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Father's Day for those who opt to 'man up'

Clovis Media Inc. editorial board

Maybe you’ve heard it said that it’s easier to be a father than to become one.

Assuming a role, and all that accompanies it, requires work. So it is with becoming a father.

As the nation celebrates Father’s Day today, it is perhaps fitting to acknowledge a couple of brutal truths.

One is that too many men are content to merely “be” fathers; they neglect the difficult task of “becoming” one. We see it all around us. Male celebrities — sometimes professional athletes — occasionally stand in the spotlight only because they have brought several children into the world with multiple women. Some of them get into trouble for being seriously behind in their child-support payments. They make the news and the public is treated to the spectacle of listening to these men seek to justify why they abrogate their parental responsibility.

Another is that a great many children are being reared by single parents, the vast majority of whom are the mothers who brought them into the world. Just in New Mexico alone, 43 percent of children were living in single-parent households in 2011, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The study doesn’t spell out how many of those households are headed by women, but there exists huge amounts of data that suggest most of the single-custodial parents are female.

Where’s the father? Well, that could be anyone’s guess.

Father’s Day, happily, isn’t about those guys.

It’s about the many more millions of men who’ve done the right thing. They’ve been there to wipe away a tear, play catch, offer a word of wisdom, change a soiled diaper, wipe a runny nose, tell the child that his or her broken heart will heal and … well the list goes on seemingly forever. You get the point.

Fathers are every bit as integral in the successful act of child-rearing as mothers. But something in the male DNA at times prohibits men from recognizing that irrefutable fact. No, not every woman becomes the perfect mother, but a mother’s instinct somehow seems a bit more compelling than a father’s.

It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.

Still, this day belongs to those who — shall we say — are willing to “man up.” They’ve taken on the multiple facets of fatherhood with joy and with resolve.

Father’s Day is for them.

Enjoy the day, Dad.

— Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Clovis Media Inc. editorial board, which includes Publisher Ray Sullivan and Editor David Stevens.