Happy Father's Day

For dinner at our house today we honored four fathers. My husband and three sons-in-law who among them  fathered a combined total of sixteen children. What a delightful evening! One granddaughter made homemade cards (printed in vibrant colors at Staples) that depicted a game she and her sisters have played with their grandfather since they were tiny. It's called "Katie the Lion" and consists of Larry the gorilla chasing Katie the lion, Jenny the giraffe, and several other assorted critters whose names I've forgotten. Another grandchild came running into the house asking Paka for a game of pai gow (double handed poker0.  The baby of the group who is 22 months old toddled into the house calling "Paka" and saying "na na na nyow!", her interpretation of her grandad's noise when he pulls back the swing and sends her flying. She's actually got it down perfectly. And she only let's "Mum" (grandma) push her if Paka is unavailable. Paka's lap is rarely empty when grandkids are around and they often demand favorite books like Let's Go on a Bear Hunt. But those quiet times only come after the pick up soccer or football games with all the dads. And for the little ones, it's their daddies' strong arms that carry their exhausted little bodies out to the car and up to bed at the end of the trail. 

Our feminist-influenced world has convinced many women that fathers are unimportant. That attitude has so infected the black community that 72% of black babies today are born to single mothers. How many of those children ever see their dads or have a significant male influence in their lives? Too few. And there is plenty of evidence that gangs are taking the place of dads. That has to change for the good of the kids and our society.

You can trace the disaster back to Johnson's War on Poverty which decimated black families, replacing fathers with Uncle Sugar and his handouts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about the disintegration in the mid 60's when the number of fatherless black families was under 24%. Liberals ignored him and minority families suffered. Today the fatherless rate for black families has almost tripled. All you have to do to see what's happened is look at the heavily black inner cities. This fathers' day weekend saw 7 killed and 32 wounded in Barack Obama's home town of Chicago. And the trend toward fatherless families is growing among whites as well.

Disappearing fathers is a tragedy for children! Kids need a mom and dad committed to their well-being to grow up healthy, happy, and normal. The trend in disappearing fathers bodes ill for the future of our children. It's time to demand family-friendly policies instead of government programs that undermine and destroy the family. 

Pray for dads today. They have been under attack for years: from the feminists and the liberal left that sees the family as a roadblock to socialism. We desperately need godly fathers who love their wives and are committed to their children. If you have a dad who's been there for your, a really important part of your life, call and thank him. And pray that more dads will wake up and become the men they are called to be. It would help if women would stop keeping them little boys by being their all-day suckers and sex toys!

A big thank you to the fathers in my family: my own dad who died in 1985 after raising ten children and being the patriarch to a growing village of grandkids, to my husband of 43 years, to my father-in-law who died in 2002 but gave his four sons a great example of fatherhood, to my two sons and three sons-in-law who are the parents of our 21 grandchildren and to all the fathers in my extended family who are committed to their kids. May God bless you all abundantly!