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Show 1 - Illustrations eight-year-o- fry WCDsitis to peiniedl UPON A TIME there were dinosaurs, oil lamps, O1NCE and fathers. Of course there really spittoons, Model-T- s 'are some fathers left, but nobody identifies them as such. If important, they are known best as bankers, physicians, scientists, authors, athletes or movie stars. The occupation of fatherhood is almost as obsolete as that of harness maker or blacksmith. Time was when father was important in his own right, the monarch of all he surveyed within the home, the patriarch. But today this is no longer true. Suppose you have a young sen: How does he learn father's role in the family? Probably from radio, TV, or the comic strips. Take "Make Room for Daddy," for instance; It's a rather amusing show, but who is always wrong, befuddled and confused? Father, of course. Then there is. The Life of Riley, equally amusing and equally hard on fathers. Add to these, comic strips like "Bringing jUp Father" or "Blondie," but and what do you have? Father is weak, invarisomewhat stupid, even by a ably he gets himself into trouble from which only the wisdom of his wife and young children eventually saves him. If a son chooses to observe his own father, he is likely to find him rarely available for observation, or concealed by a newspaper or magazine. Father's decreasing importance within the family can be blamed on two factors: the external pull and the internal, ss father and it is particusqueeze. The larly of these I speak is most likely, to be a proprietor, manager! or professional man. While labor unions have made the ur week almost standard for members, the hours of executive and professional men are as long as, or longer than, those of their counterparts of a century ago. The pressure of their work keeps them at the desk, the clinic or the laboratory far more than eight hours a day, and even when they are at home, preoccupations about the job continue to claim their thoughts and drain their energies. And when a father is free of office problems, it is quite likely that community service may demand speeches or committee work drives. Thus, the more successful a man is on fund-raisiin his chosen field, the less time he has to spend with his family. In fact, it is hot too much to say the price of business or professional success may be failure as a father. , , a m tL. Ill I r v an ai r .MvA x arm k.r ai ar av mm mmmm well-meani- I -- t JWJIUf tw mi II ten-year-ol- d's j ng, sdarf; , m upper-middle-cla- 1 r- -l O 40-ho- . of FAMILY ditor WEEKLY war to daaply !m. prassad with this thought-provokin-g articla in JUBILEE MAGAZINE, 377 Fourth Ava that 4hay Now YorkN.-Y- n atkad pormiuion to roprintit (or FAMILY WEEKLY raadars, Tko author, graduato of St. Josaph's ColUga and tho of Paniisylvania, is choir man of tho sociology Tka Uni-varsi- dapart-mont.Nof- Dama Univarsiry. FAMILY WEEKLY MAGAZINE ty ro ng What are the real causes? Now let's analyze this more closely and see what the real cause is. Take community service, for instance. We all be- lieve we owe, something to "our 'communities, and leadership in community affairs is expected to be assumed for the most part by the' upper middle class. In fact, some companies demand this extracurricular activity of their executives. If a man objected that this endangered his family life and children's rearing, his superiors would be amazed. Does he hot receive an excellent salary? Does he not provide a fine home, clothes, food, and medical care for his wife and children? Of course he does. And a materialistic society long ago defined father's role as that of economic provider. The psychological SEFTEMIER I. ltS4 Dmitri Tampolsky ld John J. Kane Fatilfiieir Bod tiOne and spiritual needs of his family are not considered at all, or dismissed as relatively unimportant A great deal has been said about the broken home as a factor in personality maladjustment of children and in later criminal careers. Little attention has been paid to what I y call the "cracked home." Father, motherland children live in the same house, the marital bond is not broken by divorce, death, or separation. But the marital bond may be very tenuous," stretched almost to the breaking point by the physical absence or psychological isolation of the father. The fault, however, is not entirely father's. Perhaps he submits too easily to the external pull of business pressures and community demands, but some of the pressure the internal squeeze comes from within his own family. In America there are certain symbols of success which the pollsters, in ' family must acquire and exhibit Public-opiniorder to place a family in the class structure, ask if it has a telephone, a refrigerator, a TV set Or I should say they used to. Just recently I filled out a questionnaire whose first item was: "Does the family, have more than In our materialistic society, it is not necessary merely to have something; you must also exhibit it.1 Here is where mother enters the picture. Father is pretty much chained to his work. He lacks time to exhibit the family wealth and status, but mother .usually has the time and the ambition to do so. Women's clothes are safer indices of a family's position than men's. It's something like a seesaw; the deeper father plunges into his work, the higher his family's status goes in our society. Children soon catch on to the pattern, and as they increase in numbers and in years, so too do their demands. I sometimes wonder if executives' ulcers are not due as much to worries over family financial problems as to business pressures. , Children suffer most in a cracked family What are the contributions a good father should make to his family? First, a family is a unit of a man and a woman and children. As Paul Popenoe put it, a man and wife are alive until they have children; one might only too-thirparaphrase this to say that children are only half -- alive when one parent is missing. In the case of death, nothing can be done about it; the surviving parent must try in every way to make up for the deceased. y The effects of divorce are a serious problem with which we have yet to come to grips realistically. The same is true of separation. In these latter cases, however, a fiction may be created that the missing parentis dead. This the child can eventually come to terms with. But in the case of the "cracked family," the child cannot and will not accept the prolonged - and frequent absences of . father. Somehow or other, to him at least, these absences ultimately mean father doesn't care, father doesn't love him. The bonds that unite a family are numerous: blood, religion, recreation, economic dependence. All are essential to' tie family members together securely. Hie ; loosening of even one makes family unity more precarious. on one-car?- " ds . |