Review: Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families

Father Hunger: Why God Calls Men to Love and Lead Their Families by Douglas Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Really good book.

Wilson surveys the damage fatherlessness has done in several aspects of our culture. I don't know if it was intentional, but it paralleled Schlossberg's "Idols for Destruction," taking a chapter on markets, another on education, another on politics, etc. Nice blend of cultural critique and personal conviction for fathers.

A weakness of the book is that you have to be familiar with how Wilson thinks to track with him at some points. He covers so much ground that he doesn't always connect the dots for the less initiated. Some parts were a bit disconnected, maybe linking blog posts together with less than smooth transitions. Might lose some people.

This is not a how-to, but gives background of why and what a father must BE, for families and societies to prosper.

I'll leave you with a gem, from pg 176.
"When a child is disciplined, one of the ways you can tell if the home environment is what it ought to be is by whether or not the first instinct of the child is to turn back to his father for a restoration of fellowship. If he does, then this means the general climate is one of fellowship, which the sin and discipline disrupted, and which the child want to have restored. But if the response to the discipline is anger, sullenness, and so forth, this is an indication that the discipline was acute pain that interrupted a larger pattern of chronic pain. The child does not try to restore fellowship because he does not have a good idea of what that might be."



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