A Father Heart?

By: Steve H - May 09, 2005

It’s Mother’s Day, and this Mother’s Day, I’m very thankful for my wife. My question, however, has as much or more to do with fathers. I want to know if there is a male equivalent to the mother heart.

I am appreciative of my wife precisely because of the great things she does for me and for our child. I always wanted to marry a woman that would make our children feel safe and loved. Who would nurture their growth in all the ways I wouldn’t be able to do because our economy insists to some extent that the provider do the providing from outside the home.

At the same time, I chose my profession partly because it allows me to live a more integrated life. I spend more time at home than most men, I think, and I’ve always wondered at the many times I’ve heard the great dedication praised of men for being able to sacrifice their time with their families, who have spent 5-10 minutes/day with their families and who are never around because they have so many callings and such a busy career.

In an effort to help those women who cannot or do not have children to feel their worth, several church leaders have recently spoken about the “mother’s heart,” that part of a woman that makes her capable of being a mother whether or not she actually bears children. I fully accept that there is something about a woman that makes her suited to the duties of motherhood, though what that means is a subject for much discussion. (Yes, it means nurturing and loving, but what do those words mean?) I don’t have a beef with this at all, and I’m glad that my wife values and honors her womanhood and is a good mother accordingly.

My question is what we men have left to offer our children. No one has ever mentioned a father’s heart. We could easily say that the priesthood is the equivalent, and that as a woman’s job is to nurture the children, the man’s job is to hold the priesthood and provide for the family. That’s what the proclamation says. I endorse that. But I don’t think it says anything about my relationship to my kids like “mother heart” does. In fact, I think it often gets used–by some men–for an excuse to have less of a relationship with their kids.

What this boils down to is that I can’t accept that what I have to offer my kids is only a watered down version of what the could get better from mom. And yet, I don’t see anyone teaching what it is that I have–what makes me a father. I often feel like being a father is seen as a struggle to get along in the absence of a mother heart. That is, fatherhood is just not being able to be a mother. I am interested in what we could ascribe to the father heart. I will start with my ideas, but I’m open to any ideas on what would constitute the father heart.

Taking my lead from the duties outlined in the proclamation, I am now going to outline a completely theoretical and completely unsubstantiated theory that is nonetheless not radical or out there, I think. Perhaps as the role of the woman tends to keep the family together and make them feel safe in the home, the man’s role is to prepare them to provide for themselves and to help them to serve others outside the family. If the mother’s role directs her to keeping the family together, the man’s role tends to keep the family from being so in-looking that the family forgets about the outside world.

At the same time, I am a scholar of the 19th-century, and I don’t want this to sound like the split between the public sphere, dominated yb the man and the private sphere relegated to women that many believed in during that era. I believe that women should be invovled in public decisions and roles and that men should be invovled in the home. I am theorizing something somewhat different, that whatever role they act in women tend to establish the coherence of groups and men tend to reach out, question those groups so that the family doesn’t get isolated. The result, ideally, preserves the family as a coherent unit wihout excluding others.

Anyway, that’s my idea, what are yours?

4 Comments

  1. I don’t want this turn into something you did not intend, so I’m going to have to be careful. I take a more nineteenth century approach to priesthood and a more 21st century approach to parenting. That is to say that I don’t believe in the whole “Women have motherhood and Men have the priesthood”, spiel.

    From the 19th century we get a perspective that views men and women accessing the power of God through His priesthood. The way in which it is accessed and the consequent forms of the priesthood are different between the sexes, however, they are nonetheless accessed. However, the 19th century also had a family structure that is not acceptable from modern perspectives. The sister wives were essentially single moms (though this did have a huge effect on Female independence).

    From the 21st Century not-particularly-LDS perspective we see that both Father and Mother are important to the nurturing of their children.

    So from my perspective, Men and Women have access to the priesthood (through the temple – especially the fullness thereof) and Men and Women have access to parenthood. I do think that you are correct that there are differences between Men and Women. There are certainly biological differences. Are there spiritual differences? I tend to think not.

    I do think that Kathryn has a better ability to maintain a holistic perspective than I and I think that I am probably better at getting distracted 😉

    Comment by J. Stapley — 5/9/2005 @ 11:57 am

  2. BTW – I’d never heard of a Mother Heart before.

    Comment by J. Stapley — 5/9/2005 @ 12:43 pm

  3. J — Don’t you go to Conference? 🙂

    Check out Julie B. Beck “A Mother Heart” in the May 2004 Ensign.

    Comment by kris — 5/9/2005 @ 5:18 pm

  4. Ohhhh, that Mother Heart. 😉

    Comment by J. Stapley — 5/9/2005 @ 5:56 pm

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