Figuring out fatherhood

I had good parents. But my parents didn’t seem to think much about their “parenting.” They just did it. My dad read zero parenting books. There’s something to be said for being a good man and letting the dad stuff take care of itself.

Some of my father’s friends studied up on the theology and philosophy of parenting and developed ideological commitments that made them controlling and remarkably unfun. They might have focused on being good dads, but they should have spent more time being close followers of Jesus. They weren’t warm or filled with the fruit of the Spirit, and, as soon as their kids got the chance, they ran and rebelled. The “right tactics” without the “right affections” is counterproductive.

When I observed this fruit as a college student, I concluded that reading parenting books to get good at parenting was like reading books about how to shoot a basketball: It won’t help, and it might make you anxious. What you need is practice and feedback. Yogi Berra said it better: “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”

Children as gift

I was 22, unmarried, and childless when I read my first parenting book. I was in my second year of seminary when a professor assigned How Children Raise Parents (2005) by Dan Allender. Why a parenting book, I asked, when this is pastoral leadership class? Because pastoring is spiritual parenting and the same principles apply, the professor answered. So like a good student I read it. It opened my mind to a healthy, relational, and heart-of-Christ-shaped vision for fatherhood.

“I am not a good father,” Allender writes on the first page of his book. How refreshing, I thought, a man who can tell the truth about himself in a book. A man who understands his sins and shortcomings and his ongoing need for grace. I was the firstborn in our family, and my dad used to say to me, “This is my first time doing this.” Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Allender certainly thinks parents must raise children. But he also writes with the goal of helping parents understand that their kids were designed by God as instruments for parents’ spiritual formation, too. “The doorway to knowing ourselves and God is often found in a relationship with someone who is dependent on our care,” he writes. When our kids don’t listen, we’re reminded that we, also, don’t listen to our Father. When we’re overwhelmed with affection for our precious children, we’re reminded what it means that our Father loves us.

We must see children as gifts to be received, not as projects to manage or problems to solve. Doing so helps us operate with closeness to the heart of God.

Adolescents as gift

Eugene Peterson’s book, Like Dew Your Youth: Growing Up With Your Teenager (1994) furthered my understanding. It is easy to think of the newborn as a gift, but the pubescent, argumentative, and smug teenager? Peterson claims that one of the main reasons adults have trouble connecting with teens is that they’ve successfully repressed the specifics of their own awkward and painful adolescent years.

Peterson suggests God designed the process of puberty to aid middle-aged parents in their own growth. Similar to Allender, Peterson showed me that “a parent’s main job is not to be a parent, but a person.” God is committed to our growth, and He orchestrated the insecurities and insufficiencies we must face within ourselves as we parent teenagers. God designed my kids for me, the easy parts of them and the hard parts. I must faithfully receive the whole of who they are in every phase of their development.

Sheltering vs. smothering

Can you love your kids too much? No. Can your own anxiety lead you toward destructive overparenting? Yes. Hara Marano’s book A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting (2008) added balance to my fatherhood framework. “What creates anxious children is parents hovering over them and protecting them from stressful experience,” Marano writes. “Overparenting can program the nervous system in such a way to create lifelong vulnerability to anxiety and depression.” Age-appropriate sheltering is important; but a smothering, interventionist disposition inhibits development. Kids need boundaries, consequences, and thousands of reps doing their own problem solving. If our main goal is to prevent physical and emotional pain in our kids, the training wheels will never come off. The absentee father might be a problem, but an overbearing parent is another.

Anticipating vs. reacting

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” said the poet Mike Tyson. He was wrong. Not everybody has a plan. They mostly just get punched in the face. How will you prepare your child for puberty? What will you do when they’re exposed to pornography? How will you form them in the faith? Jon Tyson’s The Intentional Father: A Practical Guide to Raise Sons of Courage and Character (2021) isn’t a prescriptive mechanism, but it outlines a process for fathers who want to shape rites of passage and harness the power of moments. There are five types of fathers for Tyson: irresponsible, ignorant, inconsistent, involved, and intentional. I had planned to be involved, but Tyson helped me move toward intentional.

In my ministry, I’ve distilled these insights into what I call the ABCs of Fatherhood: affection, blessing, and correction. With the Lord’s help, Christian men can be fathers who faithfully represent our Father in heaven.

—Seth Troutt is a teaching pastor at Ironwood Church in Arizona and the author of Authentic Masculinity: Leaving Behind the Counterfeits for God’s Design