FULL-TIME FATHER: THE FIRST PARAGRAPH THEY KEEP SKIPPING AT SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

Adapted from Safeguarding by the Book: The Biblical Case for Securing a Friendly and Protective Environment for Children

For years, the line about my family sat where it sits in most profiles: last, after the qualifications and appointments.

One day I saw what it had become. A trophy, one more achievement on the list. But a marriage and a child are not achievements. They are responsibilities.

I first sensed that in the hospital, when my son was placed in my hands. Many children had lived in my home over the years.

This one was mine to raise, wholly. Three years in the saddle turned that awe into knowledge; I had seen what it actually takes.

So I did not move the paragraph to be different. Practice taught me where it belonged. It now opens my profile:

“Taiwo Akinlami is a full-time father, raising his four-year-old first child, TieriayoOluwa, with his adorable and supportive wife, Oluwafunmilayo. He became a father at almost 52, after 15 years of marriage, a journey that continues to deepen his lifelong commitment to strengthening families and securing environments in which children can flourish.”

The courtroom, the books, the training, the three decades all come after it, because that is the order in which I believe I will be measured.

Here is what I noticed. Almost nobody reads it.

In most rooms, the person introducing me starts at the second paragraph. He is an attorney. He is the founder of. He has trained.

The father is quietly removed and the professional walks onto the stage. Only one or two hosts have read it as written.

These were not hostile rooms. Most were child-focused organisations; many were faith-based. People whose whole mission is children decided, without malice, that the part about raising a child is not the part that qualifies me.

When the same omission happens in room after room, it is not an oversight. It is a value system showing itself.

SCRIPTURE READS IT FIRST

The book I live by reads my profile in the opposite order.

When Paul sets out what is required of a man who would oversee the church, he asks how the man’s own house is ordered, and gives the reason: “For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?” (1 Timothy 3:5).

The household is the credential that precedes the ministry. The paragraph our hosts skip is the paragraph the apostle reads first.

And when God explains why He chose Abraham, He does not cite his wealth or courage: “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him” (Genesis 18:19).

The divine reference for the father of the faithful is a reference about his parenting.

HAVING A CHILD IS NOT THE TESTIMONY

We treat the arrival of a child as the testimony.

I waited fifteen years; I know that language from the inside. But having a child is not the testimony. Raising the child is.

If having children were the testimony, how we raise them would not matter. They would become everything God designed with or without us. That is the fallacy repeated in our homes: children will grow up somehow. Scripture says otherwise. God made husband and wife one “that he might seek a godly seed” (Malachi 2:15). Not a seed. A godly seed, which means a raised one.

Bringing a child into the world is also a choice, conscious or not, informed or not, wise or foolish.

Our Lord asked which of us would build a tower without first counting the cost (Luke 14:28).

If He required that of a tower, how much more of a human being?

WHY FULL-TIME

A child is in a phase of life and a state of development. Even of our Lord, Luke writes that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

Every stage has its own requirement, and whatever you do not do for a child at the stage it is needed, you do not get to do later.

What you do later is damage control.

As in school, each stage assumes the last; the gaps show only when something built on them gives way.

So the child’s development must be primary: second only to the marriage it was born into, and above everything in the second paragraph of my profile.

As our people say: ilé làbọ̀ sinmi oko. The home is where we return to rest from the farm. The farm feeds the home; it was never meant to replace it.

A man honoured at the farm and absent at home has mistaken the field for its purpose.

TWO CAUTIONS

First, this is not a verdict on anyone without children of their own, because no one is without children to raise.

If having a child is not the testimony, not having borne one is not a failure.

I know what fifteen years of waiting sound like in church. Paul, who wrote the household test, tells us he was unmarried (1 Corinthians 7:8) and mentions no child of his own; the son he speaks of most tenderly is Timothy, his son in the faith.

Scripture examines stewardship of whatever household you have been entrusted with.

Let no one use this to wound the waiting, or those with no children of their own.

Second, full-time is about primacy, not hours. A working mother has not abandoned her child. A single father holding two jobs may be doing the most full-time fathering in the city. Full-time means the child is never what gets done with whatever is left over. When the first paragraph and the second compete for the same evening, you already know which one wins.

So I will keep sending the profile with that paragraph first. Read it or skip it; it is still the order in which I expect to give account.

For your reflection: How would you introduce yourself in one sentence? Where does the child you are raising appear in it, and is he there as an achievement or as a responsibility?

Follower of Christ. Husband. Father. Egalitarian. Goodwill Investor. Attorney. Author. Thriver. Culture-Edge Family Strengthening and Child Safeguarding Pioneer, Innovator and Practitioner. Value-Based Parenting Ideologue. Change Agent. Rebel with a Cause. Three Decades in the Saddle.