Still a place in the world for fathers

Maybe Jodie Foster and Rosie O’Donnell are right. Maybe dads aren’t

needed to make up a happy family. Maybe it just takes the kind of

money they have to buy the support you need to take care of a kid or

two.

After all, what do dads really contribute to a family besides a

paycheck? Not much, when you really think about it. And what they do

contribute, moms could easily do instead. Moms can teach kids how to

hit a baseball, paint a wall or change the oil in a car. Moms can

watch wrestling, drink beer or go fishing all day, too.

Moms can teach kids how to cook and clean and help them with their

homework. And they can yell at them when it doesn’t get done.

There is, in fact, not a single thing you can mention that dads

contribute to the upbringing of a child that moms can’t do instead.

So if men are irrelevant, why celebrate them Sunday on Father’s

Day? What’s the big deal? OK, so dad had to contribute to the process

of making the baby -- but that’s it. Moms can take it from there,

can’t they?

Besides, looking at all of the Father’s Day ads, you’re likely to

get the impression that dads are extremely superficial. The experts,

killing trees with their junk mail, have determined what dad wants

most is:

a) New watch

b) Some new clothes

c) The latest electronic gizmo

d) More channels on his cable TV

Besides being incredibly base, men, not women, as plenty of people

have pointed out, are responsible for nearly all that has gone wrong

around the world since humans first appeared. Our testosterone has

been blamed for all the wars and most of the rest of our suffering.

When I think of my own father, I recall a man who worked hard, but

he smoked cigars and drank a lot. On weekends, he loved to watch

baseball on TV. I don’t recall him ever hitting me, but I do recall

him once chasing me around the house with his belt in his hand.

“The belt” was a focal point of a classic comedy routine by Bill

Cosby. And if you haven’t heard, “To Russell, My Brother, with Whom I

Slept,” do yourself a favor and get a copy at once.

The entire album is hilarious, but the last 20 minutes of the

story of one night in his bedroom with his brother is history. It is

very nearly an exact recount of any number of nights I had in a

bedroom with my brother, Stuart.

As Cosby notes, any kid knows that when mom asks you to do

something such as go to sleep, you have another 5 or 10 minutes to

keep fooling around. But when dad says it, it’s lights out.

OK, so maybe dads are good to have around as an enforcer, but

that’s probably it -- unless you take the time to look up some of the

data.

The source is “One-Parent Families and Their Children: The

School’s Most Significant Minority.” It’s a study conducted by the

Consortium for the Study of School Needs of Children from One Parent

Families, co-sponsored by the National Assn. of Elementary School

Principals and the Institute for Development of Educational

Activities, a division of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, in

1980.

Although the data is 23 years old, it still applies. The data

found that “Children with fathers at home tend to do better in

school, are less prone to depression and are more successful in

relationships.

Need more current information? In 1990, the U.S. Census revealed

that, “Father absence contributes to crime and delinquency. Violent

criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers.”

See, that’s the trouble with certifiable, documented studies and

the hard data they produce. It gets really hard to use emotional

arguments to support the case that a home is just as good or better

without dad, provided, of course, that dad is not abusive.

So maybe there’s something to this dad thing after all. Maybe what

dads contribute to raising a child may look superficial on the

surface, but is really built into the foundation of a family. It’s

just not easily visible until much later in a child’s life.

So, dads, despite the whims of a few famous but not important

people, it looks like you’ll have some job security for a while and

that maybe you do deserve a special day.

I’ll certainly be thinking about it while I smoke my cigar during

the Angel game Sunday.

Happy Father’s Day.

* STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and freelance writer.

Readers may leave a message for him on the Daily Pilot hotline at

(949) 642-6086.