What young fathers need in life's challenges
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Christian Life
Today's young fathers are expected to contribute more in their family's responsibilities. How can we encourage them? Chiara shares some insight.
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I recently had the opportunity to talk to a colleague who had become a father. As a mother, I would often talk to fellow Mums about the problems and joys of motherhood.
With my husband, I share everything about the journey of parenthood. I know his challenges as a father and husband, but talking to a new father from outside my family and sharing some things about the postnatal and newborn period was interesting and thought-provoking.
When a baby is born, the focus is always on the newborn and the mother's health immediately afterwards. It is right that this should be the case, and it is also correct that the father is expected to be a leader during this time, taking care of both of them and supporting his wife.
But here's what got me thinking: Perhaps this generation's fathers are facing new challenges for the first time in history.
Indeed, until our grandparents' generation, no one expected a father to be trained in the delivery room, to time contractions, and to help his wife breastfeed. The care of the new mother was left to the other women in the family.
Fathers continued to provide for the family in other ways. Today, society has changed, and new fathers are expected to be fully involved in every stage of parenthood.
They are often expected to attend ultrasound scans during pregnancy, be present at birth, change nappies immediately afterwards, and be involved in every decision about the baby.
As a wife and mother, I am grateful for this new way of experiencing parenthood. I believe churches should encourage young fathers to embark on parenthood with full conviction and in a spirit of service. They should also build a whole new knowledge of participation in practices that men have not engaged in until recently and, at the same time, have the unchanging wisdom that's from the Word of God.
Luther himself, five hundred years ago, saw the danger of young people avoiding responsibility because they didn't want to live the family life. In one of his sermons, he said: *"Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, "Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labour at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves?
What should I make such a prisoner of myself? O you poor, wretched fellow, have you taken a wife? Fie, fie upon such wretchedness and bitterness! It is better to remain free and lead peace, carefree life; I will become a priest or a nun and compel my children to do likewise.
What, then, does the Christian faith say to this? It says, "O God, because I am certain that thou hast created me as a man and hast from my body begotten this child; I also know for a certainty that it meets with thy perfect pleasure. I confess to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers. Or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother.
How is it that I, without any merit, have come to this distinction of being certain that I am serving thy creature and thy most precious will? O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labour, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in thy sight.
I say these things in order that we may learn how honorable a thing it is to live in that estate which God has ordained. In it we find God's word and good pleasure, by which all the works, conduct, and sufferings of that estate become holy, godly, and precious so that Solomon even congratulates such a man and says in Proverbs 5 [:18], 'Rejoice in the wife of your youth,' and again in Ecclesiastes 11 [9:9], Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life."*
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