Although the role of mothers has changed little over the years, the role of fathers has changed considerably, particularly over the past 150 years.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, often referred to as the Victorian Era, the father was a very distant and rarely seen figure as far as children were concerned and his responsibility was largely confined to being the family’s ‘law giver’. This changed during the early part of the twentieth century, due in no small part to the influence of Freud, and by the middle of the century fathers were seen much more as being the family’s ‘wise breadwinner’.

As we moved into the 1960s and 1970s however fathers were once more given a back seat role and many people viewed them as nothing more than ‘sperm donors’. Today, it’s difficult to define the role of fathers and it’s very much a case of ‘ask ten people and you’ll get eleven opinions’.So where do we start in trying to define a father’s role? Well, the answer is that we have to return to basics and ask a few fundamental questions such as “what effect does their presence (or absence) have on the family?”and “why do children need a father?”

In trying to answer these and other similar questions the first difficulty that you encounter is that there is a wide variety of opinions. However, one thing that most studies agree upon is that children do not normally fair as well in the absence of a father and poor performance at schools, drug use, violent behavior and criminal activity are more frequently seen in children who are raised without a father. But trying to determine just why this should be the case is not easy.

It seems likely that there is no single cause and that a combination of financial, psychological and other factors are involved. Whatever the cause, it would nonetheless seem that children need a father if they are to get the best start in life.

Apart from the traditional role of being the breadwinner and providing the basic necessities of food and shelter, fathers are also undoubtedly seen as providing such things as protection for their daughters and a role model for their sons. However, many suggest that it is the role the father plays as one half of the parental partnership that is perhaps the most important.

Children are strongly influenced by everything that they see and hear and they see and hear a great deal more than we often realize. Observing the roles of mom and dad working together, children learn a great deal from the way in which matters are discussed and decisions made. The manner in which responsibilities are divided between the parents with mom taking care of such things as bedtime routines, diet and household chores and dad being the guardian of such things as the front door (granting permission for the children to spend time with friends or go the mall) and taking care of the issue of pocket money, provides children with a model of parenting and teaches them a variety of skills.

This, combined with a host of other experiences common in a two parent household, helps to shape a child’s view of the adult world and of the interaction between the sexes.

We could of course continue to develop this further and look in more detail at just how the interaction of two parents influences the children, but things begin to get a little bit complicated when we start to consider such things as the personalities of the two parents and the strength or otherwise of their own relationship. Looking at the possibilities here would means looking at literally hundreds of different scenarios.

Perhaps the simplest answer to our original question of what a father’s role is would be to say that it is many different things to different people and, while we could try to define it, perhaps it’s simply enough to say that the presence of a father in a child’s life is important and that, in general, children are better off with a father than without one.

Parenting4Dummies.com covers a wide range of topics and provides child parenting help, tips on only child parenting, advice on parenting teenagers and information on step parenting and divorced parenting.

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Do you believe that the majority of emotional, mental and relationship problems that people deal with in adult life originate from childhood events? (Emotional wounds, patterns and conditionings in our behavior)

The best way to solve many of the problems of adults is to bring up children in a more healthy way, so we don’t have the problems in the first place.

As a child we are like beautiful, fragile vases and when dropped; break. Yes, the vase can be glued back together but it will never be exactly the same again. That is what happened to us. In most cases, it was not an intentional thing that has happened. It was done out of IGNORANCE and DENIAL. The result is that ALL OF US struggle with emotional and mental issues that we don’t need to be struggling with had we been brought up better. We are all broken vases, so we need to be gentle with ourselves, not expecting perfection because we can’t get there. Once the vase was broken it will always show the blemishes, those cracks and chips from the times it was damaged.We as fathers must stand up as men, admit our ignorance & denial and educate ourselves, supporting each other and work together toward becoming more effective successful fathers.

Here is an example of where we might be ignorant and dropping our vases.

