The World Needs Fathers
Carl Anderson, leader of the Knights of Columbus, discusses how you can become involved in Fathers for Good.
Love & Marriage
How you can make both better in your life.
Hot Topics and Links
What's In
Your Heart?
What do women want is a question made popular by Freud. Here we pose a parallel query: What do men want – or more specifically, what do fathers want?
A man who is a father, in fact, has already told us something about himself. He wants a wife and he wants children. Most men who are not yet fathers may also want a wife and children in the near or distant future.
These are the basics of life that schoolchildren used to sing: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby carriage.
Yet within this context, there is still much more to life, and many more wants to be expressed.
To begin to find out what fathers want, it would be helpful to know what they were made for, and what they are called to be and to do.
1. Every person is made to love and obey God in this life and to be happy with God in heaven. When we apply this catechism truth to fathers, we understand that a desire for God must be in the heart of every dad. Even if a father does not go to church or pray, there is a desire for the ultimate in life which is found in God.
2. Every father has a vocation, he is called to some task only he can perform. At the most basic level, he is called to care for his children and their mother. No father can deny this calling and still be satisfied within himself. Every father has an instinct and a need to provide for and to protect his family.
These are the basics. A father, like all men, longs for the ultimate in life, which is found only in a relationship with God.
A father also is tied very much to the here and now through his wife and children, and the daily labor he must take up to provide for them, care for them and protect them.
These are noble duties – and the desire of men should be directed toward fulfilling these duties. Only then will his true wants be fulfilled. Only then will the woman in his life say with deep conviction and confidence “You’re a good man.” And his children will say what every father longs to hear – “You’re a good dad.”
Links for a Good Life
The Fathers for Good website is filled with excellent insights and advice on what fathers want, and how they can get it. Please click on the following links to learn more.
A Father Wants –
1. Love
2. Respect
3. Intimacy
5. To Provide
6. To Protect