By Dr. Barry Davidson, Contributor 
Dr. Barry Davidson addressing the audience at the 'Men on a Mission' conference at Family Church on the Rock, St. Andrew, on June 5. To his left is church historian Dr. Las Newman. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
FATHERS HAVE a tremendous influence on their daughters.
Somewhere between the age of three and six years old girls go through a very important stage of development in which they are closely drawn to her father. This phase will help her to become a 'feminine' woman later on in life.
If there is no father in her life, some of the fullness of womanhood will be left out. The father is the first link with the male world. The emotional strength built up with the father will lay the foundation of her friendship with boys.
During adolescence, girls who lost their fathers through death or divorce usually have real difficulties with sexuality. Girls who have lost their fathers, particularly before the age of five years, tend to spend more time seeking male companions than in learning skills or in recreation. Girls brought up without fathers are less disciplined and have more conflicts.
It is well-known that girls brought up without a father or with an unsatisfactory relationship with their father will not be capable of a mature sexual relationship with a mate. They seek in early sex the fulfilment they did not find in their fathers.
The first need of every family and probably the most obvious is the material need. It is the father's duty to supply provision for the family I Tim 5:8 says, 'But if any man provide not for his own and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.' A man who does not do his best to provide the material needs of his family commits a great sin. In the words of the Bible, he is worse than an infidel. No greater charge could be hurled at anyone.
A second need is that every father has a duty to supply protection for the family. Again, the father has the same role over his family that God has over His people. God protects and nurtures His children, and every father has that same responsibility. Some fathers fail to provide physical protection for their families. We look with utter contempt on a man who does not provide for his family's material needs, but we respond in anger and disgust to a man who does not protect his family from physical harm.
Finally, every father has a duty to supply prayer for the family. Are you praying for your children? Fathers, one of the greatest sins we can commit against our children is the sin of prayerlessness! God has committed our children to us and part of our responsibility is to pray for them. We are to discipline them, and praise them when they do right, but pray for them at all times.
The time we spend in prayer for family is rich. It benefits us as we draw near to the Lord with our heart's burdens, and it benefits our family as God answers our prayers and we see their growth. Being a father involves both our positional and personal power. May God help us to be effective fathers by allowing our personal power to influence our positional power and impart Christian values to our families.
QUESTIONS FOR DR. DAVIDSON
Q: How can we as fathers set a vision for our sons to wait until they have found the right
person before they get involved, before they get married and become involved sexually, in order to give them the vision of a future which is worthwhile waiting for, if they hold on to their moral aspects.
A: One of the things that we have to recognise is that before we find the right person, we have to work first of all on becoming the right person. And so we need to help our youngsters to set goals for themselves, set a vision to decide, 'What is it that I'd like to become and be, and at what stage of this becoming and being would I like to find a partner', and so we need to be able to sit and talk through some of these issues with our sons.
We need to also be honest with our children, we need to talk to them about our own struggles with sexuality. I have found that quite often within the church we are sometimes not very honest and not very comfortable talking about some of these issues.
It reminds me of a pastor who stood up before a congregation like this, and said, "I'm gonna say a word and every time I say the word, I want you to sing a song, and so he says, 'Grace' and they sang Amazing Grace, he said, 'Rock' and they sang, Rock of Ages, he said, 'Cross' and they sang The Old Rugged Cross. Then he said, 'Sex' and there was a hush, until one little old lady in the back started to sing Precious Memories.
We need to be comfortable in talking about our own struggles, because I found that when we are honest as parents, as fathers, and talk about our own struggles, our own difficulties, the children open up to us and we are better able to navigate them through life's challenges.
Q: One section of your presentation struck me, where you mentioned that girls who have not had the benefits of their fathers before the age of five suffered from it, and I previously thought perhaps it was a common misconception that it was boys who suffer largely from the absence of fathers and that it didn't really matter that much with girls. So the question I really want to ask is, 'Just how deep is this?'
In Jamaica the common situation is that you might have a visiting relationship with the mother, what happens in that period where you are visiting and so the child sees you, but you don't actually live with the child, that visit may not actually be week after week. How much of an effect does that have in the child's life?
A: First of all, we need to remember that the first five years of a child's life is the most important period. Research has shown that somewhere about 85 per cent of a child's ultimate personality is formed between birth and six, and that these very crucial years are the years when that child begins to have sense of who they are and it is in that year, for instance, their sense of a relationship with the opposite sex becomes crucial in a very safe way, and a very comfortable way.
So, for instance, if a father is spending time bonding with his child at that age, later on, the curiosity to want to explore and want to know, to experience this closeness is not going to be as great. For instance, girls who are fortunate to have fathers who are very affirming and very caring, you'll find that these girls are very careful with their selection of men.
