Father's Day Column Archives - Page 6 of 6

Developing Your Identity as a Father

By Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch | January 24, 2020

When I read comic books, it seemed silly that people couldn’t tell that Clark Kent is Superman, Peter Parker is Spiderman, and Bruce Wayne is Batman. Only the people close to them knew their true identities, but who were they–the superhero who appeared occasionally or the day-to-day person? In the real world, it is much harder to separate your identities. As we become fathers, we have to re-frame how we see ourselves. Unlike mothers, who have nine months of physical growth inside them and the social attention of pregnancy to develop their sense of motherhood, fathers have less of a build-up towards becoming a father. In some ways, for dads, I think fatherhood is a bit abstract until the baby arrives. Experts have found that once men become fathers, they make significant life changes in their relationships with their partners, their families, in their leisure activities, their work-life, and interests, and values. These shifts result in the development of a father identity. There is a direct line between developing a father identity and father involvement. The more a man sees himself as a “dad,” the more likely he is to be involved with his children. Recently, a friend who was potentially separating from his wife said that he was having a hard time because his identity was so wrapped in being a father and husband. He couldn’t see himself differently from being in those roles. His statement made me think about how much being a father shapes who we are and how we view ourselves.

I know that for many young fathers, becoming a father made them grow up–they had to mature quickly, given their responsibilities in raising children. I came to being a father later in life. So, much of my identity was formed and was then re-negotiated with the responsibilities and joys of fatherhood. This is an ongoing challenge. Research supports the idea that people begin exploring their identities as teens and then consolidate them in their 20s to create a feeling of who they are that remains pretty consistent. Identities continue to evolve based on life experience, but the idea is that the person who you are stays the same after young adulthood. When I am around younger dads, I often think about what their experience is like fusing who you are as an individual and your role as a dad. The negotiation of who you are might be easier when you’re young because the person who you are is less settled. There is the opportunity to fold in the experience of fatherhood into the person you are (and to make you a better version of yourself). At the same time, it might also be easier as an older dad because parenthood might be more deliberate, and, perhaps, an older dad is more mindful of the necessary changes that take place. There is little doubt that these shifts in identity occur and then influence the fathering behavior that takes place.

For fathers, few outlets help dads learn to become dads. Studies on dads have found that father identity is “somewhat discretionary” and that the role of being a dad is less defined. Nonetheless, according to a 2015 study from the Pew Research Center, fathers said parenthood was extremely important to their identity at the same rate as did mothers. So, the notion that men see themselves separately from their roles as fathers is false. Once men become fathers, that role becomes part of who we are (tights and capes are optional).

Once you become a dad, you gain the power to shape a kid’s life. And, to quote the Spiderman movie, “with great power comes great responsibility.” I remain optimistic that today there are fewer pressures on dads to keep identities separate. You can keep your superhero identity as a dad and save the world every day, for your kids.

Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D., CFLE is a Professor of Human Development at California State University, Monterey Bay and is a Certified Family Life Educator. He and his wife are parents to a chatty 5-year-old daughter and reside in Marina.

Father’s Day: My Dad Resolutions for 2020

By Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch | December 30, 2019

As a new year begins, I start thinking about resolutions. Making concerted efforts to achieve self-improvement goals appeals to me. In the past, I gave up drinking soda for a year. Another year, I gave up watching TV. Over several years, I have set out vague goals to exercise more, with limited success, as the treadmill continues to serve as a clothes hanger. Rarely, however, have I thought about resolutions as a father.

I believe there are ways to improve as a dad, and here are some ideas for dad’s resolutions for 2020.

1. Be more present. This is my focus for 2020. Nowadays, I think many parents and adults don’t have time management challenges–it is attention management. There are far too many times when I am home, but my face is in front of a screen doing something else. So, although I am physically present, I am not there. And, this carries over to family time, where I am checking email or social media instead of watching the dance routine my daughter has created or coloring with her because she wants company. For the next year, I am making a conscious effort to be present when I am with my family.

2. Spend more one-on-one time. Many dads don’t have opportunities to spend time alone–without their partners–with their children. I also am guilty of this. It is easy for dads to cede parental duties in the presence of moms, but this results in the father-child relationship being through mom. If we want to know what is happening in our children’s lives, then we have to build the trusting, communicative relationships to allow that to occur. That can only occur when dads are with kids on their own because the focus of parenting at that time becomes you, the dad. Kids get the opportunity to know what we are like as people and how we are there for them when we are the sole parent.

