Fathers Deserve More Credit Than We Give

It is common to hear mothers joke that fathers are not always the best caregivers — children eating snacks that mothers would never approve of under their watch, bedtime routines forgotten, rules relaxed too easily.

And yet, despite all this, I would argue that fathers remain profoundly important in a child’s life.

My mother was the typical tiger mother who also subscribed heavily to helicopter parenting — attentive, disciplined, always thinking ahead. She anticipated my needs before they were spoken or even realised. She believed in structure, responsibility, and doing things properly.

My father, on the other hand, decided from the day I was born that I would be his princess. He told his sister (my aunt) so, and princess me he did.

I was pampered, indulged, and loved with an ease that softened the sharper edges of childhood. On days I wanted to skip school, he would negotiate with my mother on my behalf. When she worried about discipline, he worried more about whether I was happy. If my mother represented structure, my father represented softness.

As a child, I naturally gravitated towards what felt easier. My father was easily my favourite person. As an adult, I came to appreciate more fully what each parent was trying to give me.

Looking back now, I realise my father gave me something perhaps less visible than caregiving, but no less important: emotional safety.

Around him, I felt deeply loved, not just looked after. He made childhood feel lighter; there was comfort in knowing someone was always instinctively on my side.

And maybe that is part of what fathers often bring into a home.

Not always precision, preparedness, or vigilance. Sometimes not even competence in the ways mothers define it. But many fathers bring a different emotional dynamic into family life — humour where tension might feel too heavy, calm where anxiety feels overwhelming, and a sense of space that allows children to feel accepted even in imperfection.

Motherhood often receives recognition for sacrifice and emotional labour, and rightly so. But fatherhood can be quieter and, therefore, easier to overlook. Sometimes, underappreciated.

Many fathers express love less verbally and more functionally — through consistency, presence, reliability, and small acts repeated over years without announcement.

Children absorb these things more deeply than we sometimes realise.

As I raise my own boys now, I find myself learning to appreciate the ways fathers shape children emotionally. A father roughhousing on the floor after a long workday, turning difficult moments into laughter, and carrying the emotional tone of steadiness rather than escalation. These things matter. Children learn safety not only through caregiving, but also through their environment.

And perhaps daughters, especially, carry their fathers’ influence into adulthood in invisible ways. The way a father speaks to his daughter often becomes part of the voice she later hears within herself. A girl deeply loved by her father grows up understanding, almost instinctively, that love should feel safe rather than uncertain, affirming rather than conditional.

Of course fathers are imperfect, just as mothers are. There were many things my mother gave me that my father could not, and vice versa. But perhaps that is where the real beauty lies.

Children do not need identical love from both parents. They benefit from different forms of being seen, loved, guided, and understood.

As I grow older, I have come to appreciate that while my mother taught me discipline and resilience, my father taught me something equally valuable: the quiet confidence that comes from feeling deeply loved.

The way he indulged me, protected me, and delighted in me made me feel worthy of care and deserving of love long before I understood those things consciously.

Looking back now, I realise that kind of assurance becomes part of how a daughter later moves through the world — what she accepts, what she believes she deserves, and how securely she understands her own worth.

So this Father’s Day, perhaps we celebrate not only what fathers do, but also who they are in the lives of their children — the steadiness, reassurance, humour, softness and quiet confidence they bring into a home, often in ways that are only fully understood much later in life.

Happy Father’s Day!

Caryn Lim is the Chief Operating Officer of a healthcare company, a mother of three boys, a writer, and an advocate for inclusion and neurodiversity.