At Model Behaviors, we focus on women who strive to balance it all while prioritizing what is most important to us as individuals. For this Father’s Day, we want to take a minute to thank all the outstanding men who have supported us along the way. Specifically, we’d like to thank all the devoted dads.
Not only am I thankful for my dad, who taught me about the world from his unique perspective and encouraged me to leap and soar past any limit the world set for me, but I’m also thankful to my husband, who is a great father to our two kids. I’m blessed by the richness he adds to their lives and mine.
At present, there’s a tent pitched in the backyard and a campfire that is slowly flickering out. My two-year-old and four-year-old went to bed in the house only after roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, singing jingles, telling stories, and then retreating to their sleeping bags to howl at the moon and use their headlamps. On nights like these, I’m the killjoy, wrangling them up and scraping the sticky from their mouths and hands, only to whisk them off to bed—their real beds.
In addition to his typical “Daddy Day Fun Day” routine, my husband introduced the kids to “Backwards Day.” When I was out of town a few weeks ago, my kids woke up to ice cream, followed by dinner, and later went to bed after breakfast that evening. They also wore their pajamas all day and wore their clothes to bed. What memories!
I am continuously impressed by my husband’s approach to parenting. He balances a stressful job with fatherhood, yet it doesn’t seem to faze him. My kids light up when they hear the garage door open, and they run to meet him after work. Next thing I know they have fedoras on, and they are detectives on a mission with Dad, who is still in his work clothes.
Times have changed for men. Many men are raising kids single-handedly, and those in a partnership are expected to engage more and more. The cool thing to me is not that my husband can change diapers or make dinner—though he most certainly can and does—but that he is building a lifelong relationship with our kids. That excites me the most about these generational changes in expectations for fathers.
Many fathers of generations past lacked deeper relationships with their kids. They were expected to be strong and provide for them, but often, these expectations created barriers and left real relationships by the wayside. Nowadays, changing diapers and making dinner lends itself nicely to building a true, deep, and lasting relationship.
According to my beliefs, the greatest commandment is to love God and love others, which illustrates to me the importance of strong, healthy relationships. Somehow, today’s version of fatherhood seems to line up much better with these principles.
So for all the dads out there devoted to the task of fatherhood, who are enriching lives in the process: thank you!
Happy Father’s Day!
Kathryn
