Father's Day Thoughts
Sharp-eyed readers may have noted in a previous article how I alluded to a longform piece I was working on that I hoped to publish on Father’s Day. This is not that piece. The article I’m working on is about a complex topic, related to how boys become men and men become fathers so if we want good fathers we need to invest in our boys. But I haven’t had the bandwidth this spring to write that piece the way it deserves to be written, so it’s still in my drafts. It will see the light of the day eventually, though, I hope.
In fact, one reason that article is not ready yet is honestly because I have been so busy this spring…being a father. As any parent of school-aged children can attest, the period of time from the middle of April to the middle of June is wildly busy with kids’ activities. Most of them are special and worthy of the time, but it also makes for a very saturated spring. Now these activities are wrapping up, and I am looking forward to the coming summer, which undoubtedly will be filled with even more activities with and for the kids, but also a little bit of breathing room to write. I do have some Father’s Day thoughts that I wanted to share, however, which is the topic of this week’s article below. Thank you for being here and Happy Fathers Day to all the dads, granddads, and father figures out there.
Father’s Day Thoughts
When my wife and I got engaged and were preparing for the wedding, the minister, Dr. James Haddix, had us read The Five Love Languages book. I am instinctively skeptical of books that are so ubiquitously read, but here I am twelve years later, still thinking and writing about it. It was an important and impactful read for both of us.
The premise of the book is that we all have different ways we feel love. The five languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, and receiving gifts. People generally need to receive love in more than one category to be fulfilled, and most people tap into aspects of all five. But each of us also has one or two of the languages that are particularly important to us.
Where couples break down is not by having mismatches in the languages between themselves; mismatches are normal. The problem comes when one person consistently expresses their love in a language that is not their partners’s preferred language for receiving love. I may express my love to my wife in words of affirmation, for example, because that is what feels the most important to me, but my wife’s primary love language might actually be acts of service. The important thing is to not express love in your own love language, but to know what your partner’s love language is and how to express love through that language so he or she actually feels it rather than expressing it through your own.
This same concept is true in other aspects of our lives. I was on the Bangor City Council for nine years, for example. When I was at my best and most persuasive self, I would be able to articulate arguments in the language of the people I was trying to convince rather than in the context of what was most important to me. It didn’t always work; sometimes people just disagree. But I found that if I could maintain my own authentic voice but find ways to actually speak in the language of others, I could make much more headway than just by speaking from my own point of view.
Lots of workplaces today (including my own) use personality tests to generate reports on how managers, employees, and coworkers are likely to interact and communicate with one another. The purpose is to figure out the optimal ways to work together, and where potential pitfalls are likely to lie. In short, they are meant to help people understand each other’s languages.
The Language of Fatherhood
Among my wife’s many fruits of the spirit is an intuitive sense of what we can do to get each of our three kids back on track when they are feeling (and acting) a little bit off. To put it a different way, she understands each of their love languages very well. And the love language of our oldest, a ten-year-old boy, is undoubtedly, unquestionably, undeniable quality time. If you had 100 beans to put into the five jars representing the five love languages, I think 90 of his beans would be in the quality time jar (he might also put a few in the words of affirmation jar and probably a handful in gifts).
Last week this son of ours was not quite on his game, but my wife diagnosed the problem and proposed the solution. He was not getting enough time that week with me specifically, his father. So on Friday evening, he and I spent an hour or two in the backyard playing soccer just the two of us, and then on Saturday morning when we both woke up (we are typically the two earliest risers in the house), we went to Bagel Central together in Downtown Bangor with a cribbage board and spent nearly two hours together. His mood stabilized almost immediately on Friday night, and the positive time together then and on Saturday morning provided tailwinds for the rest of the weekend that made the rhythm of family life for all five of us much better thanks to his improved mood. I am sure the time helped stabilize me too. In fact, the two hours together at Bagel Central stood out as one of the most enjoyable little random blocks of time in recent weeks.
Fathers (including myself) need to better understand their children’s love languages. It is natural for a father to be a problem solver, and indeed one of the things we pass along to our kids is hopefully an ability to work through challenges, not give up easily, and to care for others. Fathers should teach their kids through both word and example how to carry themselves in this world. Fathers should be forces of stability and strength.
Yet these admirable qualities of fatherhood do not necessarily run counter to the need to also be able to recognize the language that one’s child needs to receive love. The way a father expresses different types of love to their child is obviously going to be much different than the way he expresses them to his wife or partner, but the varied love languages are still key to recognize and are as applicable in a parent-child relationship as they are between spouses or partners. I don’t have any data to support this and it is really just an intuitive hunch, but I think too many fathers express love to their children simply in their own love language rather than being able to recognize that their children may have a different language. And then frustrations arise on both sides of the equation when the father feels unappreciated or unrecognized and the child is lacking whatever type of love they most need to feel.