3. Take time for yourself. Among work, raising kids, and just keeping the household functioning, there is rarely personal time for dads as individuals. This resolution may seem in contrast to number two, but it isn’t. This action is about finding time to do something that is about you as a person. Some dads retreat into their work as a refuge of the demands from home because work may be predictable and controllable in ways that raising kids is not. Without taking time for yourself, I think that dads can get lost. Taking time for yourself can also include your romantic partner! My wife and I have too few times where we take time on our own away from our daughter to be with one another and live in the adult world. In the next year, I plan to spend some personal time attending to our neglected yard and hiring a babysitter more often.

4. Play more. In our garage, we have all kinds of bats, balls, frisbees, jump ropes, hula hoops, bikes, and, in the house, there are board games and card games. Although we have accumulated these over the years, they are used without regularity. When they are used, it is usually just my daughter or her with a friend for a short time. As a dad, there are just other things that draw my attention, and I don’t think about playing with my kid unless requested. This summer, when it got hot, my daughter wanted to play in the water wiggler (like a sprinkler) in our narrow backyard. My daughter was fine, but she wanted company. At first, I resisted because I didn’t want to get wet, muddy, or cold, but then I thought how often she is going to have the chance to run through the sprinkler comfortably, given our cool climate and with her dad. I obliged, and we had lots of messy fun. If I play with her, she is learning skills as valuable as reading a book. Besides, playing with her is an easy way to incorporate exercise that I often neglect for myself.

5. Yell less. Yup, when I get frustrated with my headstrong, independent daughter, my volume goes up (and up). I don’t like being late, I don’t like being rushed, and I don’t like being defied by a kid. But, these are my issues, not my daughter’s. As a dad, yelling comes easy but is a poor tool to get her to do what I want. I often forget that, in her world, something shiny is a more attractive activity than is brushing your teeth and getting ready for school or other activities. As a kid, she lives in the present and has not absorbed our adult focus on punctuality, work ethic, among different values. So, I am working on keeping myself in check and using other strategies to keep her on track to enjoy the things she wants to do. I don’t want to be a yelling dad–I want to be a loving dad.

Dads, now is the time to think about how over the next year what goals you can set to improve as a parent. Resolutions should be clear and achievable–even the smallest gesture can accumulate and add up to significant impacts in the lives of your children. Let 2020 be the year of a better dad.

Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch, MSW, Ph.D., CFLE is a Professor of Human Development at California State University, Monterey Bay and is a Certified Family Life Educator. He and his wife are parents to a chatty 5-year-old daughter and reside in Marina.

Give ‘em another hug!

By Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch | December 1, 2019

The other day, at school drop off, I saw a father holding a toddler while his first-grade son huffed off to line up for school. The father, wrestling the squirming toddler, still called his son back, and insisted the son say good-bye with a kiss and hug from dad. The son complied with a dramatic air, but a smile emerged across his face. The power of physical affection is strong for children.

Research is clear that skin-to-skin contact has positive effects on infants and especially for preemies. With the contact, the heart rate becomes more steady, body temperature regulates, and stress reactions are reduced. This kind of contact can come from Dad and Mom. Many parents have no resistance to touching, hugging, kissing, blowing raspberries, bouncing, and other forms of contact with infants. However, it seems that as children move out of babyhood, fathers become less and less demonstrative of affection. Dads, we need to change this!

Physical affection helps to reinforce those feelings of connection, trust, and support in children that fathers often neglect to show. According to research, men are more likely to do something supportive than saying or physically communicating affection. Affection results in positive outcomes for children. Child Trends, a leading research institute, has reported that kids who receive warmth and affection also report higher self-esteem, better academic performance, greater parent-child communication, and fewer psychological and behavior problems. Fathers, don’t hold back.

As kids grow up, it is easy for us dads to let kids avoid the hugs and kisses and other affectionate gestures. I think this plays into our views of masculinity, and research supports the idea that fathers tend to express the amount of affection with their children that they report having received from their fathers. If this still holds, today’s dads have to work harder to buck that trend. At the same time, physical affection from dad helps to model healthy masculinity for children. Daughters see that being masculine includes being trustworthy, reliable, supporting family, and expressing feelings. Sons learn that showing affection is all part of being a healthy man.

