We should all treat our fathers like our mothers this Sunday
The gift has been purchased and lovingly wrapped; some tender words have been inked in a carefully selected card; the table at their favourite place has been booked for lunch. All that is left is for you to join the humming throngs decanting onto the nation’s roads and railways to make that all-important pilgrimage back to hearth and home – a quintessential Mothering Sunday.
But what about fathers, I hear you cry? While we Britons have nailed the tributes to mum, dads are trailing in the league of extravagant displays of affection. If Mother’s Day was a star-studded FA Cup final, Father’s Day is a kickabout in the local park.
The average person in the UK spends three times more on Mother’s Day than Father’s Day. Mothers even benefit from inexpensive tokens on a greater scale. Though roughly seven million fathers can look forward to opening a card this Sunday, 30 million of their female counterparts enjoyed the privilege back in March. One solitary fact dads can take drunken solace in is that they outrank mums in the value of alcoholic gifts.
Surely, in this age of gender equality, shared parenting and dads wearing papooses, this isn’t on?
Dads have had the length of history to become accustomed to playing second fiddle in the celebration of parenting. Unlike fathers, adulation of the mother has been woven into our lives over millennia. The ancient Romans’ annual celebration of the “Great Mother”, Cybele, inspired such frenetic and bloody activity – devotees had a penchant for splattering her shrine with their own blood – that it was eventually banned in Rome. Our current, less sanguinary version of Mother’s Day grew out of a Christian tradition for people returning home to their “mother” church during Lent. The day became an opportunity for family reunion and the chance to dote on Ma has stuck with us ever since.
Father’s Day has less antiquity cementing it in the familial psyche. It is a relatively modern creation. Sonora Dodd campaigned for it in America at the beginning of the 20th century. Raised by her single-parent father, she rightly wanted a day to celebrate the contribution he and other fathers made.
In many ways it is fitting that our modern festival of fatherhood has its roots in the story of a man who, against the norms of the day, was a bright figure of nurture and love for his children. Indeed, it is a role that more of today’s dads are seeking out and relishing. The 2017 Modern Families Index has revealed a growing trend for fathers being more involved in their children’s lives. They are now responsible for a third of all childcare and more and more are considering working fewer hours so that they can spend more time at home. Fathers are no longer the empty chair at dinner or space at the school gates; they are the nourishing male Cybele of our homes.
Yet like Russia skipping straight from feudalism to Leninism without stopping at capitalism, Father’s Day has already become an empty holiday observed mainly by garden centres and tool shops without ever having had the chance to flourish. So this year, shouldn’t we all do more to make it a true celebration, a moment in the hectic madness of our lives to thank the man that helped create and cherish them? Failing that, let’s at least make sure to send a decent bottle of booze in the post.