Father's Day: Former US Ambassador Says Dads Still Matter

Children who grow up without fathers are two to three times more likely to become high school drop outs, abuse drugs, fail to gain long term employment, commit suicide, and have children out of wedlock, best-selling author Gregory Slayton tells Newsmax.

And it is a subject he has tackled in his new book, “Be a Better Dad Today: Ten Tools Every Father Needs.”

Slayton, a successful internet entrepreneur who served as United States Consul General to Bermuda from 2005-2009, has donated thousands of books and all the royalties from sales to Christian and military charities.

He told Newsmax during the exclusive interview, “The U.S. government will spend over $1 trillion dealing with the symptoms of fatherhood failure during the next ten years,”

Watch our exclusive interview here. Story continues below.



Slayton explained that all of those symptoms can be traced back to lack of a proper father figure.

‘The government spends so much money on the symptoms, but the cause – fatherhood failure — is unfortunately growing.”

In his book, endorsed by Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Jeb Bush among others, Slayton offers dads a set of “tools” backed by Christian scripture to build better relationships with their children, wives, and families.

“We dads understand you can’t build anything without the right tools,” Slayton said.

Slayton then expands on those tools in each of the book’s 10 chapters, which correspond with the one of the letters in the word fatherhood. Those lessons give the reader encouragement and support for some of the most common, yet challenging problems affecting men and families today.

During the interview, Slayton emphasized that every father “has areas of strength and areas of weakness,” adding that one of his biggest challenges as a father of four is communication.

“I’m kind of like a lot of dads, action oriented — solve the problem. You know, — ‘honey I don’t want to listen anymore, I just want to go solve the problem.’But that doesn’t work, because my wife, like so many wives, is more relational.”

When asked which chapter or tool he thinks is most relevant, Slayton cited the first chapter of the book, one that focuses on the letter F, which he says stands for fun.

“Nothing can equal or come close to the joy, the everyday joy of being a dad.

“Maximize the time you have with your family, have fun with them, so your kids have the benefit of remembering — even if you are a busy dad as most of us are — 'boy when my dad was with me, we had a wonderful time together.' ”