Today is Fathers’ Day. Many fathers are looking forward to receiving presents from their children. Well, one good turn deserves another. If you have been a loving and responsible father then you deserve a present-LOVE. I am afraid to say some fathers of today do not deserve anything because they have negated their responsibility as fathers!

Fathers have important part to play in the upbringing of their children. For example, it is from the father that a girl first learns who she is in the world with regard to men. She learns that she is pretty, talented, strong and deserving of respect and protection first-hand from the father. Mike Tucker (2007) puts it this way: “Girls who don’t enjoy a relationship of tenderness with their fathers develop what some call FATHER HUNGER.”

Dads have great influence on their sons as well. Sons learn from their fathers how men treat women and children. How true! I vividly remember my own experience with my father-Opanyin Joseph Eyiah (popularly known as Carpenter) of blessed memory. I learned from him that I AM CAPABLE and that has brought me this far, by God’s grace. I learned from Opanyin Joseph how to be a man-the priest of the house and the provider of the family. He was present in my life from my infancy till I finished my college education. He was also always there for my other four brothers. Where are the loving fathers? Where are the father-role models for the many fatherless children?

In our Black communities it is more pathetic the way fathers have given up or refused live up to their responsibilities to the very children they’ve brought into this world. I know the power of mothers, which sometimes throw some fathers out of their God-given authority in the home. I also know how our culture, especially among Akans of Ghana, has favored women and set men against their own children- the matrilineal inheritance comes into sharp focus. However, as fathers, we should not allow tradition and feminism to make us “useless fathers.” Or are we just running away from our responsibilities as fathers? Like, Jacob of Bible times who turned the curses of his suffering wife-Rachel-on their son, Benjamin, into blessings, fathers ought to turn the ‘curses of the modern world’ upon our sons into blessings. Fathers everywhere have a role to play! Happy Fathers’ Day to all the loving fathers of the world.