The Two Goals Of A Great Father

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Every year on Father’s Day, people flock to greeting card aisles and social media outlets to share words about what they appreciate about their Father.

As often happens with increased volume, you end up hearing and seeing a lot of the same phrases:

• He’s the very best dad we could imagine.

• He’s strong

• He loves our family so well

While sentiments like these can be sweet and genuine, they don’t often hit on the core of what it means to be a great father. When it comes to being a dad, being strong is important. But so is being sensitive.

Of course, dads should aim to love their family well. That should go without saying. But real expressions of love are rarely generic and vague. Real expressions of love are specific and contextualized to each person in a father’s family.

Last week, I lined up at the store to buy my dad a Father’s Day card. On Sunday, I shared on my Instagram yesterday about why I love and respect my dad. In doing so, I asked myself this question: “What do great fathers aim for?”

Based on my own experience as well as research, here are two core goals of great fathers.

1. Generational impact

Fathers leave legacies on their families.

If you talk to anyone of your friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc., you’ll find that they have been stamped, in part, by the ways their father treated them as they were growing up.

We all carry pieces of our fathers with us into adulthood. If your father was jovial, kind, and lighthearted, that left an imprint on you. If your father was absent or aggressive, that marked you as well.

This is because one of the core tasks of any father is to help shape generational impact. Often, that is expressed through the example the father sets for the younger generation, first within their own families and then within the greater community.

For each father, their words, actions, their involvement or availability and their emotional intelligence all help establish their legacy into the minds and hearts of the younger generation.

The culmination of this influence either leads to positive progress — positive generational change. Or, the absence of this influence leads to generational regression.

I am blessed to have a really great dad. I’ve often described him as inspiring. As someone who can tell the same three jokes, and yet somehow they are always funny.

My dad has raised me differently than his dad raised him. My dad has worked hard to connect emotionally and be present and supportive. He’s been intentional to leverage his influence in a way where he can confidently say: “my son is a better man because of my involvement in his life.”

That is one of the goals of a great father.

It’s positive generational impact. It’s changing the narrative of the years to come on purpose.

This generational change can sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be in reality. It doesn't always mean that each act of love or each moment of teaching has some grand, lofty purpose.

You’ll rarely be able to lead someone who doesn’t believe that you love them. And love comes in the margins.

Love comes in the goofiness. In the late nights and the extra five-minutes before the ride to school. Love comes in the inside jokes and the moments where words fail but a hug means the world.

If great fathers want to accomplish the goal of creating positive generational change, they do so by loving the younger generation in a way that allows their leadership to be heard and accepted.

2. Learn to love what must be done.

This second goal of great fathers may seem slightly negative from the surface. Why focus on the things that must be done, rather than on the things that could be done? It’s a subtle difference, but here’s the reason.

Most of being a great father is doing the things that aren’t really optional in the long-run.

When fathers forfeit their opportunity to do the things that must be done, they are not only giving up their influence but they are giving up their foundation of credibility.

No one becomes great without doing the small things. The things that are so often overlooked and unseen. The things that no one celebrates or applauds and that will never show up on a plaque or award. A great father starts here every time.

This is where you find the dishwashers. The bed-time storytellers. The check-book balancers and the car oil-changers. These are the types of fathers who iron their shirts, who teach their sons to tie their ties and who show their daughters how to go on a date.

These are the fathers who pick up the toys for the 124th time in two days. The fathers who break in the baseball gloves and who don’t just leave them on the garage shelf. These are the fathers who drive through the night, who listen when their people need to talk, who ask good questions and remember the details of past conversations.

If you want to check off the first goal of being a great father (to inspire positive generational change) you’ll have to be willing to do what must be done.

But more than that — you’ll have to learn to love what must be done.

Unfortunately, if you do the small things but do them with a begrudging spirit, you all but disqualify the positive impact with your negative attitude.

You can always tell the difference between a skeptic and a servant.

Therefore, the second goal of a great father is to learn to love what must be done.

Again, not everyone has a great experience with their father, but my experience is linked to what I’ve seen with my dad. He’s the kitchen-table tutor and the yard-mower. He’s the dog-walker, the head coach, the airport chauffeur, and the 5th man in a pickup basketball game.

He’s not perfect. He’s learned a lot over the last 30 years. Most importantly, he’s learned to love the small things, the thing that must be done.

The Result

If you look across the research published in the last ten to fifteen years, you’ll see a conversation happening with increasing frequency that there is a shortage of fathers in today’s society. A lot of this has culminated in Warren Farrell’s book The Boy Crisis.

As a society, we should want to see more fathers and father figures leading and loving the younger generations. But that desire should not drive us to lower the standards for fathers to the abstract, the easily attainable, or the average.

Yes, I want to celebrate the dads who are trying. Making an effort is paramount in the work of fatherhood. But if you want to be a great dad, consider thinking through these two goals.

If applied and pursued over the long-run, you’ll end up being not just a great father but a legendary one, and your legacy will last for generations to come.