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Message from Minister Smith Over the last forty years the family unit and its importance has steadily decreased.
Simultaneously the flight from our major cities to suburbia, single parent households, violence in urban and suburban areas have increased.
The question is, where does the United States look to correct these issues and restore her to the prominence she once enjoyed?
The answer is very simple. The family must be re-invigorated and stabilized. The next generation must learn that parental relationships may be complex due to a number of reasons. However, family consist of the history and support that can only come from both sides of the unit.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
By Caitlin M. Foyt
The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS -- Your dad is a lazy slob.
He's always drinking beer and burping. And if he's not patrolling the couch in his underwear, he's probably fishing, golfing or grilling meat.
No? That's what the greeting-card companies seem to think.
"Some seem too emotional or too disrespectful," Tim Wheeler, 28, said while skimming the wall-like Father's Day card display at Walgreens, 956 Michigan St. NE.
"My dad works pretty hard, so I don't want to call him lazy."
Wheeler spent a quarter of an hour rejecting cards featuring googly-eyed cats, bears dressed as fishermen and beer-bottle shapes before settling on a card that read "strong faith, gentle heart, quiet guidance."
"I was looking for something that looks like what I would write if I could write it," he said.
Card companies want to offer that, too, but mass-market efforts sometimes can play into stereotypes.
Many fathers today see parenting as a collaborative effort, crossing old-school gender lines to share responsibilities with mothers. About 159,000 dads stayed home with their children as of 2006, the Census Bureau says. And some men who have children don't particularly care for cards that depict the father as unreliable.
One Father's Day card this year pictures a child sitting inside of a toilet. The inside reads "Never put dad in charge of potty training."
Dave Schmeichel, 31, who has three girls -- ages 4, 3 and 11 months -- said such jabs are getting tired.
"I have always been a person who believes that actions speak louder than words, and the way my family responds to me is a dynamic that speaks to how I am as a father," he said. "It's become harder to buy cards. You pick one up and it's as if you've bought this card already, a couple of years ago."
Cards are not the only medium sending messages that dad is incompetent, said Ronald Smith, a minister at Abundant Life Ministries, 1725 S. Division Ave., and an organizer in the annual National Fatherhood Summit, a daylong conference focused on building relationships between children and fathers.
"It's on television, it's in advertising, it's in snack foods," Smith said. "America has got to the point where they are the jackasses of the family. ... Our society today has reduced the role of father to no more than financial obligation."
Still, not everyone wants the kind of flowery, sentimental poems some mothers receive on their day in May. That may even be why Hallmark can say the comical cards are the most popular for Father's Day.
Back at the Walgreens, 54-year-old Bill Lindhout needed only a few seconds to choose a card that read, "Having you for a dad is like peeing in a pool. It makes me feel warm all over."
"It's kind of funny and it has a good message," he explained. "I usually look for humor because it matches my personality."
Hallmark spokeswoman Deidre Parkes said the company does offer cards with more positive messages, although kidding around is a perennial theme.
"Humor is very subjective thing, and it evolves over time. It's easy to communicate with Dad by making him laugh. We're looking more to playfully tease but always make Dad feel good through a compliment," she said.
"He wants to be acknowledged for the things he does and who he is."
-- The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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