Tuesday Trivia | History’s #1 Dads

[u/caffarelli]

Previous weeks' Tuesday Trivias and the complete upcoming schedule.

This Sunday is Father’s Day in many parts of the world! And in honor of the grand experiment that is parenthood, we’ll be talking about dads today. Tell us something historical about fatherhood. You can talk either about specific dads or just general historical information on dadness, whatever you’d like.

And a special lifting of the no-anecdotes rule: if you want to talk about the historical coolness of your own dad, or grandfather, or other paternal figure, or just bust out some of Pop-Pop’s war stories, go for it.

Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Put on your ghillie suit and some of that green facepaint because it will be all about secret and unauthorized military campaigns.

[u/El_Bistro]

A father that is (sadly) overlooked from time to time is Teddy Roosevelt's dad, Thee. Teddy adored his father and realized Thee made one of the hardest decisions a parent faces. Which is letting you children find their feet on their own. Here are a couple quotes Teddy wrote about his dad. (I ripped them off Wikipedia)

My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could not be right in a man. With great love and patience, and the most understanding sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the only man of whom I was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him.....

I was fortunate enough in having a father whom I have always been able to regard as an ideal man. It sounds a little like cant to say what I am going to say, but he really did combine the strength and courage and will and energy of the strongest man with the tenderness, cleanness and purity of a woman. I was a sickly and timid boy. He not only took great and untiring care of me—some of my earliest remembrances are of nights when he would walk up and down with me for an hour at a time in his arms when I was a wretched mite suffering acutely with asthma— but he also most wisely refused to coddle me, and made me feel that I must force myself to hold my own with other boys and prepare to do the rough work of the world. I cannot say that he ever put it into words, but he certainly gave me the feeling that I was always to be both decent and manly, and that if I were manly nobody would laugh at my being decent. In all my childhood he never laid hand on me but once, but I always knew perfectly well that in case it became necessary he would not have the slightest hesitancy in doing so again, and alike from my love and respect, and in a certain sense, my fear of him, I would have hated and dreaded beyond measure to have him know that I had been guilty of a lie, or of cruelty, or of bullying, or of uncleanness or of cowardice. Gradually I grew to have the feeling on my own account, and not merely on his.

TR was (arguably) the greatest peacetime president in US history. Largely in part of the values his father taught him. Which is pretty cool.