To receive our drivers license today we must study the rules of the road, take a test, then practice by driving with a licensed driver for a year. Eventually we obtain our drivers license, basically saying that we’re qualified to operate a motor vehicle and we are now educated and have received some basic training, passing the minimum standards exam proving that we should not be a hazard to society and our community.

THAT is to simply operate a MACHINE. NOT raise another human being!

My question to you is simple: Why do many of us fathers NOT place enough value on parenting skills training and education as a society? (False pride?)

Correct me if I am wrong but raising children without “dropping the vase” would make a much bigger, positive impact on society and our family, our ENTIRE future, our lives and the generations to come.

FALSE PRIDE is the father of IGNORANCE and DENIAL is its mother. Ask yourself: In what ways am I dropping the “vases” in my life?

Ignorance: The state in which one lacks knowledge. Denial: A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request.

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When I read the title, I look at it from a reader’s point of view and I think: "What does this guy have to say that I don’t already know". Well I don’t know if I would be called an expert but I am a single parent of a beautiful eighteen year old daughter. So, I would have to say that I know what I’m talking about. I have raised her since birth and she now attends a Community College. Now, with that said, I believe fathers are protective and can be separated into two categories. Each of these can be broken down into separate subcategories but I’ll only focus on the two. First; there is the father that doesn’t want his daughter to be like all of his past girlfriends in which he was extremely friendly with. This does not (for the most part) include her mother. The second is the girlfriend he wanted, dreamed about or was raised around. This could be her mother and no disrespect to mom if she wasn’t. But every man can remember his boyhood "Dream Girl".

I personally fall into the first category. I bloomed late in High School and quickly made up for lost time. I never disrespected or hurt any woman physically, but I did have a fair share of broken hearts and pissed off families and friends in my dust. When I met my daughter’s mother, I changed. Problem was she was exactly like me and was soon gone after the birth of my daughter. That forever changed me and my attitude. While raising my daughter I was not only had to keep a look out for all the younger "me’s", I also was straight forward with my daughter about life and any other subject. This was the only way that made sense to me. Being the mother and the father left little time for subtleties. My directness with my daughter and the knowledge that I gave her about the different types of boys has made her a very intelligent and beautiful woman. Other father may not have this same situation but they were that type of boy. Heaven help his daughter’s boyfriends from being that type of person.

The second category I can only relate to by observations of other fathers and one of my best friends. The title "Dream Girl" could be broken into sub-categories other than its apparent meaning. I could be the father’s mother or sister. This is the father that wants a feminine but strong type of woman. She has the grades (hopefully) and is socially active. She may be somewhat sheltered but for all the good reasons. The father will be there in her adulthood fit any pieces left out. Now she may not be all of these things but that is the general direction in which the father is guided in watching over his daughter. For these reason the father will go to the ends of the earth to make sure she is protected.

This has been one man’s perspective on the subject. As stated before each of these two categories can be broken down but they all come back to the two. Neither way is better than the other as long as his ‘Baby Girl" is safe. Much of the way he watch’s over his daughter is based on how the father came to be a man. Those events he encountered in life and the principles he learned from his parents are his building blocks. It’s the father that wants his little girl to not be like the ones he knew growing up or the girl who is royalty or similar. The daughter can be the harshest of tomboys, the beautiful princess or the Wall Street Bulldog. To the father; and this father, she will always need his protection until his last moments in life.

The author is a 44 year old male with an 18 year old daughter. He previously finished a career in Corrections and is currently an Entrepreneur. Both he and his daughter are natives of Arizona and enjoy writing and he dabbles in cooking. The author currently has a blog concerning humor stories of a recently diagnosed Diabetic. You can find the Blog at: http://www.newdiabeticplus.blogspot.com/

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My father should have known better. He was a college graduate, a Army veteran of strategic bombing missions over Japan in 1945, and by the time I was old enough to understand what other people were saying to me about him, a respected figure in our community. I have distinct memories, corroborated by my elders when I was old enough to ask about them, of having been taken at the age of five for special intelligence testing at Boston University, that he knew there was something out of the ordinary about his son. None of that helped. Nothing was ever done in response to the results of that testing except, perhaps, the crafting of various unacknowledged barriers by my elders that helped them ignore the whole thing.

