He served as a RAF pilot during World War II when longevity was rare. Later, not long before I was born, he was badly injured in a civil air accident when his aircraft iced up.

When I was three-years-old he had two engine failures in single-engine aircraft but successfully landed on rugged South Island beaches.

When I was 10-years-old, he was nearly killed with a double engine failure and crash landing into the Shotover River at Queenstown, close to our home. When I was 15-years-old, he again nearly died from peritonitis.

Suddenly, when I was 27-years-old my Dad did die, while I was in my first year of church and community ministry. I still miss him these 35 years on.

My Dad - Captain Brian Waugh - made a big impression on me, not only his flying adventures but because he was a good man. He gave us children time with a special focus for each of us; for me, it was especially about cars; for my sister music and my brother rugby.

In his younger days, my Dad was not especially spiritual; yet he supported my Mum and came to church when he was able.

Later in life he made a more deliberate commitment to God, thankful for God's protection over his life, and became an intentional and growing disciple of Jesus Christ, never missing a Sunday in worship.

I cherish the memory of his prayers at family mealtimes and encouragement at key times in my early life; when I first started work as a 17-year-old in the motor industry, commending my ministry call and meeting my wife-to-be. All those memories mean a great deal to me.

If your Dad is alive; cherish him, warts and all, as our earthly existence can be surprisingly short and the precious relationship of Father to children - and grandchildren - is so important and doesn't last forever.

From my own experience with my Dad and my own parenting. I continue to learn much. Continue reading

• Rev Dr Richard Waugh is a long-time church leader in east Auckland, a former Howick Citizen-of-the-Year and absolutely committed to strong family life. He is also an Aviation Chaplain, historian, author and spokesperson for the Erebus National Memorial.

Today, fathers who live with their children are taking a more active role in caring for them and helping out around the house. And the ranks of stay-at-home fathers and single fathers have grown significantly in recent decades.

At the same time, more and more children are growing up without a father in the home.

The changing role of fathers has introduced new challenges, as dads juggle the competing demands of family and work. Here are some key findings about fathers from Pew Research Center reports.

1. Fewer dads are their family's sole breadwinner. Among married couples with children under age 18, dual-income households are now the dominant arrangement (60%).

In 1960, only one-in-four of these households had two incomes; 70% had a father who worked and a mother who was at home with the kids.

The public has mixed views about these changes. Most (62%) say that a marriage where the husband and wife both have jobs and both take care of the house and children is preferable to one where the husband works and the wife takes care of the home and family (30%).

At the same time, a majority (74%) says having more women in the workplace makes it harder for parents to raise children.

2. Dads' and moms' roles are converging. As the share of dual-income households has risen, the roles of mothers and fathers have begun to converge.

In 1965, fathers' time was heavily concentrated in paid work, while mothers spent more of their time on housework or childcare. Over the years, fathers have taken on more housework and child care duties—they've more than doubled time spent doing household chores and nearly tripled time spent with children since 1965.

Meanwhile, women have increased their time spent doing paid work. Significant gaps remain, but there is clearly a more equal distribution of labor between mothers and fathers these days. Continue reading

Sources

• Pew Research Center
• Image: Huffington Post

That changed when he saw the man in uniform. View YouTube video

Her perspective has a lot of intuitive appeal in an era where millions of women have children outside of marriage, serve as breadwinner moms to their families, or are raising children on their own. Dads certainly seem dispensable in today's world.

What this view overlooks, however, is a growing body of research suggesting that men bring much more to the parenting enterprise than money, especially today, when many fathers are highly involved in the warp and woof of childrearing. As Yale psychiatrist Kyle Pruett put it in Salon: "fathers don't mother."

Pruett's argument is that fathers often engage their children in ways that differ from the ways in which mothers engage their children. Yes, there are exceptions, and, yes, parents also engage their children in ways that are not specifically gendered. But there are at least four ways, spelled out in my new book, Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives (co-edited with Kathleen Kovner Kline), that today's dads tend to make distinctive contributions to their children's lives:

The Power of Play "In infants and toddlers, fathers' hallmark style of interaction is physical play that is characterized by arousal, excitement, and unpredictability," writes psychologist Ross Parke, who has conducted dozens of studies on fatherhood, including a study of 390 families that asked mothers and fathers to describe in detail how they played with their children. By contrast, mothers are "more modulated and less arousing" in their approach to play. Continue reading

Sources

• The Atlantic
• Image: We Made