Posts belonging to Category Fathers



10 Ways To Do Your Husband Good

Just in time for Father’s Day, here is a great list of 10 ways to do your husband good (from Nicole at GirlTalk).

10 Ways to Do Your Husband Good (Proverbs 31:12)

  1. Write him a love note and place it in his sock drawer.
  2. Take an entire evening to enjoy his favorite hobby with him.
  3. Show up at work with a special drink or take him to lunch.
  4. Encourage him for demonstrating a specific godly trait—in front of friends.
  5. Arrange a datenight at his favorite restaurant.
  6. Pray for him today and tell him you are doing so.
  7. Surprise him with his favorite dessert after dinner.
  8. Greet him in an extra-special way when he comes home from work.
  9. Lead the children in a time of honoring him.
  10. Ask him: “What is one way I can be a better wife?” Then do it!

What are some other ways wives can do their husbands good? We husbands want to get as many ideas out there as possible!

Related post: 20 Minutes to Change Your Marriage

Fathers and Family Vacations

C.J. Mahaney has an interesting set of posts especially for fathers on leadership and family vacations. (Here are the links:  Part 1Part 2Part 3)

Family vacations provide a unique opportunity each year for fathers to create memories their children will never forget. Memories that will last a lifetime. Memories that will be recreated by your children with your grandchildren. Memories that will outlive a father. But in order to create these memories, a father must be diligent to serve and lead during a vacation. How a father views his role on a vacation will make all the difference in the vacation.

C.J. shares the following seven lessons he has learned as a father relating to family vacations:

  1. A Servant Heart:  The father must enter family vacations committed to serve, lead, plan, initiate, and work, and do all this with joy. This isn’t your time to rest. Only your wife deserves to rest on vacation (because no one works harder than she does the rest of the year).
  2. A Tone-Setting Attitude:  The attitude of the father transcends the vacation location each and every time. And on vacation your children are carefully studying and monitoring your attitude. The father’s attitude is the tone setter, and a father who lacks joy and gratefulness will infect the entire vacation.
  3. An Awareness of Indwelling Sin:  Though you are going on vacation, you would be wise to remember that sin never does … A wise husband begins by anticipating how and where he will be tempted by sin on vacation. Ponder in advance your existing sin patterns and potential temptations on this vacation.
  4. Studying Your Family:  My idea of a great vacation is nonstop activity … But I’ve learned that this approach to life and vacations is not shared by my wife and daughters … How can you most effectively serve your family on vacation? … Find out what they would like to do and if possible make it happen, even if it involves just resting and relaxing.
  5. Skillful Surprises:  The most important effect of surprising our family is not the surprise itself but the communication of our deep affection for them through the surprise. Long after the surprise has taken place or the gift has outlived its usefulness, the expression of affection and the memory of the moment remains. Think carefully and plan purposefully whom you can surprise.
  6. Intentionally Together:  What a family does together is much more important than where a family goes together. It’s possible to invest some serious coin in a family vacation and not experience the deepening of relationships as a family … Remember, it’s a FAMILY vacation, intended to build the family together and deepen the relationships between family members.
  7. Gratefulness to God:  Vacations are a gift from God. I want my family to perceive God’s kindness and generosity each day, and I want them to express their gratefulness to God each day.

I have great memories of family vacations as a kid, and I know my Mom and Dad both worked hard to make it happen. How about you? Are family vacations an important part of your family traditions? What do you think about C.J.’s seven lessons?

A Father’s Importance in 5 Key Areas

W. Bradford Wilcox, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Virginia and the author of a recent study on fatherhood, discusses a father’s importance in five key areas of children’s lives:

Studies suggest that fathers play a particularly important role in five domains of children’s lives:

  1. Providing financially for their children,
  2. Protecting their children from abuse and neglect,
  3. Teaching their children how to regulate their bodies and emotions through play (including “roughhousing”),
  4. Disciplining their children (especially their boys), and
  5. Modeling good male-female relationships to their sons and daughters.

When asked, “Do churches help men be good fathers and husbands?” Wilcox responded:

In a word, yes … I find that churchgoing dads spend more time with their children, praise and hug their children more often, spend more time socializing with their wives, and are more emotionally engaged with their wives.

HT: Al Mohler

10 Family Facts for Father’s Day

Joe Carter from the Evangelical Outpost has gathered the following family facts relating to a father’s influence on his children.

  1. Fathers’ religiosity is linked to higher quality of parent-child relationships.
  2. Fathers who regularly attend religious services are more likely to be engaged in one-on-one activities with their children.
  3. Civically active fathers are more likely to participate in youth-related activities.
  4. Fathers’ engagement in their children’s activities was linked to higher academic performance.
  5. Among adolescent boys, those who receive more parenting from their fathers are less likely to exhibit anti-social and delinquent behaviors.
  6. Among adolescent girls, those who have a strong relationship with their fathers are less likely to report experiencing depression.
  7. Close father-adolescent bonds protect against the negative influence of peer drug use.
  8. Adolescent girls who have a close relationship with their fathers are more likely to delay sexual activity.
  9. Adolescent girls whose fathers were present during their childhood are less likely to become pregnant.
  10. Adolescent males who report a close relationship with their fathers are more likely to anticipate having a stable marriage in the future.

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there. Please know how important you are to your children.

Note: All of these facts come from the Heritage Foundation’s Family Facts page, where you can find much more research on family, society, and religion. You can visit Joe’s page here for links to sources for each of the specific facts cited above.

Visiting Fathers

This is a must-read post from Joe Carter on the subject of visiting fathers. Dads, if you are thinking of leaving your family or even in the midst of divorce proceedings, you need to stop and read this article. Thank you, Joe, for sharing honestly from your experience and from your heart.

Here is a clip from the post, but I encourage you to visit Joe’s site and read the whole thing.

Over the past twelve years I’ve learned being a part-time dad is not enough. Our children always need more.

That is why I want to address a specific, narrow audience with the rest of this post. I want to address those fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.

I want to start with a basic premise: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, then you can stop reading now. The rest of what I say will only make sense to those who understand that this is the foundation of fatherhood . . . [Your children] need you at home. If you’re a man and aspire to being a dad, that is all you need to know . . .

I couldn’t ask for a more thoughtful, accommodating woman to be my former spouse. But as hard as we work to make it easier on our daughter, everything we can do is not enough. At the end of the day, my child lives in a house where one of her parents is missing. Divorce doesn’t just end a marriage, it ends a family.