Louise Reeve here, sharing some thoughts – from my 2018 service on Father’s Day

You’ll notice that I have been exploring some different notions of what it means to be a father in this service. I originally wanted to call the service “Father’s Day, and Uncertainty”. This was inspired by a conversation I had with a transwoman friend of mine. She commented “June: the month of Father’s Day when I get to feel totally erased. Not All Dads Are Male”. I had a conversation with her about this in which she commented that she was still her teenage son’s father because “he already has a mother”.

So that’s one way in which people are considering what fatherhood means, and whilst my friend’s situation – and that of other transwomen – is quite specific, there does seem to be a lot of questioning about the role of fathers in the modern world, as we’ve seen in our readings.

It’s traditional to have a biblical reading as part of the service. I did do some research into fathers in the Bible – there’s a lot of material about this online. In the end I didn’t put in a Biblical reading at the start, partly because there are no longer readings specifically about fatherhood, but mostly, I have to say, because what I found were a lot of examples of what today we would call terrible fathers. Some familiar examples from the Old Testament include:

Abraham, who slept with his wife’s servant because he and his wife Sarah became impatient waiting for God’s promise of a son through Sarah. The concubine, Hagar, had a son named Ishmael. Abraham later sent Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert with only a skin of water and some food after he had his promised son through Sarah, named Isaac. Abraham was then going to sacrifice Isaac on an altar, because God told him to do this; fortunately for Isaac, God was just testing him. (At this point it’s hard not to think “If we call God the Father, what sort of father was He at this point?”)

Isaac himself played favourites with his children, favouring Esau over Jacob, which created some serious sibling rivalry, as Jacob first stole Esau’s birthright, then Esau’s deathbed blessing from Isaac, leading to Esau planning to kill Jacob – fortunately he later changed his mind.

Lot offered his two daughters to a mob to be raped. He later got drunk and slept with each of them on successive nights, which resulted in two sons: Ammon and Moab, who were the fathers of the Ammonites and Moabites, two of Israel’s greatest enemies. (Source: http://jesusalive.cc/ques300.htm_)

I could go on to discuss King David and his sons – and the raping, treachery and murder they got up to – but I think we get the idea. These were stories from a patriarchal time, when fatherhood literally meant owning your wives (and concubines) and children.

Yet there are good fathers in the Bible also. Job reared his children to love each other and be devout. He cared about them so much that he would regularly make sacrifices to God, because he worried that they might have unintentionally insulted God, and he wanted to protect them.

And as we look at the New Testament, we see one of the greatest fathers of the Bible, who was in fact a stepfather (if you take the traditional Christian view of Jesus’ parentage). Joseph found that the woman he was married to was pregnant, seemingly not by him. Even prior to his revelation from God about who the baby was going to be, he was concerned for the wellbeing of Mary, resolving to “put her away privately” so as not to expose her to public disgrace.

Following a visit from the angel, he married Mary, and faced huge hardships – the journey to Bethlehem, the flight from Herod into Egypt – to protect her and the infant Jesus. We don’t know that much about the lives of Joseph and Mary after the birth of Jesus and their return from Egypt, but we do know that Jesus had brothers and sisters. In Catholicism, Joseph is the patron saint of families and fathers. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Joseph)

Joseph, then was a man who did not take the easy path to protect his own reputation, but took huge risks to protect and nurture his wife and child. This, I think, is close to the traditional role of fatherhood – the breadwinner and protector, what Rev. Brian Kiely calls “Providing the necessities of life”.

I think it’s fair to say that for much of human history, this has been a major part of fatherhood, perhaps the defining aspect of it. Men were supposed to go out and work to provide for their families, and to be the disciplinarian when they got home. But as we see from Brian Kiely’s, this is only part of being a father, and it may not be the defining part. I know several couples where the woman is the main earner, and the man does most of the childcare, and I am sure others here may know people with similar arrangements. Many children are raised by their mothers, and their father figures may be other men – grandfathers, uncles, teachers, family friends – who help to nurture them and support them to grow.

When I think of my own childhood, my memories of my Dad are not about the money he earned or the house he provided for us, though I’m certainly grateful to him for all his hard work. They are of family holidays playing beach cricket, picking raspberries in the back garden, and him teaching me how to use a computer. I literally learned to type sitting on my Dad’s knee!

And I do wonder if he and my Mum would have been even happier if maternity leave, paternity leave and part-time working had been an option for them during mine and my brother’s childhood. We had a happy childhood, but perhaps Mum would liked to return to the world of work sooner, and Dad might have liked to be able spend more time at home teaching my brother and I to ride our bikes and play cards.

This is why I feel positively about the ways in which we are questioning and redefining fatherhood – and motherhood, and parenthood – although I know that this is a difficult process for many people, and that many men find themselves struggling in a world in which the role they felt they were expected to play seems to be being challenged and changed. Change is difficult and can be painful. But, as Unitarians, I think we’re happy with a little uncertainty and questioning!

And I hope that we are moving towards a world in which women and men – whether transgender, cisgender, or however a person chooses to describe themselves – can decide for themselves how they will parent their children, without feeling forced into roles that don’t suit them. Let us be grateful for the good parts of what we inherited, and feel free to leave behind the bad. And always, whether we be parents ourselves or not, let us strive to create a great world for the next generation.