They are much more careful, because they know what they don't want and they also know what they want, and its based on the relationship that they've had with their fathers.
Whereas others who have not had any relationship, they are more anxious to have a relationship and couldn't care less what it is and what it's not, just to have. And it's extremely important for us fathers to understand the need to really bond and spend quality time with our girls making them really feel loved, feel valued and show them tremendous respect, so that when they begin to experience disrespect, it is something that they are going
to reject.
Q: Dr. Davidson, to challenge you a little bit, I have a question. All this stuff about bonding with our children, especially our sons, might it not be seen as kind of soft? And if so, how do we get over that perception of being soft and being feminine?
A: That's one of the challenges that has faced us here in Jamaica, where we've not put the emphasis on the personal power, because personal power is perceived as soft. And so the big emphasis is more on the macho, the positional power. And the truth is that, if we are going to be really balanced human beings, we need to have both, when we look at the life of Jesus, we see Jesus with both positional power and personal power. There was a tenderness that came over from Jesus. There was a caring, but there is also a firmness. No wimp would have sent those people out of that temple, whipped them out of the temple. And so there is a sense in which we need to realise that what our society has socialised us to be is less than what God intend us to be. Our society is socialising us to have this macho image, to have this positional power. But we are not truly fully male, and fully man, unless we are able to demonstrate both that positional and that personal power.
Q: Dr. Davidson, my question is though, do you find that, well, I heard somebody say that before I started having children, I had three theories, now I have three children and no theories. Do you find that it is easier to deal with other people's children than your own?
A: There is a sense in which if we are not careful, we could end up finding ourselves spending more time with other people's children than our own. Especially us in the church who get so involved, and sometimes what has happened is that we've spent a lot of time with other people's children than we do spend with our own. And sometimes we're spending time with other people's children whose parents are not spending time with them, so they value us so much, and probably our children might be valuing somebody else.
So it is extremely important for us to recognise that we need to spend a tremendous amount of time with our own children and possible then spend some time also with their friends, because quite often if we are being spending time with our children, their friends are gonna be saying, 'Boy, I wish I had a dad like yours.'
And their friends are gonna come under our wings for us to be able to influence, because quite often we are able to influence our children's friends, when we have developed that kind of relationship with our own children.
Q: Dr. Davidson, I stand here feeling like I belong to an era when many of us in the church as young fathers (I have two young children) are being called up to do a lot of the things that we've being talking about, but yet sometimes I find myself almost not having the tools to effectively do some of these things. Spend the time, being torn by wanting to provide, sometimes even taking them home, and feeling like I want them to fall asleep as I reach home, because I need to do the studying, or doing
something else. Give me some advice,
in terms of how do you navigate, through all these various demands and be effective.
A: It's very difficult. But let me share with you something that has been working for some of my clients. What some of my clients have been able to do is that they have been able to organise their week. They have one evening that they call a 'couple's evening'. It's an evening when they really spend the time nurturing their relationship with their spouse. And that's very important, especially in Jamaica, because I don't know if you know this, that in Jamaica, the divorce rate is highest for people who have been married for 25 years and over. And the reason for that is that at that stage, the children are gone, and so they are now experiencing what is called 'the empty nest'. We tend to be very children-focused here, where a lot of the emphasis is really with the children, and so couples spend a tremendous amount of time, working with their kids, picking them up, taking them here, and not spending much time with themselves and forming friendships outside of the relationship. And so by the time the kids are gone, there is nothing left, it's an empty nest, there is no relationship that has been formed, but relationships have been formed elsewhere, and so it's easy to shut this one down and open something else.
And what some clients of mine have found very helpful, is that they have had one evening per week that they call a 'couple's evening' where they nurture their marriage. Then they have another evening that they call a family evening, and that's an opportunity for them to do things with their kids, because what they want to make sure is that they are giving their children memories.
It's important for kids to have memories, so that they can remember doing things with their parents, doing things with their dad, and so they try to create this opportunity for memories. Then what they also do is that the husband will have an evening that he calls 'my evening away', it's my evening out, and the wife has an evening that she calls 'her evening out'. So that they pursue some personal stuff that they would like to be working on, and what they've discovered is that by so structuring their lives, they have been able to manage.
Because if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. There is a famous family psychologist, named Salvodo Minochin, who developed what is called structural family therapy, and what Minochin does is to help families to create structures, and so unless we create structures that allow us to really find time for all the various things, then we are gonna end up having a
situation where, if we are not careful,
we become successful failures.
Successful in our careers, success in the
various things we do, but failures in our
family lives.
* Dr. Barry Davidson is a counsellor and is chief executive officer of Family Life Ministries.
