Please click the link to watch Rev. Cynthia Snavely’s video recording of this sermon.

This story from sixteen years ago is posted on the Unitarian Universalist Association’s website.

“The congregation had been through a lot of transition and nobody—I mean nobody—had time or energy for religious education. The poor Director of Religious Education couldn’t get a soul to sign up for teaching duty. And duty is just what it was feeling like.

“Finally the Men’s Group, which consisted of the elderly gray-haired gentlemen in that congregation, shyly stepped forward and said that they’d like to do something with the kids. The Religious Education Committee didn’t quite know what to do with this. They were not the typical Sunday school teachers. But okay, everyone else was profoundly burned out. The only stipulations were that the safety policy be honored with background checks and that if somehow the principles could be slipped in, then that would be great.

“What transpired was a busy basement full of Grampas and kids. There was Richard in the corner with a pile of kids reading stories and then acting them out with puppets he found. Walter, a thick-glassed engineering geek, was happily working out math problems with an almost savant brilliant boy that previously never quite fit in. They were two peas in a pod. Ron would take some kids by the hand into the kitchen, “let’s see what we can find to make today…” and goodies for social hour would be created. Bob—he took some kids outside with Sam. Sam was a developmentally delayed young adult who loved to play tag with the kids on the playground. Bob would be nearby with a block of wood, a box of big nails and a small hammer and a group of kids that needed to get out some anger. Matt and the teens listened to music and gave the lyrics UU ratings according to Principle Relevancy. That season stories were shared, large life questions were pondered, and a fabric of extended family was woven.

“Soon after that summer the Religious Education Committee found the volunteers to go back to their traditional program, which was fine. It was fall and people were ready to get back into a familiar schedule. But something really magical happened. When families came in before worship, the kids would often break from their parents to go sit with their Grampas. Grampas started showing up at school functions to cheer for their smaller friends. The community began sharing the child-rearing and the Grampa-raising.”

I wonder who the first man in the men’s group was who suggested that they could do something with the kids, and how he convinced the other men in the group not just that they could, but that they would do something with the kids.

It’s interesting that the story includes these sentences: “The Religious Education Committee didn’t quite know what to do with this. They were not the typical Sunday school teachers.” Just who is a “typical” Sunday School teacher? What biases do these sentences reveal?

In my short video blurb for today’s service, I noted that my father bathed babies, took washing in off the clothesline, and cooked, things not always thought of as men’s work. But, why exactly, did we ever come up with the idea of men’s work and women’s work?

In my childhood I had a little board book that flipped over. Read one way, it was “I Help Daddy” with a little boy helping Dad wash the car, rake leaves, fix a fence. Flipped over, it was “I Help Mommy,” and a little girl helped Mom do the dishes, sweep the floor, feed the baby. When I went to high school, I had home economics. My brother didn’t have home economics. He had industrial arts. But things were beginning to change even in our youth. My sister, the youngest of the three of us, had home economics and industrial arts when she got to high school. There is no real reason to consider some work as men’s work and other as women’s.

Recently a young person told me that male/female, they’re just ideas. Indeed, they are. They are social constructs. And sometimes those social constructs are limiting, and sometimes they go beyond limiting to harmful. A woman is killed by a man who thinks that if he can’t “have” her, then no one else will. A man is killed because another man thought he disrespected him. A man is killed as he rams into a tree as he is going 100mph, because driving fast is cool. A man is dead by suicide after he loses his job, because his self-worth was tied to that job. This is what has come to be called “toxic masculinity,” and it can be deadly.

But I titled this sermon “The Changing Social Construct of Manhood.” The idea of manhood is changing. And yes, there is backlash from those who do not want it to change or feel threatened by the change, but it is changing.

When I first moved to Frederick, MD with my family as the Army moved my son-in-law, I began working as a 5-day-a-week substitute aide in the Gettysburg, PA area schools. I was assigned a job each morning. I liked some assignments better than others. One of my favorites was a preschool special needs class, one set of kids in the morning, another set in the afternoon. Always, my favorite assignments were favorites because of the teacher. The preschool teacher had not set out to teach preschool. He had been looking for a teaching position near to his wife’s job. Preschool was what was open. It turned out he was good at teaching preschool, and he seemed to enjoy it. His masculinity was not threatened by his wife’s job or teaching small children.

I know at least one of you was a stay-at-home dad for a portion of your adult life. An article in Forbes magazine by Jack Kelly in December 2022 began, “There is a big societal shift in attitudes toward gender roles and parenting taking place, as more dads are staying at home and tending to childcare. According to the Pew Research Center, an estimated 2.1 million fathers were stay-at-home dads in 2021—up 8% since 1989,” (from The Rise Of The Stay-At-Home Dad). I hope dads in that role see it as worthy of their efforts and feel appreciated in it.

UU minister Evin Carvill Ziemer wrote this meditation:

I believe in fathering

I believe in the radical idea that men have the full human capacity to nurture

Hair bows and baseballs
Cooking and creativity
Tools and tiaras
Camping and dancing
Snuggles and shrieks of delight

Too many fathers don’t believe in their own fathering

Too many are scarred by their own fathers to hear their heart say otherwise

Too many have known fathers who, faced with a quivering lip and tears, could only say ‘man up.’

Too many have known fathers who knew only yelling and hitting

Too many have known fathers who lost sight of their sacred role of protector and became tormentor

But I believe in fathering.

When a human being gestates and gives birth their brain changes permanently.

A father’s brain changes permanently too—changes as he rocks his baby to sleep, delights in baby games, and soothes bumps and bruises. A father earns his new neurobiology.

In a world where too many mothers hand their co-parent directions more specific than those given to the babysitter;

Where a father out with his kids is asked, ‘Are you babysitting?’ and ‘Where’s mom?’;

Where fathers are the punch line,

I believe in fathering. I believe in the radical idea that men have the full human capacity to nurture.

Whether their children come through birth, adoption, or fostering; through scouts, sports, Sunday school, or youth group.

I’ve known too many gay dads, too many single fathers, too many men raising children others couldn’t to believe otherwise.

I believe we all—especially our children—deserve to know that the human capacity to nurture belongs to every one of us.

I believe in fathering.

***

When men realize that they can be nurturers and that they themselves deserve to be nurtured, then, I believe, the social construct of manhood is changing for the better. And maybe someday we won’t set up such dualistic concepts of men and women.

Nineteenth-century Unitarian Margaret Fuller was ahead of us when she said, “Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”

Don’t strive to be what you think society has told you to be. Be yourself. As German American poet, novelist, and short-story writer Charles Bukowski said, “Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” Remember. Happy Father’s Day!

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