Changing Role of the Father
Content
The Changing Role of the Father
Author(s): Van F. Christoph
Source: The Coordinator, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Sep., 1956), pp. 24-28
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/581317
Accessed: 28-05-2016 16:22 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Wiley, National Council on Family Relations are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Coordinator
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
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THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE FATHER(1)
By Father Van F. Christoph
Gonzaga University
A few years ago, just before the United States entered World War II,
a very young naval officer asked permission of his superior officer to
petition for an emergency leave because, as he said, "My wife is going
to have a baby. " My dear young man," his senior officer is reported
to have replied, "your presence at home was necessary for the laying
of the keel, but it is not necessary for the launching of the ship. " We
are not told the ultimate resolution of the story--whether the expectant
father applied for his leave or not, but the little episode bears out the
point I wish to make that in the recent past the role of the father, in all
too many cases, has been 41most a nominal one, save in the biological
sense. Our society is by tradition patrilineal in descent, patronymic
in identification, and theoretically, patriarchal in authority. While
western society, especially the U.S A. variety, still regards these
three characteristics as somewhat integral to the concept of the family, the meaning and implication of fatherhood is all but lost in the
rather nebulous concept American have of the father role.
I do not think that it is daring to say that father lost much of his function and even prestige when the family metamosphosed from its rural
to its present urban pattern. The state has taken from him the burden
(and perhaps, the satisfaction) of protecting and educating his children.
Commercialized, or at least group activities have taken over his job as
entertainer and recreational director of the family. Religion is left to
the organized church, and even the economic function of the father
looms less important as wives take to the office, shop and the factory,
and teen-agers become at least partially self-supporting. As I said
a moment ago, about the only role that today's father successfully and
adequately fulfills is the biological role.
In the change to our urban pattern, the wife and mother has taken over
the bulk of those offices which the father has not surrendered to out-
side agencies. The father has unconsciously acquiesced in this, not
recognizing that he has abdicated most of his role. Absentee fatherhood is characteristic of the urban family today. This absenteeism
24
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ranges from nine to twelve hours a day to weeks at a time for some
professional entertainers and travelling men. For the father employed
in business and industry this change has produced a unique matriarchy,
a kind of fatherless family wherein the roles of both parents are assumed by the mother. With his children for but brief periods of time,
the father feels that he should merely enjoy them and he very often
resents the disciplinarian role that mother would place on his shoulders
during his evenings or week ends at home.
It is all too true that education (insofar as it is a family function), the
administration of discipline, the organization of the home activities
and the like--yes, the very transmission of culture and all the socializing processes are, today, largely the mother's task. "The hand the
rocks the cradle rules the world" has been true in the past to the extent that the child is shaped morally, spiritually, mentally and socially
more by the mother than by the father, but in our day that axiom takes
on a new and even sinister meaning. Today it implies that the father
is little more than a biological necessity and/or economic prop. The
mother becomes a father surrogate. It cannot be said that many fathers
are even aware of this, much less concerned about it. Father may not
know it, but the present attitude of society towards the male parent may
well be described as father rejection.
Paralleling this development, the mother has assumed more independence and in many instances has simply taken over the running of the
family and the home. The father turns over his check or a certain
amount of money and expects the mother to run the home, service all
accounts and not bother him about the details of household management.
In proportion as the mother takes over, the father seems to have lost
interest or at least concern for the home. A French journalist almost
a half century ago wrote that the American husband ruled in the business world, but his wife, everywhere else. Indeed, as his patriarchal
function is being shorn from him, the American father tends to seek
escape into business. Despite a shorter work day and a shorter work
week, father still comes home exhausted. He buries his face in the
paper or a magazine or looks at TV. Organized sports and entertain-
ment keep him from the family. Rarely is the family benefited much
by father's increased leisure. It is all too true that in the competition
for father's time, the child too frequently loses out to father's peer
group or to activities in which children can play little or no part. It
is a growing conviction of child psychologists that men have no right
to be fathers if they are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to
become fathers who are interested in and devoted to their families.
Life with father has been caricatured more often than it has been painted
as it actually is. The futility and helplessness of the father in his role
25
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
are reflected in the type of behavior we see portrayed in movies and
TV, hear on radios and follow in comic strips of the "Blondie" or
"Bringing up Father" variety. The all-too common portrayal of the
expectant father whose antics are one step removed from the couvade
is a rather feeble attempt to identify the father more closely with his
wife and family. But there must be some verisimilitude to real life
in these things, otherwise there would be little interest in such portrayal. One almost gets the impression that being a father is a constant source of surprise, embarrassment and even bewilderment to
the male.
