c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J., and a fellow of the George H. Gallup International Institute in Princeton, N.J.)

(UNDATED) The noted psychologist James Dobson, who has authored several best-selling books on child-rearing, contends he learned virtually everything he knows about the subject from his father. According to Dobson, the content of his books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, were largely the result of copious notes he took during conversations with his dad.

That the life of one man could so influence his son as to affect the world is a concept I find utterly amazing. It also causes me to ponder about my father and his son.

To be sure, such musings are not unusual for me. I’ve often noted how my father’s values and habits have found expression in my life.

How, for example, his messy tool shed is reflected in my sloppy desk; and his love for literature parallels my own. More significantly, Dad’s willingness, nearly 30 years ago, to leave the church community that had shaped his life and introduced him to my mother, influenced my decision a generation later to pursue the road-less-traveled in ministry. Thus, for better or worse, my father’s character and values have had an effect on those I serve.

All of which might seem nothing more than an interesting coincidence were it not for the fact that yet another generation, that of my children, has likewise been affected. Such, indeed, is the nature of life. What we value, whether good or bad, will somehow find expression in our children, and their children, while simultaneously affecting the world around them.

What this suggests is that parents, and especially fathers, have a greater effect on the world than we realize. This is all the more important when one considers that nearly 40 percent of American children do not live with their fathers. Among the many consequences, studies have shown that, notwithstanding race or poverty, the lack of a father in the home is the greatest single predictor of criminal behavior.

Indeed, according to the Kansas City-based National Center for Fathering, 70 percent of prison inmates grew up without a father in the home. That most of these inmates are themselves fathers and represent yet another generation of absentee parents has many of the nation’s leading social scientists worried.

Social scientist John DiIulio, perhaps the leading researcher in this field, has written that “No single group of American toddlers and teens is more at risk of abuse and neglect, educational failure, illiteracy, chronic joblessness, welfare dependence, incarceration and premature death” than the children of adult prison inmates.

Yet, even in the 60 percent of homes where the father is present, the attendant pressures associated with keeping home and family together can strain the relationships between parents and children.

For example, my father was reared in the Jim Crow South, where manhood for a black man was defined by the narrow parameters within which he was able to eke out a living. For my grandfather, who was sired by a white plantation owner who raped his mother, this meant living as a sharecropper for much of his life, without the benefit of a father.

My dad, the youngest of seven children, was able to complete high school, but came north after finishing a hitch in the service.

A talented craftsman, he was able to provide a good living for my mother and their four children. But his ability to relate to his two sons, in particular, was limited by the grueling experiences of his upbringing. Though we now enjoy a fuller relationship with our dad, our perspectives have been affected nonetheless.

Today, as I hear my father’s voice while admonishing my children, I am concerned about the effect I will have on their lives. Will they and those around them be better off because of my life?

One can only hope.

DEA END ATCHISON