For many of us, Father’s Day means barbecues, new neckties and greeting cards. But June is also an excellent opportunity to reflect on the important role that fathers play in all of our lives.
As any father can attest, being a responsible father is very much a year-round job. It takes time, commitment and patience. One of the 41,000 students who entered our 1998 Illinois Father of the Year Essay Contest summed it up best when she wrote, “A father is someone a kid can count on, trust, love and have fun with.”
Navigating today’s world safely is an enormous challenge, particularly for our youth. The support and guidance provided by fathers and father figures–including uncles, grandfathers, older brothers or teachers–is essential to helping our children develop into productive, healthy adults.
Unfortunately, more than 1 million children in Illinois are growing up in homes today without fathers. Research tells us that these children are more likely to commit suicide, drop out of high school, abuse chemical substances or end up in prison.
The scars of a physically or emotionally absent father can last for generations. We can no longer afford to consider “fatherlessness” as someone else’s problem. It is our problem–as individuals, as families and as a society.
The Illinois Fatherhood Initiative (IFI) is working to help. IFI is the country’s first statewide non-profit fatherhood organization whose mission is connecting children and fathers by promoting responsible fathering and helping men to become better fathers and father figures.
There are countless ways you can help support responsible fathering. The first is to spend more time with your own children. Listen to them. Read to them. Play with them. Hug them.
Another way to help is by joining Team Dad, IFI’s membership network. Team Dad members are learning to become better fathers by sharing experiences and information with other fathers; participating in fun father-child activities; serving as role models to their children; and utilizing the fathering resources and trainings offered by IFI.
This Father’s Day, when the cookouts are over and the presents opened, let’s all take a few moments to salute the many individuals who are making fatherhood their top priority and remember that every child deserves a loving, caring, nurturing father.
