I do not need any congratulations for being a father. Neither and award or a sentimental ‘Happy Father’s Day’ are a pleasant sound to my ears. It is all so painful to see and hear. Because it is always a work on progress, fatherhood it is not something to be proud of. It is not an end product, but an ever evolving state of being.

Presently fathers do not spend enough time with their children in order for the whole venture to be considered a job. What is accomplished in the miniscule amount of time that is alloted for fatherhood?

Jidu Krishnamurti, a 20th philosopher, had this to say over half-a-century ago:

I think we have to begin observing what actually is going on, the actual fact. We have children and we send them off to school as quickly as possible. We have our own private life independent of the children and we think we love our children and we have really very little relationship with our children. That’s the actual fact – no? So one wonders, as one sees not only in India and the East but also in the West, why we educate children at all. Is it merely to acquire knowledge so that they can earn a livelihood and therefore conform to the pattern of the society which the elder generation have established? Go on, you have to discuss this with me, please. The elder generation is responsible for the total mess the world is in. Right? Not only the parents but the grandparents and the great-great-great-great grandparents. And do we educate the children to conform to the pattern which the older generation have established? That’s one point. And actually what is going on in the world – the parents have very little time with their children. They have their offices, their factories, and the mother and the father have to earn more because the society, the expansive society: buy more and more and more. So the parents have very little time with their children and so they are sent off to schools as quickly as possible. These are all facts. And when they come home, the children, the parents are tired, and fortunately or unfortunately there is the television and the children are put in front of it and for god’s sake don’t bother me because I am tired. Right?