The focus on fatherhood & what it means to be a dad

Lessons learned from 'Cat's in the Cradle' and a renowned family therapist on Father's Day 2026

The "Cat's in the Cradle" came on the radio in the car minivan this weekend, eliciting a reaction from my wife, Shelby, and me—we both said how it makes us want to cry. My eldest son, Malcolm, then asked "why." I responded with, "listen to the lyrics." 

What rings out from Harry Chapin's voice is about a dad who never quite has enough time for his son and, in turn, the son not having time for his father once the role and rigors of working life switch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u-KWa3tL-0

Grab some tissues before you press play.

"As I hung up the phone, it occurred to me: 'He'd grown up just like me, my boy was just like me.'"

From son to father and the focus it takes to be family man

On this Father's Day, I look back on the time my own father, John Eric William Stamm, put in with me. Hitting me balls in the backyard, chaperoning my sister's and my field trips, loading up the family in the station wagon for vacations. He wanted to make sure that he didn't miss out on his children growing up.

Now a father myself, I have taken on that same philosophy to be there for my three sons. It's not always easy, sometimes it's tough, but like many practices, the more you give to it, the more you get.

Renowned psychiatrist and family therapist Frank Pittman summed it up perfectly: "Fatherhood is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man."

But what about sowing oats? And traveling the world? And being wild?

I found an interview where Pittman honed in on the focus of becoming a father and what it means to grow into adulthood without regret:

"I was a doctor, a husband, and a father. I might very well have wanted to go off to Tahiti and paint. But that just didn't seem like much of an option! If you don't consider it an option, then you don't go through the rest of your life pouting because you didn't get to do it. I mean, at a certain age, I wanted to run off with the circus! At another age, I would have liked to have been a cowboy. By the time I was moving toward adulthood, certainly by the time I got out of college, it became apparent that hey, I've got the abilities that are required to become an adult. If I become an adult, then I will have all of these rights and privileges. I will have honor and integrity, and I will be respected by all sorts of people. There will be all manner of good things that will happen to me."

Being a husband, being a father, being a family man—those are my greatest accomplishments. And in times when the distractions mount, those are the north star guiding me back to what really matters. 

I don't share photos of my kids online, so this is a photo of me taken during Father's Day weekend while showing my kids the University of Maryland campus will have to suffice.

Because, after all, focused fathers hope their sons want to say, as Chapin put it, "I'm gonna be like you, dad."

Happy Father's Day.