Father’s Day has taken a strange turn in recent years. Once a day for honoring fathers with heartfelt appreciation and, maybe, slipping them a Texas Roadhouse gift card, it’s evolving into something unrecognizable. In some corners of society, it now appears to be yet another opportunity to gush about mothers. Amid the sea of days already dedicated to women, like Mother’s Day, International Women’s Day, and even Women’s History Month, we have just one day explicitly devoted to fathers—and even that isn’t safe. According to some, it must also be shared.
Adding fuel to the fire, some op-eds audaciously serve as public airings of grievances against fathers, seemingly more about the authors’ inability to let go of childhood disappointments than about celebrating paternal influence. One wonders if the point of these pieces is to highlight a supposed failure of fathers, or if they are simply attempts to underscore an ongoing trend where the perceived shortcomings of dads are criticized relentlessly.
The authors, in their later years, sometimes don’t hold back, complaining about everything from inherited physical traits to childhood game snubs. One has to ask why such trivialities weren’t left behind in the realm of childhood grumbles where they belong. Publishing such personal matters for all the world to see doesn’t exactly scream forgiveness. It speaks more to a cultural mood that prizes perceived victimhood over any genuine appreciation or understanding of familial complexities.
Society can’t seem to resist turning occasions meant to honor men into narrative battlegrounds. Acknowledging life’s imperfections, especially those of our parents, should be an internal exercise. Hauling skeletons out of the closet for public display seems less about justice or closure and more about feeding a cultural appetite for drama. This trend of publicly shaming fathers for decades-old slights misses the point of what a day like Father’s Day is supposed to represent—a time for reflection, gratitude, and familial bonding, not public indictments.
If this is where we’re heading—where every flaw is magnified and every misstep put under the microscope—then maybe what needs examining is not just parental mistakes, but our own failure to move past them. We are all imperfect beings, after all. Criticizing one’s aging father from the comfort of a public platform serves little purpose other than to reflect poorly on oneself. Would it not be more productive to celebrate the efforts fathers make, even if they aren’t perfect? That’s what this day should be about—showing appreciation for what was good and, perhaps, letting go of what wasn’t. This could be a lesson in itself: to embrace the flawed nature of human relationships and find grace therein.
