Category Archives: Dad Matters

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Dad’s Matter

Father absence is at epidemic status in the United States today. Yet, science has been unable to produce a single child without one. In fact, 100% of children have a father. Some are deceased, incarcerated, pushed away or errantly absent, but everyone has a father… it’s the only way children are made.

For decades, research focused on why mothers are central to children. It is a no-brainer that moms play a critical role in parenting and child development. Sometimes single moms tell us that they are “the mother and the father.” They may be doing double duty, but mom cannot replace dad. In the past few decades research has revealed that “father need” is as central to children as “mother need.”

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What To Do For Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is just around the corner and Dad’s everywhere this week will be working on how to make this Mother’s Day wonderful for their wives.

‘Into the home of the childless wife, He sends children who are, for her, a cause of happiness beyond measure.’ Psalm 113:9 (VOICE)

There is no Mother’s Day Manual For Dads. Most new and young dads make rookie mistakes. Those of us who have been married a few decades have figured out how to get through Mother’s Day without having major snafus. Here are some easy tips to help set you up for success with this year’s Mother’s Day.

Making Mother’s Day Successful

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Loving Your Wife Well

We love our friend in ministry, Ron Rose. Ron has written much that has influenced our relationship and our parenting of our children. He blogs today at Faith Team.

One of our favorite books by Ron is “Loving Her: 30 days to a more loving relationship with your wife”. It is a month of daily reading with action steps husbands can take to strengthen their relationship with their wife.

Rediscovering Your Wife
One of the most important things a husband can realize is that they have so much to yet discover about their wife. Here are a few nuggets from “Loving Her”.

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Your Spouse Deserves Your Full Body Attention

Lisa was about to explode. Her husband of 8 years came home early from work, plopped down on the couch and asked, “what’s for supper?” After a full day of caregiving for her 18 month old and kindergartner, she was tired and stressed. And his first communication with her was one that really pushed her buttons.

As an intelligent leader who had held her own in a corporate job before focusing on raising children, she knew she would have a better chance of telling him how she feels if she kept her emotions in check. So she asked him if they could talk and began telling him about her stressful day of caregiving. In the middle of her report she realized that his eyes were moving from the television to his phone and back to the television. He was facing the television and rarely turned his head toward her face. And she felt like she was not being heard.

What Lisa wanted more than anything else in that moment was to experience what we call “full body attention”.   She wanted him to show her in every way possible that she had his undivided attention. She wanted to know that there was nothing in the world more important or of a higher priority to him than what she had to say.

Full Body Attention

Full body attention is how we tell our spouse they are the most important and highest priority in our world in that moment.

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Are You A Good Husband?

It seems like the definition of what it means to be a good husband keeps morphing over time. What was once heralded as good is now looked upon as being controlling or inadequate.

We believe that when a man seeks to marry, he wants to be a good husband. But too often he is ill equipped to be all that his spouse needs and wants. And it is unrealistic to meet a moving target of what it means to be a man, much less, a husband.

1950’s Assessment of What It Means To Be A Good Husband

Dr. George Crane published a test for husbands in the 1950s. Here are some of the items on the list:

Positive Attributes:

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Why Dads Matter

Father absence is at epidemic status in the United States today. Yet, science has been unable to produce a single child without one. In fact, 100% of children have a father. Some are deceased, incarcerated, pushed away or errantly absent, but everyone has a father… it’s the only way children are made.

For decades, research focused on why mothers are central to children. It is a no-brainer that moms play a critical role in parenting and child development. Sometimes single moms tell us that they are “the mother and the father.” They may be doing double duty, but mom cannot replace dad. In the past few decades research has revealed that “father need” is as central to children as “mother need.”