Fatherhood.

I was at a banquet tonight given under the auspices of “America Supports You,” a group that helps Americans show tangible support for our military personnel and their families. It got me to thinking about tough jobs. Anybody serving in our military has a tough job. That almost (but not quite) goes without saying. Military families have a tough (and usually under-appreciated) job, too. Keeping things going stateside while your significant other is deployed can be every bit demanding (in a quite different way) from serving in harm’s way. Tonight, I’d like to talk about another tough job: Fatherhood.

To set the record straight, I am NOT saying that being a dad is harder than being a mom. I’ve never been a mom, nor will I ever be, so I have no perspective on that. But I can tell you, firsthand, that being a dad is a difficult job. Being a dad is tough for a lot of reasons. There’s no formal training course, no instruction manual, no way you can get experience beforehand. It’s 100% On the Job Training, period. It’s one of those jobs, too, where something you do wrong today can come back and bite you years from now. Or not. You never know. It’s a job where you need to do a lot of thinking, praying, and hoping, not necesarrily in that order. It’s also a job where the rewards can far outweigh any pain or torment you might experience doing the job. 

I was talking with another dad tonight. A good man – a righteous man, he was relating to me a story about one of his kids. No need to go into details. Suffice it to say that I have been in his shoes, and he is doing his best to raise his kids to be good, upstanding adults, just as I’m trying to do with mine. His challenge put into stark relief the kinds of things that dads have to go through on a daily basis, everywhere. 

Being a dad is a lot like piloting a ship down an uncharted river, at night, with no map, no sonar, no radar, and little in the way of guidance. If you see a threat looming – a sandbar, a shoal, a bend in the river – maybe even some hostiles wanting to board – you have to steer the right course – over-correct and you can run aground, or knock a hole in the hull, with results that could range from a slow leak to a sudden sinking of your ship. 

Being a dad requires logic, reason, love, and compassion, but it oftentimes requires that you be the tough one. Moms have pretty much co-opted the “lets err on the side of compassion” position. I can’t tell you how many times Mrs. Digital has offered up the idea that “you’re being to hard on them.” Maybe. So be it. I don’t want to make my kids afraid of me, but I am not doing my job if they do not respect me. 

A lot of what I see today (thanks to the combination of idiots who think that kids fragile little egos are irreperably damaged by hearing the word “no,” and a society that thinks anything can be a-ok, as long as it feels good) are dads who think Job #1 is to be their kids’ best friend. Wrong. “Dad” and “best friend” are two, mutually-exculsive job descriptions. Kids instinctively want two things. They want to test limits. And they want you to put limits on them. Limits – not permissiveness – show that you love them. You love them enough to say “no.” That doesn’t mean you have to say “no” to everything (nor should you), but it DOES mean that if you never say “no” you’re screwing up – and screwing them up for life.

It’s a difficult job, knowing how far to bend, and having to be the bad guy, ready to meet out punishment when it’s called for, ready to offer good advice and tough love when it’s appropriate. I love my kids. And I hope that when they are parents, they’ll look back at the way I raised them and think that I didn’t do too bad a job. And I hope they realize just how difficult a job being a good dad really is.