A Map
Just as in the story of the Prodigal Son, this return home is not always easy. In the biblical tale, the Prodigal Son and welcoming father must deal with the anger and resentment of the eldest son who has stayed behind and toiled beside his father.
Those who have been left behind in our modern-day single-parent homes often harbor just such well-earned resentments against the absent parent. Their understandably bitter feelings often undermine efforts at reunion. Consequently, this book is also directed toward the former mates and children, grown or not, of these fathers, who seek understanding and healing with these men. It offers an explanation that will help to heal the feelings of abandonment.
For instance, many mothers and children who have been left assume they have not been missed. I have yet to work with an absent father who does not often think of his children, or their mother. Simply by correcting this misconception for women and children, it has been my experience that years of heartache can begin to be eased.
The war of the sexes is over and we all lost. Swept up in the battle of "who's right" and "who's wrong," mothers and fathers have stopped focusing on the most important part of the family, the children. Nothing has been solved by playing "the blame game." As our divorce rates have soared, unacknowledged emotional pain has left the majority of our children fatherless. This fatherlessness causes major disturbances in the lives of children, and they lose BOTH parents because of it.
They lose the father as he wonders about his importance in their lives and tries to stay connected from a distance that is both physical and emotional. They lose their mother as she must work double time, often as their sole source of support with no time left over for much "mothering." These radical social changes and expectations have left all of us deeply wounded without much experience handling our changing social roles. Men, women, and children have all been swept up in the race to blame someone for their pain without understanding the forces involved that caused it. They have lost the map for finding a way to help each other back to safety.
The Prodigal Father is intended to be that map. It is a step-by-step guide for uniting fathers with their children, and easing the pain that keeps us all isolated from our best selves. It should be read by fathers, mothers, and grown children who seek to better understand their father. It is imperative that the book be read by mothers as well as fathers because it is the relationship between the father and mother that will determine the essence of the bond between the father and the children. And the bond between the father and the children is an essential building block for the child's self-esteem and confidence.
It seems that as a nation we have forgotten two of our most important moral principles: the belief in redemption and the belief in forgiveness. Every person has a right to experience his or her resurrection into a happier and more productive person, and every person has the right to earn the forgiveness for past sins by changing their behavior and proving their worthiness. All too often we write people off for their immature mistakes, and all too often those people go on to live up to society's low expectations of them. It is time we gave fathers and mothers, and therefore the kids, a little help.
It is a central theme of this book that people can and do change for the better and that it is never too late, and we are rarely too flawed, to be healed and made whole. In order to become the productive and happy citizens we all hope to be, many of us need guidance and training we never got, or have forgotten. "A new drill," as my father would say, to train us toward community.