Who Shall Be Father to My Boy? by C. L. Benson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 5, 1914

Who Shall Be Father to My Boy?

By C. L. Benson

Recently a boy said to his mother, "Won't you ask father if I can have a pair of skates?" The mother replied, "You ask father; he is in the other room." But the boy replied, "I don't know father very well."

In hundreds and thousands of homes, this sad experience is duplicated. Parents are so busy providing food, clothing, and schooling for their children that they haven't time to live in the lives of their boys and girls. The boys grow to manhood, the girls to womanhood, and the parents who have toiled and slaved for their children often stand in dire need of an introduction to their finished product. Brethren, these things ought not so to be!

Our country has recently been awakened from its Rip Van Winkle sleep over this matter by an aggressive campaign encouraging father and son to be chums during 1914. Nearly two hundred mayors joined in calling fathers and sons to be comrades. Many a man has been brought up with a jerk who has been robbing his boys of the sympathy, love, and companionship due them. Many fathers have discovered that they and their sons are strangers. Money, cares, and misunderstandings have made a yawning gulf between them and their boys.

Many a boy who has been blundering along in his teens sadly in need of sympathy and a loving, steady grip, not understanding himself, and confident that no one else understands him, will now share the confidence and fellowship of his father because of this agitation. To a large extent this will in the future prevent boys from saying, "If I had had some one to talk with, I should not have gone wrong."

A big son said to his father, late one evening: "Do you mind staying awhile, father? I want to talk over my problems with you." And they talked all night. It was one of the best nights of their lives. The boy wanted his father's companionship, and counsel in solving his problems. How many big boys are hungry for such a talk with father.

Every sympathetic Missionary Volunteer secretary in the land is well-nigh overwhelmed with the problems of boys which their fathers have been little or no help in solving. The real problem is to sensitize the father-mind and to warm the son-heart toward the mutual need which each has of the other.

The proclamation of Newton D. Baker, mayor of Cleveland, was published December 26, and read in the pulpits of the churches and to the 80,000 pupils in the schoolrooms of that city; 40,000 messages were handed to the boys to carry to their homes. One man said: "This agitation about fathers and sons has waked me up. I have been doing a lot of thinking, and I am going to practice it."

Mayor Wallace G. Nye issued, in a proclamation to the fathers and sons of Minneapolis, these words: "Fathers and sons must be drawn together in that companionable relationship which will develop in both an inspiration for things which are wholesome and ennobling."

The editor of the Youngstown Vindicar, in an editorial, said, "Sons are not likely to go wrong when the fathers go right and take the sons with them."

The Philadelphia North American, in an article, said: "Once or twice in the average life each individual meets or knows of a few fathers who are 'boys' with their boys. The writer recalls one such instance, and even to this day the remembrance of the remarkable comradeship that existed between that father and his four sons stands out as an object lesson."

Secretary Stratton, of Charleston, S. C., expressed the matter well in these words: "Show me a man that is interested in children; who loves their companionship; who plans for their health, comfort, and happiness; who is interested in their amusements and problems, and I will show you a man with a pure heart, a healthy soul, and a good mind."

Mayor Buschemeyer, of Louisville, struck the keynote: "It is the duty of the mother to be the guardian angel of the daughter, but the protection of the son against the many pitfalls of city life rests primarily with the father. He ought to lead the son with a firm hand through the days of boyhood. He ought to make a companion and a friend of him as he grows to manhood. Infinite misery and unhappiness are frequently caused by nothing else but the fact that the father neglects to gain the confidence of the son, and thereby misses the opportune time to warn him against besetting dangers."

Of all people, the hearts of Seventh-day Adventist fathers should be warm and sympathetic toward their children.