Some dads may have trouble feeling comfortable with expressing affection. For dads who have a hard time saying, “I love you,” the National Center on Fathering advises to go into the child’s room at night when the kid is sleeping, and practice saying it. With more regular practice, it will come out naturally during the day. Notes containing expressions of love can be slipped into lunches and backpacks or written on foggy bathroom mirrors (and later text messages). Fathers can also not allow kids to avoid physical affection being offered because they are embarrassed or uncomfortable at the attention. An easy way to address this embarrassment is to say, “That is how we interact in our family,” or something similar. This sentiment allows the kid to explain then that the “embarrassing” behavior is a family thing but also reinforces what the actual standards for behavior are in the family.

I read a parenting book once where the author advocated for holding your child’s hand unexpectedly and saying, “I just like holding your hand.” The idea is that because parents spend so much time directing a child’s behavior that there may be much less time simply providing reassurance. As a dad, I do spend less overall time with my daughter than my wife does, and that time is often filled with directions and requests to do something. By just taking my daughter’s hand casually, I think I can remind her that I support her, care for her, and love her unconditionally.

Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

By Robert (Rob) S. Weisskirch | October 24, 2019

With the cooler winds and pumpkin spice flavored everything, it’s time to think about Thanksgiving! For many, the goal of the holiday is eating. Instead, I propose that it is time to put the thanks back into Thanksgiving.

The origin of Thanksgiving dates to the 1600s when pilgrims invited the local Wampanoag Indians to share in a several days-long feast. The cooperation of the local Native Americans helped pilgrims survive in what was a difficult landscape for them to cultivate. As a gesture of thanks, they shared a feast. Later, in the 1800s, Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent writer and editor (and composer of “Mary had a Little Lamb”), advocated in her writing and activism to have a day of thanks as a national holiday. President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, during the Civil War, finally declared the fourth Thursday in November as a national day of thanks. I think the sentiment that, even during a war, we should pause and be thankful for what we have is a powerful notion.

When juggling work and family life, it is easy to focus on the hardship, burden, and struggle and neglect gratitude for what you do have. Now is the time to give thanks!

However, the reality is that kids are not always grateful in their interactions with their parents. Many kids have learned manners and use “please” and “thank you”—some consistently and some less so. Kids often do not recognize the hard work parents put in to provide for the family and to keep the household running successfully. They may not notice the millions of other tasks we parents do to make their lives better than our own. For example, my daughter will eat four bites of a delicious, homecooked dinner and proclaim she is full, only to seek out snacks she finds more desirable twenty minutes later. She doesn’t appreciate the fact that her mother worked hard to prepare the meal and that we have food readily available to her. I know that her gratitude will come sometime towards adulthood (I hope). In the meantime, we are working on helping our kid look outside herself to think about others and to appreciate what she has.

As a dad, I am thankful for my wife, who shoulders more than her share in our family. Dads out there, take this opportunity to give thanks to those moms and others who support raising your children. For the mothers out there, take a minute and give thanks to the dads for what they contribute to your family and the raising of the kids.

My wife and I are not alone in raising our daughter. We rely on people formally like teachers, childcare providers, ballet instructors, and others, but we also rely on people informally. Many people help shape the world in which my daughter lives. I am genuinely thankful for the neighbors who treat her kindly in answering her never-ending questions. I am grateful for the store employees who engage with her and for the other parents who lend a helping hand. I am thankful for the big kids who step in, when needed, on the playground. As you interact with people who treat your children kindly, now is the time to say thank you.

For those in more formal roles, I prefer providing gifts, making treats, and giving my direct thanks at Thanksgiving, rather than associate the thank-you gift-giving with the winter holidays. I genuinely want those special people to know that I (and my wife and daughter) are grateful for all they do. Many people who work with children are not paid to take a concerted interest in her, in her learning, and her happiness. Too often, it is easy to assume that pay is a sufficient reward. As a parent, I think it is a good reminder that thanks can go a long way to make individuals feel appreciated. And, dads need to step forward in the giving of thanks, in whatever form, to those individuals, rather than allowing moms always to be the family ambassadors.

Researchers who study happiness have found that one way to increase your personal experience of happiness is to keep a gratitude journal. Every day, before you go to sleep, write down one thing for which you are grateful. Over time, this act of recalling at least one thing that day bolsters your feelings that things are positive.

I’ve been thinking that this might be an excellent way to build my kid’s feelings of happiness and resilience by having her say, before she goes to bed, one thing for which she is grateful. For older kids, you could have them keep a gratitude journal. Even better, you could both do it and share what you are thankful for every day.