"To grow up like father, to do no better than he has done, to be the
same sort of person as he was, would be failure indeed," writes
Gorer. Father has indeed lost stature in the home. The mores sev-
erely limit the use of his authority. To demand obedience on the base
of withholding an inheritance is a useless threat today. To expect
compliance on the basis of being the head of the house is too unrealistic, for father headship is questioned. Once a father's word was all
sufficient. Now the children pay little or no attention to him. Both
extremes are unfortunate. Father's knowledge in an earlier society
was awe-inspiring to his children. Now, more often than not, the
education of his children is superior to his own.
Fatherhood is a role that should be embraced out of a feeling of love,
pursued in an atmosphere of confident awareness of means and ends,
and fulfilled in a spirit of devotion supported by a sense of high duty,
restricted only by the limitations of the human personality. It is the
father in our society who takes the initiative in establishing the home,
but surely his concern and interest should not stop there. He is intended by nature to be a teacher, a leader, a model, and a source, in
part, of moral and spiritual ideals.
In our equalitarian society, the democractic ideal has run wild. The
democratization of the wife and mother role has encouraged her to be
more assertive and independent. Our industrialized society has fostered this, divorcing the husband father more and more from domestic
concerns. The primary interest of the father should be the general
welfare of his family. Unless the father is willing to sacrifice practically all of what little leisure he has in the interests of the family,
he stands to lose all of his authority and much of his status as head of
the house. It does little good for the state to assign him legal power,
it does little good for society to grant him a certain status, if in practice he cannot or will not find time to implement them by genuine intere st.
26
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Unless he wishes merely to be a rubber stamp, seconding the decisions
made by a wife and mother, who for all her concern about the family
is still limited by the feminine point of view, father is going to have
to do something. If he is to function as a father--oversee the education of his children, make decisions of importance affecting the welfare of the whole family and still have due consideration for the unique
character of the personalities that make up his family, he must know
them intimately. Society is forever harping on the theme "a woman's
place is in the home" to which most men and many women will agree,
but society has overlooked a very important facet of family life, of
character and personality development, and nature's obvious intent
when it fails to emphasize that if man's place is not in the home, at
least a father's place is in it. He may be important as the breadwinner; his position in the business and social world may enhance the
prestige of the family but his most important role is that of father.
All other roles are--or at least should be--secondary to this one.
The sociological phenomenon of the vanishing father is being challenged
on a number of fronts and in a number of ways. The press, TV, and
screen to some extent, have been allies of the new offense. The schools,
especially on the college level have done much. Adult education programs, the Church with its counseling program, community social
hygiene groups, the PTA and kindred organizations (and organizations
like our own) are doing their part to awaken father to concern over his
role and the manner in which he is facing it.
The father wants status as a father. He still feels that he should be the
man of the house. He still wants headship. He ought to recognize that
nature has fitted him, more than woman, to conduct the external af-
fairs of the home. Even in those cultures which to anthropologists offer the best cases for matriarchy (female domination and control), male
leadership is still the rule. Dr. Cooper, the social anthropologist, concluded after analyzing the facts that, "all things considered, for the
world at large, headship in the sense of domestic control appears to
rest somewhat more with the man than with the woman."
The pendulum has swung from one extreme wherein the father wielded
absolute authority over the wife and child to the other wherein the father
is tolerated but scarcely looked up to. Both extremes have had their
day.
A happy mean is possible--nay, necessary. Marriage is a partnership; parenthood is a shared responsibility, a partnership that embraces the physical needs, that is concerned with the emotional adjust-
ment of the children, that resolves questions of discipline on the basis
27
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
of function. Only in this way will the family function as a unit. The
father must assume his responsibilities. He cannot remain semi-
detached from the family. He cannot feel that he has absolved himself of his responsibilities when he provides food, clothing and shelter. Those are the material aspects of fatherhood. The non-material
are more important and more neglected, maybe because they are intangible. But the father of the future, to hold his place inthe changing family picture, is going to have to take a more realistic attitude
towards his role, not let it deteriorate by indifference nor permit
it to go by default.
"A Man may work from sun to sun
But as a father, his work's never done."
(1)Presidential address given at the annual meeting of the Pacific
Northwest Conference of Family Relations held at Gonzaga University April 5-7, 1956.
