Joe Carter at his painful best

On his experience as a part-time father:

Tonight Mr. Blankenhorn will be in D.C. and I have the pleasure of joining him for dinner. I want to tell him how much I appreciate his book, and how he is absolutely wrong. I want to tell him that the base isn’t always lost and that the linkage is not always shattered. I want to tell him that it is possible to be a “good-enough father” because I am one, I am good-enough.

But it isn’t true. As much as I would like to believe otherwise, his book was devastatingly prescient about my own experience as a “visiting father.” Over the past twelve years I’ve learned being a part-time dad is not enough. Our children always need more.

That is why I want to address a specific, narrow audience with the rest of this post. I want to address those fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.

I hope a few of the women who are contemplating removing the father from their children’s lives will consider his words as well. I wish more parents would understand that once you have a child, your life must cease to revolve around you, your wishes and even your needs.