In case you haven't noticed, there's a new zeitgeist emerging in our culture. This new way of looking at life is the product of numerous societal trends, and it's resulted in a whole new way of being human. It manifests in lots of ways that might not seem to be connected on the surface, yet are outgrowths of the same new worldview. Issues like environmental sustainability, neohumanism, natural family living, social awareness, evidentialism, and a value of diversity are all growing out of the core of the emerging new reality.
This blog will not attempt to address all these issues, except as far as they impact our main thesis - that there is a whole New Fatherhood emerging around us. This new model is partly reactive, and partly proactive. It is reactive in that many of today's fathers have seen the failures of former fatherhood models: the cold, distant fathers of the 1950's, the overly permissive fathers of the 1970's, the demanding and overachieving fathers of the 1990's, etc. We have seen the kind of father/child relationships that resulted from these models, and we want nothing to do with them.
The New Fatherhood is proactive in that we are beginning to see our role as fathers as part of an integrated approach to the way we see the whole world. We want to be more open, more engaging, more authentic. We want to provide structure and guidance for our children, but maintain intimate relationships with them as well. We want to teach them to engage their world as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And, along with our partners, we want to nurture them into caring, compassionate, creative women and men.
