- Introduction - Page 11

in four out of five of those homes, they are doing it without the reassuringly deep comfort of a close emotional relationship with either their spouses or their children.

This book will hopefully give fathers some concrete tools (yeah, we love tools!) to build a close and powerful emotional connection that flows like a current of electricity between father and child. It is a most powerful thing and a most fragile one. It can be lost or interrupted abruptly, or it can persist over vast distances and time. It can make the difference between a life that is rich and full, and one that is empty and meaningless. It is one of our deepest desires as men, yet, for so many of us, it has proven to be painfully elusive.

Sadly, the tradition of fatherhood handed down to most of us is one of distance. And it is that distance of the father— physically and, much more important, emotionally—that is at the heart of the crisis. Paradoxically, however, it is the miracle of becoming a father that opens up for us the most inviting, most surprising, and most promising avenue for finding our way back to our hearts and souls. Fatherhood is a precious opportunity and we know it, even if we cannot comprehend or articulate why. It is something we feel in our bones. We want to understand it, to face the challenge and be found worthy; we know that there is something to it that can transform us if only we do it right, but often we don’t even know how to begin.

Out of fear, out of ignorance, it is easiest to gravitate toward the patterns of fathering in which we were raised. From the birth of our first child, we tend to concede the role of comforter and nurturer to our wives and find ourselves removed from the child. The family dynamic becomes established, and we find ourselves somehow inexplicably “outside.”