In his usual honest way, Ian Pilkington shares from his own experience both as a son and a Dad.

Ian Pilkington

'Write on anything you like, but how about integrity in business, marriage, friendship, working through fatherlessness' That's a paraphrase of the guidance that Heather Bellamy gave me for this article - nice, light, easy reading-type issues then.

But that phrase 'working through fatherlessness' jumped out at me. I would rephrase it as 'broken fathering' since it's not just the absence of a father that can hurt. All of us fathers are imperfect, works in progress who can hurt others out of our own unhealed hurts.

As a 45 year old father of six children, and with some wonderful healing experiences in my journey with God, I am still working with issues arising out of broken fathering in my own life. Just today, before writing this, I have been battling a real need for affirmation and a sense that my work is the source of my worth. My soul was crying out for affirmation from someone whom I respect a lot, and it's a tough journey to keep your face turned towards God for that affirmation, and away from the comforts of this world and the praise of men, even good men.

My natural father was a stranger to me until December last year, when we met for the first time. At one point in my childhood my mother, weighed down with her own struggles, told me he was dead (probably to stop the questions that raised painful memories for her).

My relationship with my step-father started badly, when I was about seven (I was scared stiff of him, he was old-school stern and quite hard, and he was the first real male authority I had encountered). Early years without a Dad, and the deaths of some close family members, had made me a hard child to love; folks had to get through a lot of rejection to get anywhere near me even at a young age.

Our relationship deteriorated as he faced his own, very painful problems and battled them with alcohol. During my teenage years, his battles deepened and my own attitude toward him worsened. He was never physically abusive to me, and he was quite a morally upright man who occasionally showed a softer side, but he had a critical way that could wither a young boy's heart. Looking back on it, he had trouble accepting me, and I had trouble accepting him.

So fathering was a bit of a mess, just like it is for a lot of people nowadays.

Broken fathering causes problems, very real problems, and they seem to be mounting up as each generation comes along. Research shows that children from fatherless homes are more likely to enter into a whole range of behavioural problems, drop out of school, become runaways, in the case of girls become teenage mothers, enter into state-run institutions. the list goes on, unfortunately. Personally, I sought my comfort in pornography and soft drugs, and wasted a vast amount of my youth and potential.

When we discuss the consequences of fatherlessness, we need to shout out 'hey, fathers, you're important, you're valuable, in fact you are essential and you'll be sorely missed if you are not around.'

As well as the children, the mothers are deeply affected if fathers are missing. Our hearts and prayers, as well as social provision and practical support, should go out to single mothers. One such, a regular contributor to the CR website, is a good friend of mine and has done an absolutely stunning job of raising her children in the love of God.

But we need to put a real value back on fathering. Fathers are so important, and the need in boys and girls for a father is so obvious - how come our society seems to devalue fathering so much?

Well, to be really subjective here - from my own experience, fathering became an unimportant or even negative role. It had little value, and subconsciously, 'father' to me meant harsh authority, or abandonment. It's a similar picture for so many people from broken homes.

The real trouble for families and society starts when the fatherless generation become fathers. That's what happened to my step-dad, who grew up in the twenties and thirties and left home at the age of fourteen. He had no real idea of how to live and love as a father, and what he did have was buried beneath the trauma of Second World War experiences in Africa that he never, ever talked about.

As a result of being fathered badly himself, he had a very limited ability to father, he had no real affirmation inside that said 'You're a good man, you're valuable as a father, you're doing a good job'. I reaped the consequences of his lack of fathering, and so my children, especially my boys, reap the broken consequences into the third generation.