Just last month, we celebrated Mother’s Day.
It was the time of year we reserve for honoring the beauty that is motherhood, the consistent personal and career sacrifices a woman makes for the betterment of her children and families, and the acceptance of the role that kind of nurturing — or more accurately, nurturing that kind — plays in the development of individual lives and societies and, even, our country as a whole.
And in this space, on that day, we recalled the story of Anna Jarvis, the founder of the day itself who came to hate it because it became, in her mind, an overtly commercial holiday destined to be stripped of its original sentiment and meaning.
Well, Sunday is Father’s Day, and its origins are as interesting, for opposite reasons.
First celebrated unofficially in 1908, Father’s Day wasn’t recognized as an official national observance until President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.
That is mostly because men resisted the idea of it for decades.
They saw Mother’s Day as a celebration of femininity, and it is fair to suggest most men didn’t share Jarvis’ fear of the event lacking any sentimentality. Celebrating any emotion toward fatherhood didn’t seem to capture its spirit more than a century ago. One historian wrote: Men “scoffed at the holiday’s sentimental attempts to domesticate manliness with flowers and gift-giving, or they derided the proliferation of such holidays as a commercial gimmick to sell more products — often paid for by the father himself.”
It brought up a conundrum, at the time: Why bother to set a day aside to celebrate patriarchs, during a time when they were unquestioned heads of households and certainly not underappreciated socially? Celebrating a day for dads didn’t pick up much steam until businesses began pitching it as an opportunity to purchase practical gifts for men during the Great Depression — things like, wait for it, ties and socks that dads skimped on the rest of the year to save a few pennies.
An argument can be made that our modern celebration of Father’s Day is still somewhat languishing in those early issues and tropes of what fatherhood was and should be. Back then, fathers were viewed as loving in their own way, but also distant, stern authority figures whose engagement with their families was limited to weekends. Their biggest contribution to the family, it was generally accepted then, was their ability to provide for his wife and kids during the workday.
But in many regards, Father’s Day is changing more slowly than fatherhood itself.
As they have through recent decades, celebrations this year will focus as much on barbecues and the gift of gadgets as they will a genuine acknowledgement of how a father’s role has adapted to a very different world.
Not that there is anything wrong with grilled steaks or the new app-enabled meat thermometer that will help dad sear them today to a perfect medium. Many dads rather enjoy a quiet hour at the grill every so often. But the day itself doesn’t do much to acknowledge the reality that many more dads today play a much more hands-on role in raising children and running homes than they ever would have been expected to a century ago. They are more now than burger flippers, as society has demanded.
Today, we believe celebrating fatherhood should also include a recognition of the men who have accepted those changing roles.
Dads today work from home, prepare meals for wives coming home from the office and kids they help shuttle around from activity to activity.
Many read bedtime stories to their young sons, help them with their math homework, pack their lunches for school. They have worked in many cases to avoid the win-at-all-costs lessons of the past, opting instead to foster capable young men who are also kind and understanding of the plight of others.
Many have or take the time to learn to braid their daughters’ hair, to be the loudest supporting voices at their dance recitals and softball games. In the aftermath of the tragic 2020 helicopter crash that claimed the life of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and several coaches and players on their basketball team, “girl dads” nationwide rallied to show support for Bryant’s active role in his daughters’ lives. The movement showed fathers could be emotionally available and nurturing while being engaged in the lives of their daughters — roles that once exclusively belonged to mothers.
On days like this, we should better understand that a good father’s value is found in his presence in the everyday chaos that constitutes family life in our current time. That is no longer a rarity deserving of a yearly thank you, but the standard for modern parenting we’re seeing more and more everyday.