28
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Author(s): Van F. Christoph
Source: The Coordinator, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Sep., 1956), pp. 24-28
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/581317
Accessed: 28-05-2016 16:22 UTC
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Wiley, National Council on Family Relations are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Coordinator
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE FATHER(1)
By Father Van F. Christoph
Gonzaga University
A few years ago, just before the United States entered World War II,
a very young naval officer asked permission of his superior officer to
petition for an emergency leave because, as he said, "My wife is going
to have a baby. " My dear young man," his senior officer is reported
to have replied, "your presence at home was necessary for the laying
of the keel, but it is not necessary for the launching of the ship. " We
are not told the ultimate resolution of the story--whether the expectant
father applied for his leave or not, but the little episode bears out the
point I wish to make that in the recent past the role of the father, in all
too many cases, has been 41most a nominal one, save in the biological
sense. Our society is by tradition patrilineal in descent, patronymic
in identification, and theoretically, patriarchal in authority. While
western society, especially the U.S A. variety, still regards these
three characteristics as somewhat integral to the concept of the family, the meaning and implication of fatherhood is all but lost in the
rather nebulous concept American have of the father role.
I do not think that it is daring to say that father lost much of his function and even prestige when the family metamosphosed from its rural
to its present urban pattern. The state has taken from him the burden
(and perhaps, the satisfaction) of protecting and educating his children.
Commercialized, or at least group activities have taken over his job as
entertainer and recreational director of the family. Religion is left to
the organized church, and even the economic function of the father
looms less important as wives take to the office, shop and the factory,
and teen-agers become at least partially self-supporting. As I said
a moment ago, about the only role that today's father successfully and
adequately fulfills is the biological role.
In the change to our urban pattern, the wife and mother has taken over
the bulk of those offices which the father has not surrendered to out-
side agencies. The father has unconsciously acquiesced in this, not
recognizing that he has abdicated most of his role. Absentee fatherhood is characteristic of the urban family today. This absenteeism
24
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
ranges from nine to twelve hours a day to weeks at a time for some
professional entertainers and travelling men. For the father employed
in business and industry this change has produced a unique matriarchy,
a kind of fatherless family wherein the roles of both parents are assumed by the mother. With his children for but brief periods of time,
the father feels that he should merely enjoy them and he very often
resents the disciplinarian role that mother would place on his shoulders
during his evenings or week ends at home.
It is all too true that education (insofar as it is a family function), the
administration of discipline, the organization of the home activities
and the like--yes, the very transmission of culture and all the socializing processes are, today, largely the mother's task. "The hand the
rocks the cradle rules the world" has been true in the past to the extent that the child is shaped morally, spiritually, mentally and socially
more by the mother than by the father, but in our day that axiom takes
on a new and even sinister meaning. Today it implies that the father
is little more than a biological necessity and/or economic prop. The
mother becomes a father surrogate. It cannot be said that many fathers
are even aware of this, much less concerned about it. Father may not
know it, but the present attitude of society towards the male parent may
well be described as father rejection.
Paralleling this development, the mother has assumed more independence and in many instances has simply taken over the running of the
family and the home. The father turns over his check or a certain
amount of money and expects the mother to run the home, service all
accounts and not bother him about the details of household management.
In proportion as the mother takes over, the father seems to have lost
interest or at least concern for the home. A French journalist almost
a half century ago wrote that the American husband ruled in the business world, but his wife, everywhere else. Indeed, as his patriarchal
function is being shorn from him, the American father tends to seek
escape into business. Despite a shorter work day and a shorter work
week, father still comes home exhausted. He buries his face in the
paper or a magazine or looks at TV. Organized sports and entertain-
ment keep him from the family. Rarely is the family benefited much
by father's increased leisure. It is all too true that in the competition
for father's time, the child too frequently loses out to father's peer
group or to activities in which children can play little or no part. It
is a growing conviction of child psychologists that men have no right
to be fathers if they are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to
become fathers who are interested in and devoted to their families.
Life with father has been caricatured more often than it has been painted
as it actually is. The futility and helplessness of the father in his role
25
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
are reflected in the type of behavior we see portrayed in movies and
TV, hear on radios and follow in comic strips of the "Blondie" or
"Bringing up Father" variety. The all-too common portrayal of the
expectant father whose antics are one step removed from the couvade
is a rather feeble attempt to identify the father more closely with his
wife and family. But there must be some verisimilitude to real life
in these things, otherwise there would be little interest in such portrayal. One almost gets the impression that being a father is a constant source of surprise, embarrassment and even bewilderment to
the male.
