(Thomas Froese)
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, June 20, 2026)
The thing about even the most humdrum of moments is that something of life’s larger mystery can come through them.
Take this moment in Congo, a father holding his child in their home’s doorway. Neither seemed to mind me stopping. My sense is that both would be okay, even pleased, knowing their photo finally found its way into this space even now, 23 years later.
My wife was pregnant with our first, so we too were in the doorway of parenthood. We’d just travelled from home in Yemen to home-to-be in Uganda, before flying to Congo in a small single-engine plane to visit Hamilton friends working there. (But really, people, can we not all agree that even the smallest of planes needs a second engine as a back-up?)
She was six months along, which gives you an idea of my wife. It’s also a reminder that mothers, wherever they are, have nine months to warm up to the entire idea while they nurture life inside them day after week after month.
Fathers, on the other hand, are thrown into it all, one minute wondering, the next a father, and here you go, here’s your little loaf, and good luck. As a friend recently put it, “For men, fatherhood is more a decision you make.” I don’t doubt this truth.
Father’s Day is a good time to consider it, this doorway. On average, worldwide, four men become fathers or, more often, fathers again, every second of the day. This during, on average, 363,000 daily births. Then the step-dads and adoptive dads.
In Canada we’re seeing more fathers who are foreign born, now about one in three, and a still-increasing age of first-time dads, now 34, according to Statistics Canada. First-time mothers now average age 30. Most Canadian births are in late summer or early fall.
Some countries have celebrated a form of Father’s Day for hundreds of years. More than 80 do so now, including this weekend, although Congo celebrates Parent’s Day in August.
It’s a small sketch.
But, with the children’s mother, I now find myself entering life with young adult children. And while you’ll easily find oceans of books on raising young kids, often contradictory if not complete nonsense, there’s precious little on how to be sensible with your adult kids. It’s all the more reason for fathers to commiserate on these still important fathering matters.
Another friend, who has seven children under 15, recently told me he can’t find good material on disciplining them. As a boy, he told me, it was, “Let’s just spank them.” Naturally, it was the same when I was a boy, although I was rarely spanked, one exception being when I smoked even before middle school. It didn’t work. I smoked all the more later.
In either case, if I tried to spank my children, now 23, 20 and 20, nobody would be happy. This much I know.
In recent conversation with a dear loved one – she and her husband have two boys, 40 and 33, now living back home – we did talk about a rare book that’s helpful with some of this. “Doing Life With Your Adult Children,” by Jim Burns, has the subtitle, “Keep Your Mouth Shut and the Welcome Mat Out.” Seems clear enough. Two ears. One mouth.
My wife and I have listened to it while driving here and there. If you’re in a similar season, which enough of us are, you may find it a helpful guide on issues like boundaries, money, and keeping connection during these changing seasons.
Today’s only other rumination on fathers and doorways is that the next time your son or daughter is standing in one, whether they’re coming or going, or not sure whether they’re coming or going, tell them that you love them. And keep telling them. Often.
Anyone at any age still needs this, to be held, so to speak, by a father who means what he says.