Welcome to the Call to Flourish podcast.
I'm Thomas Kronquist, your cohost, again with father Charles Sikorsky, the president of Divine Mercy University.
Father, how are you today?
I'm doing fine, Tom.
I'm really excited.
I think we have a great topic today, and we have, one of the one of the all time greats with us today, so that's why I'm really, excited about that.
Well, today we will discuss a very important topic, the importance of fatherhood and family structure for mental health and happiness.
Our guest is doctor Paul Vitz.
Doctor Vitz is a senior scholar of psychology here at the Institute for Psychological Sciences, which is our school of psychology at Divine Mercy University.
He's also professor emeritus at New York University.
He has written many books and articles.
Most notably, he's the coauthor of the recently published textbook, A Catholic Christian Meta Model of the Person, which has already won a prestigious expanded reason award given by the Vatican Foundation, Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict sixteenth, and University of Francisco de Vittoria in Spain.
Doctor Vitts, how are you today?
I'm fine.
Thank you, Tom.
Looking forward to all this.
Well, that's an impressive resume, doctor Vitts, and, we're looking very much, very much looking forward to hearing you talk about this topic today.
So, we have a number of questions for you, father.
I don't know if you'd like to, to start.
Sure, Tom.
Well, you know, today's topic is gonna be on the importance of fatherhood, the importance of good fathers, which is so important in our society.
So I'd just like maybe start off doctor.
Bitz, could you just give us an overview of why you think, what is, what is the importance of fatherhood is, and why it's so critical today for our society?
An overview.
Okay.
I guess that but I'll try to make it short.
Right?
Make it a five minute overview.
Well, the importance of fathers for, the family, particularly for the children, is now it's been well established now for seventy years.
The first big study came out in 1950 that showed that when fathers were absent from the family, juvenile delinquency was very, very much more probable amongst the children, particularly the boys.
And so that has held up over seventy years and not just studies in this country, but in all over the world, England, South America, Asia.
Many studies have shown that the absence of the father in the family makes the boys especially very prone to criminal behavior, very prone to criminal behavior and also to drug use, and this shows up in studies all over the world.
Let's take a look at that, what that means just for this country.
The United States has, I think, the largest prison population per capita of any country in the world.
And the most of those prisoners, the great majority of them, are basically young men who didn't have fathers.
And the cost of that's enormous.
First, there's the cost of the crime that got them in there.
Second, there's the cost of the police enforcement in order to arrest them and take care of it.
There's the cost of the the legal system that deals with it, and then there's the cost of housing them in these dormitories called prisons for fatherless boys.
And that the cost of housing them is probably as much as a tuition to a private school would be.
And finally, there's the big cost.
And the big cost is the loss of years in the lives of millions of young men in this country.
And so until we can deal with that problem, we've got an enormous cost in all of these areas, not just money, but socially.
And the absence of fathers or of substitute fathers, which can be very helpful, is really the basic cause of that.
Let me let me ask a follow-up question, doctor.
So what what do you think it is about fatherhood that leads to crime?
So the lack of a father figure, what about, you know, we hear so much today.
Well, the the mother you have a good mother and a single mother and how how much how difficult that is, but it sounds like she can't make up for what the father brings?
Especially with boys, but fathers bring self control and discipline to, particularly to the boys.
You know, you can just you you don't have to be a a psychologist.
You can be the ordinary truck driver, and and the boy makes a smart remark to his mother, and the father says, shut up.
That's my wife you're talking to.
And, oh, you know, that doesn't.
The older man sets up the discipline that boys begin to learn, and they learn it from their father.
And I'll give you a funny example here.
This was a study that was done with elephants in South Africa.
Elephants.
There was a there's a big, natural history park there, and they had a lot of elephants.
And they, for some reason, decided to take all the young male elephants, the young bull elephants, and put them together and take them away from the herd.
So they had about, I think about 50 or a 100 of these young bull elephants all by themselves in another part of the park.
And those bull elephants, those young ones started being wild beyond belief.
They started, fighting with each other.
They started attacking other animals.
Then they began killing, rhinos.
They've never seen this before.
And the rhinos are protected too just like the elephants, so they said, my god.
We've got a problem here.
And they said, what should we do?
Well, one smart, park ranger said, let's bring a bunch of old bull elephants down and put them in with these young male elephants.
Well, that's what they did.
They brought down a bunch of the old bulls, and somehow or other, they controlled the aggression of these young males.
I don't know how they did it.
You know, elephants don't spank each other.
I don't know what the communication was, but the presence of the old bulls calm down the overexcited aggressiveness of the young bulls, and the problem went away.
That's amazing.
Wow.
So but this is what fathers do with especially with their sons.
And they're very helpful.
You know, they they provide other things too besides self control, which is so important for men.
They have to control both aggression and sexuality.
But they provide other things for the family too.
One of the things they provide is help with the daughters to separate and, you know, distinguish themselves from the mother.
Separation and individuation is very important for every child.
But somehow other boys find this a little easier than girls, and the girls get help from their dad on this.
