Strong Fathers as Strong Teachers
Part 3: The Father’s Role in Education
As fathers take on a collaborative role with the school in teaching children, a father’s role can be defined by certain qualities and behaviors associated with being a man and a father. Three key components of a father’s role in the growth and learning of his children include the actual quality of being a man and a parent, his expectations regarding the future path for his children, and the way in which he teaches and engages his children through play and interaction. These elements help to define a father’s role as a teacher of his children and a strong supporter of their formal and informal education.
Fathers, Masculinity, and Learning in the Outside World
Fathers exert a significant influence on children simply by virtue of their masculinity and the interactions they engage in that frame a child’s encounters with the larger world. Fathers and mothers come to their experience with a child some- what differently, in the beginning, simply by virtue of their gender.
From the time a child is conceived, it begins its life in the body of the mother (stop me if you have heard this before) and even from the moment of conception prepares to move away from the mother for the rest of his or her life. The father, who had a role in the conception of the child, primarily has only to wait and furnish support while the child is formed inside the mother. At the birth of the child, the mother typically has a very strong bond and a profound basis for a relation- ship with this child: it is of her and from her. Mother and child have spent a significant amount of time physically together that has contributed to this tremendous personal bond. It is arguable as well that the mother acts as she does and bonds as a parent because she is feminine and has gone through the incredible physical, chemical, emotional, and perhaps spiritual change of childbirth. The father has a more limited basis for his relationship with the child to begin with, as he has been waiting on the outside of the two bodies that were joined together. Read the rest of this entry »
