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“What I really need is a course on how to raise my son.” This phrase is not only common, it’s commonly genuine.
Think about the stages that lead up to this point. The wedding bells ring, the lights go out, and nine months later the nurse is watching you take a human away to strap into your car. Skip ahead another 12 years and all of a sudden your pride and joy has found his way to the Internet’s less enriching pages. But he’s only 12?!
That’s right, study after study during the past 10 years continue to reveal that the common age of exposure to pornography continues to drop. A recent report by Common Sense Media found 54 per cent of young people are exposed to pornography before the age of 13. That means your son – or daughter for that matter – doesn’t even have a 50/50 shot to make it to the first day of their teenage years before experiencing the emptiness of human exposure. What are you going to do about it?
Even if you could break out the proverbial handbook that we all wish we had received at the birth of our first child, you'd likely find that there is nothing in there about what to do when your son first discovers pornography in its modern form. Nor is there anything in there about what to do when he hits puberty, begins high school, gets his license, tests the limits of libations, or heads off on his own for the first time to a place soaked in childish debauchery and hellish ideologies – also known as university. Should you really be paying for that?
Although there isn’t a handbook that lays these things out word for word – as nice as that would seem – there are certainly some guiding principles and tangible things that men can do to aid their sons, physically or spiritually, along the road of heroic virtue.
The aforementioned road is narrow and leads straight up the mountain of holiness. It is not an easy road for a man to get himself up even when he just has to worry about himself. All the more difficult is the work of leading a son, a young man with his own freedom and will, up this difficult route.
It is the way of the Cross. The sole road to unity with Christ for ourselves and for our sons. Every other alternative falls short. Every other road will leave us and our sons empty. Only one road will lead a man to a life of true freedom, fulfilment, life, peace and joy.
While there are increasing numbers of articles, especially in Catholic media, that address the challenges facing fathers today, before a man can even begin to apply, or much less grasp, the instructions in those forthcoming articles, he must first lay a foundation for those instructions to be built upon. To that foundational work, we turn now.
A father who is learned in the latest and most effective ways of classroom pedagogy might feel he has a leg up on his peers when it comes to the raising of his children. Yet, no amount of skill in the art of academic instruction will aid a man in leading his son to chastity if the son knows the father is not wholeheartedly fighting the good fight himself.
Our words are dust in the wind if our actions testify to a life lived contrarily. Or to say it most plainly, we are wasting our time telling our sons what to do if we are not living it out ourselves.
Sons are perceptive. Maybe not as early as daughters, but by the time they are twelve they certainly have developed a nose for hypocrisy and are quite able to call others out on it, even if not in such a defined manner.
Secondly, and more charmingly, sons look up to their fathers, both physical and spiritual. It is in the omnipotent father’s design that sons look to their fathers to show them how to be a man. Emphasis on show. The more one considers this reality the less charming it is and the more daunting the reality becomes.
Your son is watching you. From a young age, he is watching you.
He sees how you hold yourself. He notices how you treat your wife. He observes your relationship with your creator, your neighbour, your phone, your food, your drink, and your time “away” from the family. Every great master longs for an apprentice as devotedly observant as a son. Few can find one but every father has one. At least to start.
But too many fathers lose their sons over time. Occasionally through no fault of their own. Sin is real. And the temptations of the world have been strong from the beginning. But too often fathers lose their sons well before they should. Often through modelling a life to them that is not attractive ,either due to their life’s display of hypocrisy or simply because it appears objectively unappealing.
Take a step back and look at your life for a moment from the outside. The hours you work, the relationships you have, the attachments you struggle with, the joy that stems from your deep relationship with Christ, or the lack thereof on both accounts … is your life attractive to you?
A man who is living the fulfilling life in Christ – the one he was made for – has only to reveal that life to his son. Though that in and of itself is a long journey.
On the other hand, a man who is living a life that isn’t even attractive to himself, what hope can he have in raising a son that wants to be like him? In such a situation, how can a father hope that his son will believe that the father knows the way to a life of freedom, fulfillment, life, peace and joy?
The father who is looking for the handbook on how to raise his son is grasping at an empty supplement. The role of the father is not that of the teacher. The role of the father is that of the model.
The father who wants his son to be able to live a life of heroic virtue, must lace up his own boots and start leading the way, if not for his own soul at the end, then for the soul of his beloved son, today.
Photo: graphic by Arcadia
