According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

There are many brave and wonderful mothers, grandmothers and other women who are bearing more than their share of the load in rearing families.

I applaud Mayor Wharton for tackling this complex problem. Positive male presence and leadership are desperately needed. One of the underlying pieces of the puzzle, employment with a living wage, needs to be included in an overall strategy that public and
private sectors can embrace.

According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

Sociologically, the absentee father is probably the key to most of our problems in Memphis and the nation. Although the statistics are especially alarming among African-Americans, this issue affects all of our families. I see evidence in young people every day of the good job or poor job that fathers have done in rearing their children. Every church, school, and social agency would be wise to focus on this issue in coming years.

According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

The most confusing day in America is Father’s Day for untold millions of children. Sexual irresponsibility has been prevalent for the last half a century. What a distortion from God’s ideal. That is, one man, one woman, one sexual relationship, for life. While many may try to discount the value of a two parent home, the moral, social, emotional, and spiritual realities tell a different story. God’s ways are the best ways. We need to return to the God of the Bible.

According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

Fatherless homes have become an epidemic of major proportion in society; one which will continue to have spiritual, mental and physical implications upon families and communities for years to come. It is one of the grand contributors to many of the societal ills that plague us today. The family is the fundamental unit of society and when this breaks down, we are susceptible to an increase of problems such as behavioral disorders, educational deficiencies, dysfunctional relationships, an increase in crime, drug abuse and premarital sexual encounters to name a few.

Marriage is ordained of God and the family unit is essential to His plan. When we contemplate why God has allowed mankind to procreate upon the earth and placed us in families, we know that it was for a wise purpose. Fathers and mothers will be held accountable before God if they fail in their responsibilities to provide for the physical and spiritual needs of their children.

As we celebrate fatherhood this weekend, perhaps a few suggestions for the men may be cause for some thought:

1. Father humble yourself. Pride is one of the great sins of the world and many a man has fallen when he has become self absorbed in satisfying his own desires. To put self, work, or carnal pleasures ahead of wife and children is selfish and wrong. Too many fathers are quick to give up rather than to give in when faced with challenges.
2. Father should be a righteous leader. Most women and children desire a strong role model who they can look to for love and support. Someone who leads the family in prayer, and religious study; who calls the family together for meaningful discussion and takes part in wholesome family activities. A righteous father walks beside his wife and takes counsel from her as they jointly make decisions which affect the well being of the family.
3. Fathers be an impact teacher. It is essential to teach correct principles to our children. These are basics of honesty, integrity, love of God, country and fellowman. Teach your boys to honor and respect womanhood and your sons and daughters to be chaste and virtuous. Teach them it is important to work in order to get gain and that getting an education will greatly improve their future opportunities. We can’t send our children out to “specialists” to be taught in the weightier matters of life; it is our responsibility to help them understand things of greatest importance.
4. Father as a provider. Scripture indicates that man shall “work by the sweat of his brow” and the father is to provide for the temporal needs of the family. He should use his financial resources wisely in order to provide for the basic needs of his family. Living within his mean and staying out of debt are essential elements of a healthy family. When the father is providing for the temporal needs of the family it allows mothers more time to concentrate on their role as nurturer of the children.

Fathers, come home and be involved in your family’s lives!

According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

The phenomenon of fatherlessness is both absence and passivity. Absence is more rampantly obvious. Passivity is a present father who abdicates teaching his kids or requiring responsibility from them. He may be feeding and clothing children but he is not raising them. That dad also is “missing” in that he is derelict or negligent in shaping his kids’ character.

I applaud most any effort to, in Malachi’s words, “turn the hearts of fathers to their children” (Mal. 4:6). The benefits of dads respectably well-engaged with their children demonstratively ripple out from home to neighborhood to community. Years ago, our titled men’s ministry at First Evan was an assertion by acronym: M.A.N. (Men Are Necessary). It wasn’t meant to be chest-thumping braggadocio. It was meant to remind men that we aren’t optional to the roles we take upon ourselves, fatherhood being one of the most vital.

While writing this just now a friend in my church called me to share the news that his family is adopting a child later this summer. They met the birth-mother today, a teenage pregnancy. As have many others in our church my friend is doing the ultimate thing about fatherlessness in our own community: He is becoming Dad to one who would not know those arms around him otherwise. May his tribe increase.

According to the 2010 Census, of the 168,000 children living in Memphis, nearly 67,000 — about 4 in 10 — are living in a family with a female householder and NO FATHER PRESENT.

Later this month, Memphis Mayor A C Wharton will host the Second Annual Memphis Training Camp for Dads. (Wharton is writing a guest column about the issue that will run with your response.)

From your perspective, how big is this problem? How do you see if effecting your congregation, your community, the culture at large? What can/should be done about it?

President Obama’s statement that the nation has “too many fathers missing from too many homes, from too many lives” points to a problem of such magnitude that it affects schools, congregations, corporations, communities – indeed, the culture at large.

A fatherless home compromises the home’s stability, creating uneasiness which kids soak up. And the ripple effect of such unease is borne out in research New York Times columnist David Brooks cites that shows how much better off children are who feel emotionally safe. These children do much better in school, Brooks reports. Moreover, “they tend to choose friends wisely, handle frustration better, are more resilient in the face of setbacks, and become more productive workers.”

As for what can be done about fatherless homes, the first thing would be to penetrate the denial that this problem is the root cause of so much of what’s wrong with our society. Indeed, one sign of the denial is that little, if anything, is said concerning the relationship between broken homes and poor school performance in the national discussion about school reform. To cut through the self-deception, I see, as one step, media outlets making the research that draws this relationship common knowledge.