When former baseball great Wade Boggs was inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 2005, he credited his father during his speech. “Anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad,” he told the crowd.
“As I began to walk with my own children in their process, watching them struggle, fail, desire to do better, and fail again, I began to understand the more compassionate side of God the Father,” he wrote in Chapter 4.
“God the Father is like me? Maybe He enjoys walking with me as I do with my own kids? Maybe he feels the same compassion toward His own children in their struggle?”
The author acknowledges his own shortcomings as a father, but says he felt that led to his writing the book. He believes we are in a manhood crisis and fathering rut. He believes boys need to be initiated into manhood, and initiation is the heart and soul of Polito’s book.
Farms to Factories
Prior to the industrial revolution, fathers taught their boys skills. But fathers today have little time to teach and advise their sons because the focus is on providing rather than parenting.
“With the industrial revolution, when men moved out of the home/shop and into the workplace or factories, we lost our closeness with dad. We are no longer learning our father’s trades or drinking of his experience. Many kids are lucky to see their dad for a couple hours each day,” he says in the chapter titled “Pancakes and Tepees.”
“Not only did sons lose closeness and apprenticeship with dad, they lost hard work and physical labor. Dad wasn’t around to teach them its value.”
Another broken link in the father-son chain is the fact that many men today are cognitive-oriented rather than skills-oriented. Men today generally didn’t have fathers to teach them do-it-yourself chores and so they outsource tasks like plumbing, electrical and car maintenance that their ancestors had handled.
Provider and Protector
Prior to modern times, every culture had an initiation period when boys transitioned into men. He cites Sioux fathers and tribal elders who initiated boys into manhood by teaching them how to provide (hunt) and protect (fight).Five Things to Understand
The book is divided into two parts: preparing boys for initiation by setting expectations, and the initiation process itself. He seasons his narrative with interesting and amusing anecdotes about personal interactions with his boys, the challenges and obstacles they faced learning new tasks and activities, and real-life lessons he learned that he has passed on to his sons.The initiation process has five things in common across cultures. Quoting Father Richard Rohr, the author of “Adam’s Return,” Polito writes: “Life is hard; you are not that important; life is not about you; you are not in control; you are going to die.” He calls these five things rules.
As part of his sons’ initiations, Polito required that they memorize and recite those five basic things to understand. Noah and Elijah were also given five Bible verses to memorize and recite that corresponded to each of the five, though the boys had to choose the appropriate verse themselves. Also, each boy chose other men to participate in his initiation process and to celebrate his transition to manhood.
Polito has been an active Catholic all of his life, serving on a youth ministry team as a young adult. He emphasizes more than once that the initiation rites he provided his own sons are merely a blueprint for other interested fathers. Every son has his own personality and aptitude, and every father is different too. The rudiments of the five rules are the same though, regardless of whether the father practices a different faith or no faith.
Polito’s book is written in a voice that is heartfelt and unabashedly honest. His book is a valuable read for fathers, stepfathers, and those looking forward to fatherhood.
