Who Is YOUR Son’s Mentor?
In the growing movement to re-emphasize fatherhood and masculine formation there is – rightly – immense focus on biological fathers. For boys especially, as they grow into adolescence they are growing away from their childhood and the world of women represented by their mother and teachers and into the world of men. The father is the one who lends his son the confidence and guidance he needs to make that transition. Fathers share in the fatherhood of God by loving the way God loves, by helping a son to fulfill the mission that is his – his vocation. As sociologists have noted, children “grow toward their fathers” and their fathers, in the ideal at least, are there waiting to be their guide.
But fathers are not enough. I am happy to see the renewed interest in fatherhood, but it is worth noting that cultures that had effective rites of passage shared a culture together among the men as a larger brotherhood. Boys were integrated into manhood by being integrated with the world men(plural). In our hyper individualist society even we Catholics can fall prey to thinking we can “do life” on our own. We cannot. We need others. And when it comes to masculine formation, our sons need their fathers in the singular and broader sense.
