by Theresa Wiza

Created on: June 11, 2008

Fathers, don't let your babies grow up to be - without you.

"Daddy, were you loved enough?" (from the movie, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood")

A little girl, her tear-stained face plastered against the window, stares at a father who can't bear to look at his little girl one last time. Heaving heavy sobs, she knows from somewhere deep inside that Daddy is thinking, "They're better off without me."

His choice was to leave. His excuse was that it hurt too much to see her and her brother only occasionally.

Hurt whom? Who genuinely suffers from having no father? The children? Yes, but also the father. Dad will never know the loving relationship that forms between a father and his son or between a father and his daughter if he considers only how the separation will affect him.

What matters most is the affect his leaving has on his children. Given the opportunity, these children could love their daddy unconditionally and possibly more than he's ever been loved.

Another little boy looks out a window fully expecting Daddy to return. This daddy is a man who loves his wife and children so much he can't stand to be away from them. But he has to be, because his choice sends him to Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and other countries again and again and again. When he joined the military, he was told he would be gone for a year. He didn't know it would be every year, many times on Father's Day.

Father's Day is supposed to be a celebration for children and their dads, a day when special cards and gifts, created by loving children and planned by mothers, teachers, and day care providers give dads treasures filled with love. While it is rare that a child does not have a mother to celebrate on Mother's Day, the story is different for Father's Day. Some children have never met their fathers. Others see them only occasionally.

How many fathers miss those presents - and the physical presence - of their babies, because they don't realize how important they are in their children's lives? Is their self-esteem so low they can't fathom anybody loving them so much they would want him in their lives?

If self-esteem is the issue, unselfishness should be the remedy. If fathers would step out of themselves and look - not at what has happened to them - but at how their actions (or inactions) affect their children, they would realize that skipping out on a child's life damages that child from the inside out.

Sadly, many children have only one parent. Too often it is the mother who bears most of the

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