Give Everything You Have

A fifteen-year-old lad returned home from a rock concert. “How was it?” his grandfather asked. “It was great!” the boy replied. “You would have hated it.”

The boy’s twelve-year-old sister was in the family room where their father was listening to the strains of “Melancholy Baby” coming from one of grandfather’s phonograph records. “Gee, Dad,” said the daughter, “why are you always listening to that classical stuff?”

For reasons that go beyond the clash of tastes in music, we’re all aware of the fact that many father/son and father/daughter relationships have had their difficulties during the past twenty years of rapid social change. Moreover, there has been some considerable shifting of parents’ roles during that period. As a result, many fathers are much more involved in day-to-day family activities that once were exclusively the mother’s. A father tells of receiving a birthday card from his little daughter on which she had written, “Dad, you’re the motherest father I know.”

A mother, son…