Daly Focus Blog
By: Gary Schneeberger
While I was in Boston on business a few weeks ago, I picked up a Father’s Day card for my Dad at a tony downtown stationery shop. I’ve long been both a card guy and a card snob, so the simple but elegant bifold printed on recycled paper drew me like catnip entices a tabby.
On its outside it simply says, “I love you, dad” – with the subtle flourish of the period at the end of the sentiment being a red heart.
Jesus’ mother was Mary.
The prophet Samuel’s mother was Hannah.
King David’s mother?
The Bible doesn’t tell us. But she must have had tremendous insight into how to raise a boy to become man. Everyone remembers David for conquering Goliath. Yet, his strength and trust in the Lord were developed as a teenager in the field:
“But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth.
Remember the days when your boys climbed jungle gyms and went up and down slides? They cultivated friendships and learned to navigate their world on the playground.
Now that they’re teenagers, the playground is social media. They connect, form relationships, and shape their identity by measuring themselves against “influencers” in the virtual world.
Your son’s online presence could be summarized by “more accessibility, less accountability.” Back in the day, things like pornography and dangerous worldviews were “around,” but they weren’t finding their way into a child’s world through every Wi-Fi signal in the house.
Are your boys rambunctious? Messy? Loud? Are they always falling off of their bikes? Wrestling with the neighbor kids? Forgetting the same instruction you’ve reminded them of a hundred … no, a thousand times?
Boys will be boys, but author Brooke McGlothlin says that her boys were so wild she was embarrassed. They were strong-willed from birth and their behavior grew wilder the older they became. Some days, her household felt like one big wrestling match.
Numerous studies show that masculinity is in crisis. Boys are struggling to mature into competent young men, and men and fathers in general are denigrated in the culture.
Even when the criticism is justified, the solution to those problems isn’tto denigrate masculinity. It’s to teach boys how to harness manhood and to channel it in proper ways.
That’s where you come in, mom.
For every study that shows boys are in trouble there’s another showing that boys grow into healthy, strong, and courageous young men when they have healthy and secure attachments with their mothers.
It’s been said it’s “easier to build a boy than to mend a man.”
I agree.
A startling number of boys today are alone, left to figure out for themselves what it means to be a man. They don’t have a father in the home who will engage them.
Oh, dad may be there. But he isn’t present.
There are a lot of great dads out there, but too many men are disengaged. They don’t see manhood as a quality for them to intentionally bestow upon their son.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
