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I'd argue you can be a figure of authority and discipline for your children, but still be their friend as well. You can go too far in either direction.
For instance, if the only way you ever interact with your children is to discipline or scold them, that's too harsh and likely not good for them. Likewise, if you only ever act as their friend and never discipline them, well, look at America nowadays and you'll see the issue there.
Now I'm not a parent so I don't have the personal insight, but I'd always imagined the goal is to strike a balance.
I'm not saying I don't love them, and I'm not saying I'm not "friendly", telling bad jokes and playing Super Smash Bros with them. But a man can only serve one master and when push comes to shove one must choose between being the friend and being the authority figure.
Very true. Especially when they’re young. Glad to see we’re on the same page old man.
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No dude, that's America nowadays, everyone trying to find a balance between being a parent and being a friend. People think back to their own childhood where dad was just this hard ass who appeared after 5 every day to whup you for whatever your mom said you did wrong and associate their parents checking out with parenting (apathy = aloofness = authority, hence the apathetic anti-authority that is everywhere these days, we hate authority because it wasn't fair to us as kids but still perform it the way we were taught to) and resolve not to do that to their own kids, so they befriend them.
But kids get an indefinite number of friends throughout their lives, they only get one dad and one mom. And those two figures shape how you see every other person you meet. Your dad becomes your model of authority and your mom becomes your model of empathy, an emotional anchor. This whole weaponised compassion thing is from a similar source imo - when dads were working 60 hours a week everyone became atheists, and when dads were taken out of the equation altogether empathy became the highest authority.
A kid needs their dad to show them who God is, what ultimate authority looks like. Ultimate authority is not your friend, can not be your friend, because friends get compromises and compromises destroy authority. If you want to be a good father you have to be willing to sacrifice everything for your kids, and the most important sacrifice you can make is to sacrifice your wants and desires - including the desire to have a good, friendly relationship with your child. It will feel like cutting a body part off, but that's how you know it's necessary - it only hurts you. Your kid won't be hurt by you deciding to be a father over a friend, only you will - it's a you thing, not a you and your kid thing. That is a much tougher sacrifice to make than any amount of time or luxury goods, and therefore a much more powerful sacrifice.
I'm skeptical. The typical F500 CEO has at least half a dozen direct reports and probably averages fewer than 2-3 hours of face time with each direct report. Yet the direct reports presumably are modeled much more by theses 2-3 hours with the CEO than however many hours they spend with their own direct reports or assistants. I agree absent fathers won't have much influence, but fathers working 60 hour weeks can and should impart sufficient modeling and influence compared to SAHMs.
Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, but I'm not sure where we disagree. I think everyone becoming atheists wasn't great for society, but it's not catastrophic like the love is God cult.
I should say, I think every generation fucks up their kids in a different way. Even a generation that somehow did everything right during their development would have unintended negative consequences, because those kids still need to rebel against their parents at some point, to sever the drawstrings and enter adulthood. Beyond that, how do you decide where the cut off of responsibility is? I think it's fair to say that parents are only responsible for their children, but that they also bear some responsibility for how their children's children come out - their parenting being the guide for their children's parenting, and if their children parented in a way that is opposed to their parenting, then it was in reaction to their parenting.
Please pretend that last bit made sense.
Happy thought: if you believe nature > nurture, then the generational fucking up is merely par for the course at conception!
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