CONTENTS

• FEATURE ARTICLE "Boys Need Dads"
• CHILDREN AND CHURCH ATTENDANCE
• SOME GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE FAMILY

I've never subscribed to the theory that a Dad ought to be a pal to his son. Most adolescents would like to put some distance between themselves and their fathers. When boys discover the awful truth that fathers don't know everything, they often assume their Dads don't know anything. A few years back a cartoonist captured the essence of generational conflict, when he depicted a teenage boy engaging his father in a rare conversation. The caption reads, "Dad, as an outsider, what's your view of the world?"

Every normal male adolescent chooses some degree of distance between himself and his Dad. Without it a son never acquires the independence he needs to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Distance also has the side effect of increasing the chances that a boy might actually survive until his eighteenth birthday. While some fathers smother their sons, many more cut their sons out of their lives for all practical purposes. Sociological research in America's inner cites - breeding grounds of violence, drugs and gangs - reveals the depressing truth that most inner city fathers have fled from all parental responsibility. An investigative report published by the New York Times Magazine concluded, "The welfare world of New York is a fatherless world."

But Dads are also absent in suburbia, in small towns and in rural America. Dads miss band concerts, football games, Boy Scout overnight campouts, parent-teacher conferences and other rites of passage. Where are the fathers when junior is growing up? On the golf course, in the bowling alleys, on the lakes in their bass boats, or maybe just at home tuning up the car. A boy deserves a bigger slice of Dad's time.

While a typical boy neither needs nor wants his father as a pal, he does need a role model and mentor. Psychologist Christopher Bacorn believes that attentive husbands and fathers possess the capacity to stabilize the divorce rate. Fathers pass along values which sons adopt in their own marriages. The Bible says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). A boy may not realize it, but the guy he regards as the dumbest man in the world may well be the most significant person in his life.

But what if a child doesn't want to go? To tell you the truth there was a time I wasn't very keen on attending church, either. I usually went barefooted in the summertime and the only pair of dress shoes I owned were too small. I felt like two vises were clamped onto my feet and screwed down about as far as they would go without breaking some bones.

When I got there the songs were all right and I didn't mind the praying, but I could have done without the sermon. In the first place sermons were too long and in the second place I didn't understand them and in the third place the pews were hard. Besides that, it seemed like the preachers were always mad at somebody and I thought they were aiming their indictments at me. Back in those days, preachers liked to condemn movie going. This was before preachers acquired television sets and decided that God had changed his mind about the movies. I usually watched the Saturday afternoon "shoot 'em ups," which were a lot more exciting that the Sunday morning sermons. Anyway, I figured somebody saw me go into a theater and reported my sin to the preacher, who then spied me from the pulpit and said, "There's Norman. I'm gonna get him." When one of my relatives said that I ought to consider becoming a preacher, I considered her a candidate for a straight jacket.

However much I may have disliked it, church attendance was a mandatory family activity. My folks didn't send me; they took me. Sometimes I protested, just like I protested neck scrubbing. My mother's condemnatory words still linger in my ears, "Norman, the back of your neck is absolutely filthy." My mother exaggerated; she never seemed to understand the fact that "soiled" and "filthy" are not precise synonyms, but then she didn't own a Thesaurus either.

Later on, I outgrew my aversion to both neck scrubbing and church attendance. I don't know exactly when I changed, but eventually I accepted the premise that "cleanliness is next to godliness" and appreciated the merits of both. Based on my own experience I would have to say that requiring your children to attend church is a good thing, but don't expect it to work if you don't go yourself.

NEXT WEEK'S STUDY OUTLINE: "Balancing Job and Family"