Dads Helping Out Dads

Lets face it, being a Dad is not always roses and sunshine.  Sometimes its a very hard set of boots to fill.  To begin, we typically need to take the responsibility for the financial well-being of the family.  On top of that, our spouses typically need us to spend more time at home helping with the children than we ever spent before.  There is always a pull of pressures between the house and the office.

From this starting point, "family" life can really put a strain on our relationship with our spouse.  We have to force deliberate action to nurture our spousal relationships, otherwise it just does not happen.  Sometimes we blink, look back over weeks or months and realise there has been little or no intimacy at all.  It may even have been replaced by a growing feeling of isolation and detachment.

We need our down time too, time with our buddies, with a beer, a fishing line or basketball so we can recharge our batteries.  This is often the one thing we need the most to ensure we can deal effectively with the pressures in our life.  Despite this, this is usually the first thing we sacrifice under the weight of our career and family responsibilities.

On a rare occasion I get together with a couple of dads in our neighborhood for just this purpose and in our discussions it quickly becomes obvious that we all face the same pressures and strains.  They are common to dads.  It always feels great coming home from these evenings, just like the proverb; "A burden shared is a burden halved".

Moms have this worked out really well.  Every Wednesday my wife gets together with a group of moms and they just share their experiences about motherhood.  Motherhood is the common thread that binds this group.  They bring their babies, compare notes, share their little victories and defeats and are better individually for these meetings.  They are successful though through their regularity.

Dads typically do not have groups like this, groups where fatherhood is the common theme.  I am not sure why this is, I certainly think we would be better off if more dads groups existed.  Only  fathers really understands fatherhood, it is a difficult perspective to share with anyone else and that includes our wives. 

On this basis, I have recently started a fathers group with two of my buddies in our neighborhood.  We have met up once.  At the next get-together, we have committed to bring two fathers each, to make the group worthwhile.  We will see how it goes from there.  I challenge you to do the same in your location too.  If we all become better fathers from this interaction, from sharing our burdens and how we deal with our challenges, it will be our children who benefit.