Of course, no earthly father can represent God perfectly. We mess up, and when we do, we must ask forgiveness from God and from our children. It is also important to note that God promises to be a father for the fatherless. If your dad failed you, know that there’s a Father who will never forsake you, Who redeems brokenness in people and families and entire cultures, and Who rewrites stories despite statistics. You really can trust Him.
Dads are crucial. We’ve known this for a long time. For example, former president Barack Obama, despite advancing many policies that undermined the family, remained an outspoken voice on the importance of loving, involved fathers. According to all the evidence, he was partly correct. Kids need their fathers, but do best when their fathers are married to their mothers.
Earlier this month in The Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Breheny Wallace surveyed the overwhelming and decades-long scientific consensus that fathers and fatherly love are irreplaceable in the lives of children. For example, a 2021 study from the Journal of Family Psychology found that warm and caring dads predict better mental health outcomes for children. Both boys and girls with such fathers experience “fewer weight concerns, higher self-esteem and fewer depression symptoms.”
The connection between physically present, emotionally available fathers and mentally healthy kids is so strong that researchers have termed it the “good father effect.” A recent review published in the journal Children surveyed nearly four dozen studies on the father-child relationship. In Wallace’s words, these studies conclude that,
Fathers who were involved in caregiving and play, and who reacted with warmth and greater sensitivity to a child who expressed emotions, were significantly more likely to have children with better emotional balance from infancy to adolescence.
Such emotional stability in turn predicted “higher levels of social competence, peer relationships, academic achievement, and resilience” among kids.
If it is indeed true, as all the evidence shows, that a dad’s love has such incredible power to set children on a healthy trajectory, why are our laws, our culture, and so many of the movements that shape both, so intent on denying the need for fathers?