They have another adult to go to who can serve to help them separate in a positive way toward natural independence from the, over involvement with the mother.
In addition, the boy the the fathers provide a, they provide a a model, a gender identity model for the boys.
So if girls find separation and individuation a little more difficult than boys, boys find gender identity a little more difficult than girls And the presence of the father or a father substitute provides that gender identity model In a very good way in a natural way And so that's one of the things that those are three of the things that fathers provide.
They provide self control and discipline.
They provide, gender identity for both the boy and the girl, but particularly the boy.
They provide separation and individuation for the girl, especially, and also for the boy.
And, all of these are very positive things.
They also provide a kind of social identity to the child.
Children wanna know who their father was.
You know, even these, you know, even these, children, sperm donor fathers now wanna find out who their father was.
So they all meet meet their sort of relatives.
They get together, and they they they have half siblings when they meet.
You know?
And they wanna find out who their father was and who their for their other family members are.
So those are things that fathers provide, and they're very important.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So they provide self weakened when the father's absent.
Mhmm.
Yeah.
So they provide self control.
They provide, identity, gender identity, and also, just separation, separation, individuation.
Yeah.
Now we, we, why do it seems like there's not much recognition or appreciation of how important the father's role is because we see the one example you gave of, of crime being a problem.
And I think rightfully so, you know, a lot of mothers take on a lot of responsibilities today and they get a lot of attention to single mother.
We hear a lot about that.
And I think, I think that needs to be recognized and acknowledged.
What makes you think, why don't we hear more about the importance of the father's role?
Because maybe if more men were kind of aware of how important they are to their child's development, they might take more of an interest Any of yes, they would that one there are a variety of reasons why this has happened before the last two or three generations, the tradition and then the traditional culture, made fathers important, and it was part of the natural role of a father to be there, and they were understood as important just by tradition.
Now we've lost all that in the last twenty, well, fifty, sixty years with the media and all of the other changes.
So we need to reeducate young men to the importance of being a father.
That's one thing.
But there are also characteristics in our society that are very hostile to fathers.
They don't want fathers to be important.
The feminist movement doesn't want fathers to be seen as important.
The, alphabet soup people, you know, the LBGT, whatever type people, they don't want fathers to be important.
After all, that would imply that there are sexual differences in the roles of men and women.
It would imply that people should have a father.
They don't want that if they if they can have that avoided.
So, Their cultures, there are people who are there's a huge divorce culture doesn't want to admit that the father who left who isn't there was is important and for a while, they they thought that the absent father was was sort of a problem for black Americans, and therefore, it was an implicit racist issue to bring bring up.
But that's just not the case.
This is all over the world that fathers are important, and we're now seeing in The United States the the absence of fathers in in a lot of the rural white communities, small town communities where the where the opioid crisis is bad.
We're seeing plenty of, of young white, boys having the same problem.
So this is not a racial issue.
It's a worldwide problem, but and we have to recognize that fathers are important.
And it's not just natural fathers, but we could find ways perhaps to bring in substitute fathers.
What, you know, a lot of dads out there it sort of is a mindset in some people, like, the dad is out to be the breadwinner, and he provides them the the the money and the house and and so forth and pays for the education.
And mom's the one who nurtures the kids.
Is there something in that relationship maybe we miss that, that maybe distracts us from the father's, the father needs to do more than just provide material things, and and and how how can fathers, better serve their family?
There is, and it's interesting about the literature on fathers.
The crucial aspect of the father that's important is his important is his warmth, his positive, love or expression of warmth to the children.
It he doesn't have to be a macho man to be a model of of a good father.
He does have to show his love and warmth to the children.
He isn't going to be as nurturing, of course, as as mother, but he has to show that he he respects, admires, and loves his children, and that shows up in warmth.
And if the warmth is there, all of these other problems go away.
So it's not just providing.
It's not just, you know, protecting your family.
It's not just providing.
It's warmth and support for your children along with, also probably, helping your children to learn how to cope with the future.
Right.
Interested.
Is I was wondering, is there a connection between the experience of fatherhood in families and, children's ability to relate to god the father, their faith, their ability to embrace the faith?
Well, yes.
There is.
First of all, it has to do with the issue of atheism, and let me explain.
There are two kinds of atheists.
The most common atheist doesn't even know he's an atheist.
He just doesn't believe in God.
He's not very educated, and he behaves as though there isn't a God.
So he's a behavioral atheist without thinking about it intellectually.
And your average atheist truck driver is this, and there are plenty of them out there that your average atheist, typical, young man who's perhaps not at all interested in being an atheist intellectually, but he's a functional atheist.
And they're often the result of not have growing up in a family without a father.
But even the intellectual atheist, and I've done a lot of research on this, your major intellectual atheists are almost always had no father or a dysfunctional father.
You know, an abusive or a weak and hard to both the Catholic world, the Protestant world, and the Jewish world is filled with atheists, in each of those traditions who had absent or bad or abusive fathers.
And what it means is the father is the first representation psychologically of god the father for his own children.
