Take One for the Team

By Ethical

Team sports are a coming of age for many boys. They’re even more meaningful to fathers. The first time our son wipes away a bloody nose without a tear, or shrugs off a hard hit and smiles because he helped his team get just a little closer to winning … it’s enough to tug at the toughest father’s heart strings. Our boy just “took one for the team”. Even if we didn’t see it other fathers will tip their caps in a quiet nod of respect and we’ll know. Despite whatever failings, on that day we’re certain we’ve done something right in this world. We’ve succeeded in raising a son to the point where he’s on his way to becoming a man.

With providence our boys get bigger, and the challenges they’re capable of facing get tougher. Whether they take on gruelling or dangerous jobs to feed their families, or go to war and put their lives on the line defending their countries, we’re thankful for the part we were able to play in preparing them. “Taking one for the greater good” is an irrevocable part of what we as a society have always trained men to do. Males are born hard wired to be receptive to that socialization. When faced with unexpected circumstances we as men have time and time again shown our readiness to lay down our lives for our women, our children, and for the countries we’ve pledged our allegiance to. Being a man has always meant being ready to be brave at all times so there’s no surprise it takes an entire boyhood to prepare us for it. It’s not a small thing to be ready to take responsibility, ready to give one’s all, with no notice.

Giving our all as men is so important there’s a government initiative about it at the website Fatherhood.gov:

Fatherlessness is a growing crisis in America, one that undergirds many of the challenges that families are facing. When dads aren’t around, young people are more likely to drop out of school, use drugs, be involved in the criminal justice system, and become young parents themselves.

President Obama grew up without his dad, and has said that being a father is the most important job he has. That’s why the President is joining dads from across the nation in a fatherhood pledge – a pledge that we’ll do everything we can to be there for our children and for young people whose fathers are not around. When you take the President’s Fatherhood Pledge, you’ll receive updates, tips and resources from fatherhood organizations, prominent dads and other supporters of responsible fatherhood around the nation.

The message is clear. We must “take one on the chin” if we need to, and fight through whatever adversity standing between us and providing for our families. We must make a pledge to hold our families together so we can be there to protect our loved ones.

With the equal legal rights women enjoy in today’s society, it’s inevitable that some will call on women to defend their families in the same way. The other day I read an article in which a woman named Stacey at a domestic abuse crisis center counselled women: “The first time he hits you, make it the last”.

It seemed reasonable, after all who wants to be slapped? Then I considered that a woman’s pain from taking a slap would be gone in a day. I wondered if leaving would really always be the best way for a woman to “defend her family”. The next day after the slap he or she might apologize, they’d have great sex, and a week later both would forgot it ever happened. On the other hand the pain she would inflict on her children by leaving her husband, as described so eloquently above by Mr. Obama, this would last the children’s entire lifetime. By leaving she would throw innocents into financial chaos and emotional devastation.

I began to question whether the abuse centers were really giving out good advice and I started to look for answers to the question: “should women also consider the “greater good”?

I discovered that the idea of women having the same “spouse and the children before me” responsibility towards their families as men do was so completely revolutionary it didn’t exist yet on the web. Though it seemed a great “right” for feminists to make equal claim to I couldn’t find anything about a woman’s responsiblity to her family on any feminist site anywhere. Given the entire government funded website dedicated to the importance of intact families this seemed a little confusing. It was also more than a little alarming. A generation of men were being raised to lay down their lives for their families, yet a generation of women were being counselled to give up on their families at a slap. Were women being denied the right to sacrifice for their families the way men always have?

President Obama’s message that fatherlessness is so incredibly harmful for children, and common wisdom about how devastating financially a divorce can be, both suggest that the decision to break up a family shouldn’t be taken lightly. That many women leave one abusive relationships to go straight into another exposes the “victim” paradigm to be ineffective and inaccurate. Abuse is a mutual problem for couples to tackle together. Yet websites advising women to seek mutual counselling to heal their marriage rather than to just walk away are non-existent.

Many other women’s domestic violence websites I found seemed to have a similar “Divorce him without a second thought” message. A number even counselled that a man should be considered to have abused the woman if he so much as raised his voice to her. All agreed that there could be no mitigating factor in abuse. Didn’t matter whether he came home to see her in bed with his worst enemy, or whether she was scalding his children with hot water. A man could never be excused, and a woman never needed to be.

Now any teacher in charge of a playground knows failing to come down on both parties in a dispute even handedly makes the party that always gets off feel encouraged to foment conflict again. Simple common sense. The consensus of statistics surrounding domestic violence show that women initiate the violence 50-60% of the time. If families are really important, isn’t it in the interest of children that BOTH sides be shown some forgiveness in order that BOTH sides shoulder some responsibility?

I got my answer to that very quickly. Despite the great public funding for domestic violence programs there was no “President’s Mother’s Pledge” to encourage women to show the bravery, love for family, and fortitude to succeed in preserving a two parent home as the best environment possible for children as has been demanded of men. Perhaps, in these days of equal rights, it’s high time.