A cleric, Rev. Maxwell Onyia, has urged fathers to promote love and understanding in homes through closer family ties.
Onyia gave the advice on Sunday, while delivering a homily at a Fathers’ Day Service held at the Anglican Church of Ascension, Enugu.
He said that the disciplining of children should be done with love, adding that a father should also show understanding to his spouse in the home.
The cleric said that most fathers had scattered their homes through meanness and lack of love to their wives and children.
“That fathers are losing out in the household communication and communion is a known fact.
“Today, in most homes even where fathers are providing the needed daily bread and necessities, they are still seen as highly rigid and unapproachable.
“Children today confide more in their mothers that listen to them.
“Thus, fathers are largely isolated and left out of affairs and the sharing found in most homes.
“This scenario has made most fathers to stand alone in their homes,’’ he said.
The cleric therefore urged fathers to start cultivating closeness to the children by ensuring that a child clearly understood why he or she was being scolded.
“The present computer-age child is no longer attuned to the authoritarian stand of some fathers, especially when they want to assert their authority as a man without any cause for it,’’ he said.
Onyia also urged fathers to spend more time with their families, instead of hanging out always in joints with friends and peers.
“Fathers should return home and strive to understand their homes.
“They should understand the individual differences in their children, which make them unique from one another in terms of characters and their view points,’’ he said.
One of the leaders of fathers’ fellowship in the church, Chief Temple Udeh, said that the fellowship was meant for spiritual upliftment and interaction among fathers.
According to him, this involves sharing experiences of the home front.
