To make myself feel special today, we bought a tacky "dad's card" - the stereotypical blokey one, with a fishing rod and golf clubs and a beer stein on the front, and inside I allowed myself to write:
"Some dads fish...
Some dads play golf...
But my 'dad' does everything...
She's my MUM...!"
and signed it "Happy Awesome-Parent's Day - love from Tyler and Maya"...
Of course we also made an effort to treat my own dads (yep, I'm a 'statistic affected child' myself!) and have spent the day at their grandpa's house cooking a barbecue and playing bocce on the lawn in the sunshine. Just having an all-round generally "nice" day...
I'm not bitter about father's day... If anything, I think it's wonderful to acknowledge people in general. Though with today's society being created so much of step-families, blended-families, same-sex oriented parental families, adopted families and the like - perhaps it should just be "parent's day?" That way neither party (single dads on mother's day, or single mother's on father's day... or grandparents/aunts/older siblings who have taken on the parental role in the mother/father's absence on either of the occasions) would feel bad. Even the non-parents out there would feel good because even if they don't have kids themselves, they're still someone's child and therefore could surely see some sense in occasion of "Parent's Day"!
I find it interesting from an etymological perspective, too, to note that the origins of the word "dad" or "dada" indicates the word was most likely actually relating to mothers! In Hebrew it was represented by the word "dod" which was the provider of food from breasts (ie. a mother. You know. The one with the BREASTS!) In one faction within Italy, the word "dada" still means "mother" to this day...
Furthermore the fact babies tend to say "dada" as their first words has no correlation to any admiration of their paternal figures whatsoever. Studies have revealled babies brains are wired to have increased frontal and temporal lobe activity recorded when adjacent repetitive sounds are played - but whether they are "mama and dada" or "baba and gaga" make no difference whatsoever. The activity in the brain is simply more responsive to adjacent repetitive words of any kind as opposed to non-adjacent words (like bo-ma or pa-co). So it is no preference of the baby to adhere to terms like "dada" and "papa" than it is "mama" and they are unable to process any link between paternity and "labelling" at such an age where first language is developed, and more than likely through overhearing occurrences of repetition in our own daily vocabulary and come out with these phrases on their own (plus the fact such words are sometimes reinforced through the "teaching" we provide as parents are encouraged to continue to vocalise these sounds). The likelihood of "dada" and "dad" being applied to the paternal figure of the household is probably prehistoric (as, afterall, being the "head of the family" probably meant our little cavemen were of course assuming the baby would be expressing "words" to him above all others!) despite the fact it's "meaning" was nothing more than noise...!
Taking the origins of the word into account, I therefore feel that anyone who is a parent can choose to call themselves a "Dad" today - and relish in the fact that they are providing for and nurturing their children, regardless of the kind of "junk" they have in their trunk..! I wish everyone out there a Happy Dad's Day. And if you know a great parent/grandparent/aunt/uncle/older sibling/foster parent or ANYONE who is doing a great job of raising a child or children, you wish them a great day too :)
Peace out ;)
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