"To grow up like father, to do no better than he has done, to be the
same sort of person as he was, would be failure indeed," writes
Gorer. Father has indeed lost stature in the home. The mores sev-
erely limit the use of his authority. To demand obedience on the base
of withholding an inheritance is a useless threat today. To expect
compliance on the basis of being the head of the house is too unrealistic, for father headship is questioned. Once a father's word was all
sufficient. Now the children pay little or no attention to him. Both
extremes are unfortunate. Father's knowledge in an earlier society
was awe-inspiring to his children. Now, more often than not, the
education of his children is superior to his own.
Fatherhood is a role that should be embraced out of a feeling of love,
pursued in an atmosphere of confident awareness of means and ends,
and fulfilled in a spirit of devotion supported by a sense of high duty,
restricted only by the limitations of the human personality. It is the
father in our society who takes the initiative in establishing the home,
but surely his concern and interest should not stop there. He is intended by nature to be a teacher, a leader, a model, and a source, in
part, of moral and spiritual ideals.
In our equalitarian society, the democractic ideal has run wild. The
democratization of the wife and mother role has encouraged her to be
more assertive and independent. Our industrialized society has fostered this, divorcing the husband father more and more from domestic
concerns. The primary interest of the father should be the general
welfare of his family. Unless the father is willing to sacrifice practically all of what little leisure he has in the interests of the family,
he stands to lose all of his authority and much of his status as head of
the house. It does little good for the state to assign him legal power,
it does little good for society to grant him a certain status, if in practice he cannot or will not find time to implement them by genuine intere st.
26
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Unless he wishes merely to be a rubber stamp, seconding the decisions
made by a wife and mother, who for all her concern about the family
is still limited by the feminine point of view, father is going to have
to do something. If he is to function as a father--oversee the education of his children, make decisions of importance affecting the welfare of the whole family and still have due consideration for the unique
character of the personalities that make up his family, he must know
them intimately. Society is forever harping on the theme "a woman's
place is in the home" to which most men and many women will agree,
but society has overlooked a very important facet of family life, of
character and personality development, and nature's obvious intent
when it fails to emphasize that if man's place is not in the home, at
least a father's place is in it. He may be important as the breadwinner; his position in the business and social world may enhance the
prestige of the family but his most important role is that of father.
All other roles are--or at least should be--secondary to this one.
The sociological phenomenon of the vanishing father is being challenged
on a number of fronts and in a number of ways. The press, TV, and
screen to some extent, have been allies of the new offense. The schools,
especially on the college level have done much. Adult education programs, the Church with its counseling program, community social
hygiene groups, the PTA and kindred organizations (and organizations
like our own) are doing their part to awaken father to concern over his
role and the manner in which he is facing it.
The father wants status as a father. He still feels that he should be the
man of the house. He still wants headship. He ought to recognize that
nature has fitted him, more than woman, to conduct the external af-
fairs of the home. Even in those cultures which to anthropologists offer the best cases for matriarchy (female domination and control), male
leadership is still the rule. Dr. Cooper, the social anthropologist, concluded after analyzing the facts that, "all things considered, for the
world at large, headship in the sense of domestic control appears to
rest somewhat more with the man than with the woman."
The pendulum has swung from one extreme wherein the father wielded
absolute authority over the wife and child to the other wherein the father
is tolerated but scarcely looked up to. Both extremes have had their
day.
A happy mean is possible--nay, necessary. Marriage is a partnership; parenthood is a shared responsibility, a partnership that embraces the physical needs, that is concerned with the emotional adjust-
ment of the children, that resolves questions of discipline on the basis
27
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
of function. Only in this way will the family function as a unit. The
father must assume his responsibilities. He cannot remain semi-
detached from the family. He cannot feel that he has absolved himself of his responsibilities when he provides food, clothing and shelter. Those are the material aspects of fatherhood. The non-material
are more important and more neglected, maybe because they are intangible. But the father of the future, to hold his place inthe changing family picture, is going to have to take a more realistic attitude
towards his role, not let it deteriorate by indifference nor permit
it to go by default.
"A Man may work from sun to sun
But as a father, his work's never done."
(1)Presidential address given at the annual meeting of the Pacific
Northwest Conference of Family Relations held at Gonzaga University April 5-7, 1956.
28
This content downloaded from 86.120.53.115 on Sat, 28 May 2016 16:22:07 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