He should have known better. Within a few years of coming home from the War, my father completed the first of what would become a long series of college night classes to qualify himself as a public school teacher, while working days as a life insurance agent to support his family. By the time I had grown old enough to go off to college on my own he had progressed from being an elementary classroom teacher to a school principal to the Superintendent of Schools in an exclusive New Jersey community. The way he did that had sufficient effect on me that my first real job, fresh out of college myself, was as a Middle School math teacher. At first glance you might have accepted our experiences as yet another chapter in the Great American Success Story, but you would have been wrong. Along with the rest of my family, my father did a fine job of keeping me from realizing what was going on. In looking back over many long and not particularly happy years, the man I grew to be learned that I presented a classic example of an unacknowledged gifted child. The path I followed to that classroom had indeed led through a wilderness of near total lack of confidence, a dismal self image, and a crisis of identity severe enough to have brought me right into the depths of a debilitating emotional collapse, and the weight of the difficulties all that left behind led me into was such that after a few years of what I thought was success in my chosen profession, it bore me straight off another precipice and out of teaching forever.

My father should have known better, but he did not. Being an intelligent man with a good education did not help him at all in dealing with a gifted son. It happens all the time. In my case, a combination of stern, old-time New England Puritan tradition, a grandmother who had raised my father to fear indulging any interest beyond the hard work necessary to support his family, and a mother who was just a bit afraid of anything intellectual, made it easy to agree that any signs from young Bobby of the kinds of behavior we now associate with being gifted had better be nipped in the bud. My father should have known how to find some time to spend helping me learn more about making model airplanes that would fly, encouraging me to identify and classify the multitude of snakes I kept bringing in from the pasture behind our house, to let me know that being able to read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer during the summer after I finished First Grade was something wonderful, to do anything to prevent me from having to learn that asking "Can we go do this, Dad?" would guarantee a stern lecture on how hard your father has to work. It was not until I was in High School that I gave up questioning my mother about why I felt so different from the other kids, but I could not remember a time when I didn’t already understand that asking Dad just wasn’t done.

He should have known that never having time for a little boy who was always ready to read another book, ask about something new, make things, do stuff, with his father was not a wise choice. Maybe he did know that, but just like my test at Boston University he did nothing about it. All the kids I grew up with had fathers who worked hard to make a living and we all understood, every one of us, that time with Dad was something special to be treasured, but I knew better than to ask.

Years later, when my wife, a veteran teacher herself, took my parents aside one at time and asked "How could you not have known…how could you have done nothing?", my mother admitted she had been afraid that acknowledging my giftedness would have spoiled me, turned me into a little Smart- Alec. At least she had a reason. My father, I’m told, had nothing to say.

The reasons don’t matter. I suspect that the parents of any gifted child, if they chose to do so, could find reasons to deny acknowledging what is happening. In this context, that my parents found themselves overburdened with residual guilt from their Puritan heritage is beside the point. That they denied acknowledgment is what matters…any one of a thousand different circumstances could have led to the same consequences. Sixty-some years later, my father has passed on to a better place. I do not blame him for what happened. He believed he was doing the right thing and there was nobody to suggest that a fresh look around might be a good idea. In his place would you…could you…have done better? If you can honestly answer yes, then my challenge to you is to do whatever you can to keep the gifted children of today from going unrecognized and unacknowledged.

My father was no help. We can do better.

