men resisted the idea of it for decades<\/a>.<\/p>\nThey saw Mother\u2019s Day as a celebration of femininity, and it is fair to suggest most men didn\u2019t share Jarvis\u2019 fear of the event lacking any sentimentality. Celebrating any emotion toward fatherhood didn\u2019t seem to capture its spirit more than a century ago. One historian wrote: Men \u201cscoffed at the holiday\u2019s 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 \u2014 often paid for by the father himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019t pick up much steam until businesses began pitching it as an opportunity to purchase practical gifts for men during the Great Depression \u2014 things like, wait for it, ties and socks that dads skimped on the rest of the year to save a few pennies.<\/p>\n
An argument can be made that our modern celebration of Father\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But in many regards, Father\u2019s Day is changing more slowly than fatherhood itself.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s role has adapted to a very different world.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Today, we believe celebrating fatherhood should also include a recognition of the men who have accepted those changing roles.<\/p>\n
Dads today work from home, prepare meals for wives coming home from the office and kids they help shuttle around from activity to activity.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Many have or take the time to learn to braid their daughters\u2019 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, \u201cgirl dads\u201d nationwide rallied to show support for Bryant\u2019s active role in his daughters\u2019 lives. The movement showed fathers could be emotionally available and nurturing while being engaged in the lives of their daughters \u2014 roles that once exclusively belonged to mothers.<\/p>\n
On days like this, we should better understand that a good father\u2019s 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\u2019re seeing more and more everyday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just last month, we celebrated Mother\u2019s Day. It was the time of year we reserve for honoring the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[9079,201,803,1559,28,231,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-224392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-editorials","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-luzerne-county","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}