The Diary of Brooks Adams
Brooks Adams, the great grandson of President John Adams, once wrote in his diary as a child, “Went fishing with my father; the most glorious day of my life.” Decades later historians compared the diary of the child, Brooks, with a diary kept by his father, Charles Francis Adams, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and then Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to England, a position that had interestingly enough also been held by his father, John Quincy Adams, and his grandfather, John Adams. Amazingly, the father also wrote in his diary on this same day, so it was easy to compare the sentiments of the father and the son. What did the elder Adams write? “Went fishing with my son; a day wasted.”
What a contrast! The most glorious day of the son’s life on the one hand, a day wasted in the eyes of the father on the other. Fortunately for the son’s sake, it does not appear that the father actually said or did anything on that particular day that would have undermined his son in that moment, but this little vignette shows how our children experience and interpret time spent with us in ways that are much different than our own. Even simple and ordinary experience like fishing together may be the very things that are most important to our kids, the things that weave the very fabric of a loving parent-child relationship.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of really good dads out there. And yet in pop culture and commercialized America, it feels like there is a lack of appreciation for and representation of steady and consistent fathers. Dads are seen as bumbling doofuses like Homer Simpson, or that they are almost like an additional child for their wife to take care of. And I get it, Homer Simpson is one of the most iconic and funny television characters of all time. But the next time you’re watching TV, notice how many commercials feature a goofy or distracted dad alongside a hard-edged mom who is portrayed as the one who is really keeping the family on track. This has become one of the main pop culture images of a father; once you start noticing it, you won’t be able to stop because the father-as-extra-child portrayal is so ubiquitous.
Other common images of dads in pop culture are ones who are simply absent or emotionally inaccessible. Online, fatherhood is treated by some as a product; Twitter and Instagram are full of “life hack” dads hocking advice and often paid courses or e-books on traditional manhood. This can go down a rabbit hole pretty quickly towards an underlying anger and misogyny (and politics of bitterness) that undermines the very image of fatherhood it purportedly is meant to promote.
Social media clutter and pop culture aside, fathers are really important: to their families, yes, but also to their communities and I would dare say to the very fabric of the nation. And yes, I know and appreciate that there are so many wonderful mothers out there who are so often tirelessly playing the role of two parents, with a father being either absent or inaccessible. Plus there are so many incredible two-mom households with loving relationships between and among the parents and children in such families. My thoughts on fatherhood are not meant to discount these other types of meaningful and authentic family relationships. But society needs good dads, and not the ones who are simply cosplaying fatherhood to sell an online courses or to generate social media kudos or political clout.
I know many great dads: fathers in my wife and I’s extended families, fathers I work with or go to church with, the fathers of my kids’ friends, neighbors and fellow community members, and more. The list would go on and on. I am sure I know more good dads than bad ones. To those who have read this far: you know who you are. I see you and appreciate you. Happy Father’s Day to all.
Ben Sprague lives and works in Bangor, Maine as a Senior V.P./Commercial Lending Officer for Damariscotta-based First National Bank. He previously worked as an investment advisor and graduated from Harvard University in 2006. Ben can be reached at ben.sprague@thefirst.com or bsprague1@gmail.com.
The Sunday Morning Post is offered free of charge. To learn how (and why) to become a paid subscriber, read here. Thank you for your support.
Weekly Round-Up
Here are a few things that caught my eye this week that I thought would interest you too!
To ease the housing crunch, we talk a lot about new housing developments, accessory dwelling units, and increased density. My own community is adding a new level to this conversation: height! Via Kathleen O’Brien of The Bangor Daily News, the Bangor City Council will soon take up proposed code changes to increase the maximum height of residential buildings from 45 feet to 60 feet. It’s meant to allow developers to build higher, and therefore more units. A good start, I say, but why stop at 60 feet? Read more here.
Elsewhere in Maine, the coastal town of Kennebunk passed rule changes to require inspections and registration fees of all short-term rental units. The rules do stop short of placing a cap on short-term rentals, which is a key part of more aggressive measures that some other Maine towns have taken up. Read more via Zara Norman of The Bangor Daily News here.
Unusual Whales, which is a media and data platform meant to bring transparency to the financial and political worlds, has two ETFs that you can invest in that track the stock trades of members of Congress. The ticket symbols are NANC for trades by Democrats (a nod to Nancy Pelosi) and KRUZ for trades by Republicans (a nod to Ted Cruz). The NANC ETF is up nearly 20% for the year, while the KRUZ ETF is lagging with an increase of just 7.5%. Read more about them here. You can also read my previous thoughts on the need to ban stock trading by member of Congress.
Winding down the spring soccer season. © Ben Sprague 2024
