Whether you consider yourself a girl dad, a boy dad, or just a dad, the recent tragic death of basketball superstar Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna should give us pause. Much has been made of Kobe being a highly involved father who empowered and just loved raising his girls. When talking about Kobe’s sudden death, another hall of famer and daddy, LeBron James, said it puts “everything into perspective.” For Lebron, career and family might conflict, but fathers must make time for their families, as Kobe did. At a memorial service for his close friend, Lebron implored, “Try to make it as much as you can and don’t feel bad if you happen to go to one of your loved one’s events and that means you spend less time working. ”
Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse, worked with patients living with a serious illness. In her book, Regrets of the Dying, her patients who were on the verge of dying inevitably shared things they wished they’d done differently. One regret, that came from every male patient Ware nursed, was something along the lines of “I wished I hadn’t worked so hard.” In particular, many shared how they regretted missing their child’s youth.
It’s worth noting that as more and more men work in jobs that offer paternity leave, many don’t take it out of fear that staying home to care for a newborn could make it harder for them to advance on the job. LeBron James talked about that in the context of basketball. “We get compared all the time to greatness, and that makes us even more driven and even more [kept] away from our own family. That’s the difficult part that we deal with as professional athletes…” Regardless of the profession, the desire for greatness may very well mean prioritizing one’s job over one’s family.
A recent study by the PEW research center found that six in ten dads say they “spend too little time with their kids.” Most of these dads cite work obligations as the main culprit. I’m a dad who continues to make the choice to be with his children or grandchildren whenever possible. I don’t say this to brag, but simply to reaffirm what Kobe and LeBron said more eloquently. Make the choice and make the time dads. If you wait till your life is almost over to come to this realization, you will have deprived yourself of some of the greatest joys of life.
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Buy A MOMMY, A DADDY, TWO SISTERS AND A JIMMY: AUTISM AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES at Amazon.com