Late night TV show host Stephen Colbert wrote, “A father has to be a provider, a teacher, a role model, but most importantly, a distant authority figure who can never be pleased.”

In my mind, he’s describing the father of the 19th century, a dignified man adorned in a dress shirt and tie and seated at the opposite end of the dinner table from his wife.

The family eats quietly and obediently. He asks his children about their school days, and they know what he expects them to say.

“Yes, Father, the day went well,” says his 12-year-old daughter. “I got the third highest score on my mathematics test.” Father is not pleased.

“You must do better,” he says, “especially because you’re a girl and this is a man’s world, and because it’s well-known fact that boys do better with numbers than girls do.”

He glances at his 10-year-old son. “And how was your day, Michael?” The boy does not answer and keeps his eyes lowered into his soup bowl.

“Tell him what you did today, Michael,” says Mother. “Go on, tell him.”

“I got into a fight at recess,” he says with some difficulty. “This kid pushed me down when I tried to kick the ball so I punched him, and then he jumped on top of me before a teacher came over and broke us up.”

“Now tell your father what the principal did,” says Mother. Michael hesitates to answer, but then he speaks.

“I got suspended from school for two days.”

Father places his soup spoon on the table, takes a deep breath. “Well now, for this to never happen again, I do believe that a two-day suspension from school is an insufficient punishment. During your time off, you will do your chores and your sister’s chores. You will write me a two-page essay about how you must accept the consequences of your actions. You will tend the chickens and clean the coops. You will not see your friends and you will not sass your mother. Do you understand?

“Yes, sir,” says Michael softly.

“Speak up, son!”

“Yes, Father. I understand.”

The evolution of fatherhood has redefined his title in the family. Author J. Sterling wrote, “That anyone could father a child, but a real man chooses to be a dad.”

The transition of the American father to become a “dad” has taken a long time. Many heads of the households in the 1960s and ’70s would come home after work and expect their wives to have dinner on the table for the family at precisely 5:30. While the family chattered about this or that, the father rarely engaged in the conversation.

Once done with his dinner, he’d make his way into the living room, turn on the TV, and sit in his chair until his tired eyes opened and closed just like the TV vertical hold that was on the fritz and was flipping the picture up and down. An hour or so later, he’d flush the toilet and off to bed he went. This routine went on for 25 years.

They were fathers, but they were not dads. A dad has so much more interaction with his children today, from changing their diapers and playing outdoors with them to even cooking dinners for them sometimes. The old adage of a father saying, “I put a roof over your head, food on your table, and clothes on your back” does not fulfill his child’s psyche. Kids want much more from their fathers now. They want their dads to spend time with them and show their love for them.

In 2022, it was estimated that 18.3 million American children were living without a father figure in their homes, especially in urban areas. That number has been growing ever since I retired from teaching in 2011. What are the consequences when fathers abandon their responsibilities?

Here’s an unforgettable experience that happened in my high school classroom 14 years ago. We were reading a story about a boy who was struggling to behave with no father in the house and a mother who tried her best to keep the kid on the straight and narrow. The boy had already spent a month in a juvenile detention home for breaking into and entering the house across the street.

Suddenly, a 17-year-old male student stood up in the back of my class just as I was reading the final sentence aloud from the story.

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this (bleeping) country!” he shouted. “Too many kids ain’t got no fathers! They drink. They run out. They make kids with other women and they run out on them, too. They ain’t men! They be cowards, (bleeping) losers! Their kids grow up and do crime. Go to the prisons. Nobody there had a good father, and some had no father at all. It’s a (bleeping) shame!”

He went on with his rant for about 10 minutes. Emotionally exhausted, he slumped down in his seat and wiped a tear from his cheek with his arm.

The rest of the students looked at me to see if I would reprimand him for his inappropriate language. When a student speaks from his heart to his classmates, that is a profound act of courage. I sat down at my desk and closed my book. Silence swept the room until the class ended. The boy waited for all the students to leave before he came to me.

“Thank you, Mr. S.” He reached out to me and we embraced each other.

Sometimes you can tell if a man is a father or a dad to his older children by listening to how they speak to their friends. There’s a difference between saying, “It’s my father’s birthday” and “It’s my dad’s birthday.”

Author Kristin Hannah wrote, “It’s not biology that determines fatherhood. It’s love.”

And it’s love that makes a father a dad.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com