This is just simple psychological, understanding.
He didn't follow it up, but Sigmund Freud said nothing is more common than for an adult, young for a a young teenage child to lose his faith in God when he loses respect for his father.
Freud said that.
He didn't bottle it up in his own life because he didn't respect his own father.
But, the father is a model of god the father for his children.
And, if they can't see that model, they can't get through that model because their father was away or rejecting or abusive.
How can they approach god the father?
To them, the very word father means rejection, means abandonment, means hostility, or whatever those things were in their own father.
You know, I've heard that there are studies regarding faith.
When dads go to church regularly, there seems to be a connection that the children will practice their faith throughout their lives.
I don't know if you've you've heard anything about that research, but it would sort of be the, the counter to that.
Right?
On one hand, if if the dad is is is absent or abusive, it could cause him to not believe.
On the other hand, if the dad, you know, doesn't need to be you know, nobody's gonna be perfect, but the dad who who is a religious leader in the family and goes to mass or goes to church on Sunday or whatever the religion might be, I would imagine, does that help the children become more faithful to their religious faith?
Yes.
It does.
There's a a a book out that shows that not only is the mother important in in the, passing on of the religious tradition, but the father is even more important.
Somehow or other, if the father makes religion significant, the children recognize that it's an important thing.
And if the father disses religion or ignores it or has nothing to do with it, the children pick up that attitude.
Children pick up a father's attitude toward the outside world and toward concepts like that very, very easily.
And, so there is evidence that says that if a father is a reliable believer and goes to church, that his children are even more, likely to follow in his footsteps than if only the mother is.
We've talked about, recommendations for fathers who are in difficult situations, but how about for all the moms out there who maybe, their, their husband or their father, the father of their children isn't around, and they're struggling, they really, they see the need for male influence, with their children.
Doctor.
Vitz, what would you, what could you recommend to those mothers?
The best thing is to, if you can, find a substitute father.
And who might that be?
That could be, an uncle.
It could be a coach.
It could be, a grandfather, someone in it could be a priest, it could be a pastor, it could be any male figure in your life that would be willing to come in and help at times with the family.
Not on a daily basis necessarily, but, you know, coaches are really important substitute fathers for for many young men.
The same thing is true of relatives like uncles and grandfathers.
A lot of older men who are really solid should recognize that they could mentor lots of younger people and that that mentoring, as a father figure would be extremely, helpful and very positive and would be a very important sacrifice of time that they made for the other.
So a surrogate father.
Okay.
Any recommendations for those who are really interested in this topic?
Anywhere they could get, research or different information, on some of the things you've mentioned?
Well, I have a paper not published yet, but about 35 or 40 pages with lots of references, substantiating what I said in my earlier comments.
And, they can contact DMU to get a copy of it.
Well, that'll be great.
We'll see if we can maybe put that on our website We'll we'll make it available.
And we'll, those who are interested, please send us, you can email us, after the podcast.
Well, thank you very much.
Okay.
Well, just, you know, one final one final question here.
So if there are any fathers out there who kind of regret that maybe they haven't been doing a good job or or there's some tension with their children, maybe are grown up a little bit or older and and and then there could be some friction and break.
Is there anything how can reconciliation be made or are there any recommendations?
I've seen some touching movies where we've probably all seen them where there's a, an issue with a dad, and in the end, there's a conversion or there's some kind of reconciliation, and you see tears from grown men, in that situation.
What is there a hope for, say, if there's a dad listening today who who may have that on his heart?
What would you suggest to that father?
It's up to you to take the initiative as the father.
Not only because you're the father, but because perhaps you're responsible for some of these problems in your children's lives.
And so you have to honestly recognize, that you've perhaps harmed them and and not been as good as you should have been as a father.
It would help to ask for your children's forgiveness and, pray and hope that they would give it to you.
And in any case, it is time it's never too late to step up to the plate and show that you're concerned with your children, to show that you care for them, to show you to show that you have truly come to love and respect them.
It's never too late for that.
Doctor Vitz, thank you again.
So we're very thankful you were able to, to join us, and like to thank, everybody who was able to listen.
You can find, you can get more information about Divine Mercy University on our website.
That's divinemercy.edu.
And to see our podcast, click on the podcast web web page.
You can also, view the episodes on YouTube or download them from iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
So, father, if there's anything you'd like to say here, here to to finish.
I'd like to thank doctor Vitz for for his time for being with us today and Tom for your your help with this.
And for our listeners out there, I think we ended on on another very important, right?
There's always hope.
God is always there for us.
He never gives up on us and he has ways of of of, you know, erasing our failures.
Right?
His mercy and his love, and that's what we're all about.
Divine Mercy University, is is spreading that.
And so there's hope for all of us, and hopefully this, this podcast has been a help for that.
And We want to have strong families.
We want to have strong relationships and so I just pray for our listeners and especially if any of who are struggling right now with their families and be praying for them that, our Lord will step in and I just would encourage them to to invite the lord invite the lord to step into their lives and to to put put their difficulties and struggles and worries into his hands.