Fathers Day

With Father’s Day just around the corner, we are all hopefully thinking about our dads. Dads have it tough, you know, compared to moms. We don’t have a clue about parenting, or so we are told regularly by our wives. And we don’t have that bond with our kids the way that mom’s do (“YOU didn’t give birth to these kids”). But we do have a special part in the family dynamics but that obviously varies family by family.

Dads come in all models with a variety of features. There are dads who are “checked out” or work all of the time and don’t spend much time with their kids. There are stay-at-home dads who watch the fort and the captives therein while the mom is out bringing home the bacon. There are hyper-engaged dads who do everything, work and take care of the kids, and make the rest of us look bad. There are jock dads who do a lot of sports with and without their kids. And, of course, there are HighTechDads where technology is considered to be “the other woman” (or at least that is what my wife says). Remember, technology is not a substitute for parenting. It is merely a tool that can occasionally make things easier or provide other experiences.

My dad is an “education dad.” He’s a professor of European History with a specialty in German History at Stanford University. He has taught all around the world including Northwestern, Princeton, and Oxford. He was the president of the American Historical Association and is a recipient of the Pour Le  Merite order, which is a civil version of an order bestowed to the arts and sciences by the German government (there are only 20 German and 20 foreign recipients of this order at any given time and only when a recipient passes away does the order get given to someone else). He even has a Wikipedia entry which I think could use a bit more content.

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