Children Need Fathers as Well as Mothers

Yesterday evening on the O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly had Gretchen Carlson and Margaret Hoover as his guests on the Cultural Warrior segment on his program.  He was mentioning about the comment that Actress Jennifer Aniston made concerning single motherhood.  Aniston stated (I'm paraphrasing it) that women more and more don't have to settle down with a man to have a child.  Bill O'Reilly stated that Aniston was presenting the message to 12 and 13 year old girls that fathers aren't important.  In other words, you don't need father.  O'Reilly said sending that kind of message to young girls is very destructive to society.  O'Reilly's on the mark.  I can recall back in 1992 when Candace Bergen, who starred in "Murphy Brown" made light of the importance of fatherhood.  Then Vice President Dan Quayle jumped on that issue and he received a lot of criticism for that statement.  That same year happened to be a presidential election year as well where Bill Clinton defeated incumbent George H.W. Bush for the presidency.

I want to make a statement at the outset and say I do recognize there are men or males who are sorry fathers.  There are numerous deadbeat fathers in our society who don't pay child support nor have any type of contact with their children.  However, that doesn't demean the importance of fatherhood.  On the other hand there are some women or females who make sorry mothers.  There have been news reports of some mothers throwing their newborns in the garbage can.  That's unnatural affection.  However, that doesn't demean the importance of motherhood or imply that most mothers are bad mothers.  Of course not.  Consequently, there are some in this society that want to denigrate the importance of fathers in a child's life.  Today, secular society wants to remake a man in a femine way and make him effeminate.  That's not a true father nor more than society attempting to masculanize a woman makes a true mother.  Both mothers and fathers have distinct roles in their children's lives, but the roles of both mother and father are equally important.  God created the family unit which consists of a mother and father.  The very first child that was born on earth was Cain.  His birth parents were Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve nor Mary and Eve.  The concept of homosexual parents is out of the pits of hell.  That's a perversion of parenthood.  A child needs the influence of both genders in his/her life in order to be a complete person.  If God was in favor of homosexual parenting, then there would've been one gender, instead of two.  God has a purpose in creating both male and female.  God's design for the family unit is for the child to have both a mother and father who are married prior to the conception of that child.

I quickly need to make a point concerning single mothers.  There are situations due to divorce, abandonment, death, or other situations where some mothers become single mothers.  I'm not in any way trying to belittle those women that are single mothers due to hardships.  My heart's out to those single mothers who have lost their husband and are trying to make it the best they could alone.  There are single mothers that despite their circumstances have done a great job in rearing their children alone.  The point I'm trying to stress is that single motherhood shouldn't be extolled as the ideal or another option, like Jennifer Aniston put it.  I'm in no way trying to belittle single mothers that are forced into that position.  There are many single mothers that have done very well in raising children given their circumstances.  I recognize it's easier for some mothers to raise their children by themselves than raising them with abusive or alcoholic husbands.

We need a rebirth of manhood in this society.  Children need to know what a man is and what it means to be a man.  The Word of God states what the roles of husband/father and mother/wife are.  Children need fathers who will work diligently to provide for their families and will sacrifice for the family's well-being.  That's what fathers are about.  They are the priests of their home.  They're also to discipline and teach their children in the right way.  Ephesians 5:22-33 talks about the relationship between the husband and wife and Ephesians 6:1-4 mentions about the children's relationship to their parents.  Our homes need to return to that model once again.  We need husbands that will live for God and love their wives as Christ loved the church.  The husband/father needs to be the provider/protector of the home.

It's a tragedy how society denigrates the roles not only of the mother but also of the father.  A country will be weak and leaderless without strong father figures in the home.  The only hope our children have is a strong stable home where both mother and father are fulfilling their God-given roles in the home.  Many of the problems children experience today would be eliminated if they had the kind of fatherly leadership that's so desperately lacking in the home.  The lives of America's children will lack stability until the father resumes his rightful place in the life of his children.