Robert A. Benjamin is a writer who has devoted years to a personal account of his experiences as an unacknowledged gifted child. To learn more about A Gift of Dreams, I Promised You Daisies, and Side Door To Heaven, the three books of the Imperfectly Ordinary trilogy, go to http://www.imperfectlyordinary.com

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Being a father is not necessarily the "be all" and "end all" of the male existence as compared to what motherhood is for many women. The biggest difference is probably in the biology. Whereas women are biologically wired to be a mother, fatherhood may be more of an incidental or sometimes even an accidental occurrence. It’s kind of hard to describe, but though men are needed in order to procreate, their role, once the creation part is done, has historically, and yes, biologically been quite different from the female role.

I can hear people screaming in rage everywhere as they read this, but let’s be honest here. Isn’t it true that man’s job has always been to bring home the bacon, so to speak? Hasn’t it been their responsibility to keep a roof over their family’s head? Isn’t it natural to look to the father for physical strength and for those attributes that are clearly dominated by the male of the species? Isn’t it true that women are naturally looked to for the more feminine attributes?

Who are we then to rage against the natural order of things? No, it doesn’t mean that women cannot also hold down a successful career and even make more money than what her husband may make, but why must she be less feminine when she does so? No, it doesn’t mean that a man cannot change a diaper or nurture his children, buy why does it make him less masculine to do so?

Fatherhood should be a source of pride for the male of our species. We are not animals, so I think it’s time we quit applying animal traits, such as the strength of a lion or the cunning of a fox, to human beings. It’s also true that we should quit acting like animals. We have been given the ability to reason and to love. We have been blessed with so much more than the animals of our world, and the ability to choose to be a great father, or to choose not to, is one of those many blessings.

Fatherhood is a blessing and it is up to each and every father to make of it what he will. Yes, times have changed. Just as women have entered the workplace and share in the monetary gains of the family, so must men not be afraid to enter the home and to share in the emotional gains of the family.

Now, more than ever it takes two. Economic and social times ahead will be tough. The writing is on the wall. It will take two strong parents to bring their families through these arduous times, working together, side by side, even if not under the same roof, in order to raise healthy children who themselves will take on the roles of Fatherhood and Motherhood in an uncertain future.

You should be proud to take on the responsibility of fatherhood, and if you are not, then don’t begrudge the person who may do so in your absence. Every child needs someone to show them the way, someone who is able and proud to wear the badge of fatherhood, even if his children may biologically be someone else’s. Every child also needs the guiding, nurturing example of a mother. It takes two.

Along with being a proud dad, Joseph enjoys working in his gardens. Garden Harvest Supply is one of his favorite gardening web sites which offers cold frame kits and wall o waters for early season plant protection.

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Foster parent, who is also known as adoptive parent, can be a good parent by just following some parental rules which are followed by any other biological parent. Here are some tops on how to be a good foster father.

When talking to children, talk to them respectfully; do not use a rough and discouraging tone. Spare some time to play with them. Do not spent your leisure by sticking to the television or getting drunk, Instead spend time wrestling with them, playing outside with them or spending time together tinkering in the backyard.

You have the responsibility of teaching the kids values. Usually kids learn from example. So, be careful how you behave at home and with others. When talking to you wife, be polite. Do not get abusive. Instead be a good husband and help her out if you find her looking tired or worn out. Show the kids that you are a husband who cares about his spouse.

Involve the kids in the household chores. Alternatively, you can get them to help you repair your car. Spending time with them and asking them to help you out will show the kids that you care for them. Like every normal family, go on a family vacation. Do not differentiate between your biological children and the foster kids.

All the kids should be treated equally and as a part of the family. This will make the foster kids feel welcomed and as a part of the family. Remember, they are going through a traumatic period and have just lost not only their homes, but also parents, even if they were abusive or addicts. So, be understanding and patient with them. Sooner or later they will realize that you genuinely care for them and they will begin to open up. So, give the kids some space.

Make sure that you inform the foster kids that you will always be there for them no matter what happens. The kids will appreciate this once they realize that you mean it. There are many other ways which help you become a good foster father. Follow your instincts and you will not go wrong.

About Author:
Kum Martin is an online leading expert in men’s health industry. He also offers top quality articles like:
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