Won't someone think of the children?

“I cannot imagine my life without parents.”

In that statement, quoted in bold below his photograph on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last weekend, Tymofiy Zozulia, a twelve-year old Ukrainian boy whose mother and stepfather were killed by the Russians, may have unconsciously expressed what is at stake, deep down, in the war with Russia, and in a much broader context both for his country and the rest of the world.

A collection of recent images partially captures our challenge to rescue the Tymofiys everywhere in the world. It’s the picture I have written about before: President Zelensky having fun with his family. It’s the media coverage of Ukrainian fathers dropping their wives and children at the border and returning to fight. It’s the images of the desperate struggle of Ukrainian mothers and children to exist as refugees in a foreign land.

Yet, it’s much more than that.

To me, it’s about the lesson all of us need to learn and relearn throughout our lives — it’s about the children.

For me at this moment in my life, I am focusing on the challenges men and fathers face. It’s not that women and mothers are not challenged, but there is generally more media attention and sympathy paid to them.

Think for a moment about the courtroom soap opera involved in the defamation battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. While I have not followed that sad story in any depth, my understanding is that the most memorable line is when Depp accused Heard of abusing him, and she replied, “Tell them, I Johnny Depp, I’m a victim of domestic abuse…and see how many people believe or side with you.”

However, for me the most memorable aspect of that melodrama is like when a therapist and I ran a co-mediation service for divorce in the late 1980s and clients would often go virtually an entire session without mentioning their children. In the case of Depp and Heard, though they don’t have any children together Depp is a huge model in his Pirates of the Caribbean role — for children of many ages. Heard and Depp may be battling each other, but as happens every minute of every day in courts throughout our country, the children are the real losers.

When we battle each other over seemingly simple things like pronouns, or complex issues such as race, abortion or international relations, it’s ultimately our children and grandchildren, such as Tymofiy, who suffer.

We haven’t learned to listen — and intervene — so that a disturbed eighteen-year-old white kid doesn’t murder black shoppers after leaving enormous clues over the years. We haven’t learned to appreciate each other’s perspectives on the tough issues, such as abortion. For example, in the shouting back and forth, we have forgotten fathers. How many of us could even identify footnote 67 in the Roe v. Wade decision? It reads in part, “Neither in this opinion nor in Doe v. Bolton…do we discuss the father’s rights, if any exist in the constitutional context in the abortion decision….”

Yet fathers, such as two in the news recently — a security guard at the market in Buffalo and a doctor at the Taiwanese church in Southern California — are part of the solution. President Zelensky simply exemplifies that heroic father figure we desperately need. Tough, yet sensitive. Brave enough to say, “I don’t need a ride; send ammunition;” yet mature enough to know when to evacuate a steel plant.

The story of the attack at the church deserves more attention and will likely receive less. The reason for the inattention is simple: China. One reason for the need for more attention is also China. Yet a key backstory is once again fathers — or in this case, grandfathers, as the average age in that congregation was eighty.

In the hundreds of mass shootings in the United States since 1982, only three were committed by women. The need to address men and boy’s anger and rage is critical. It’s just below the surface, until it’s not.

Yet in that church so many positive events about men happened in seconds. Against an apparent background of a premeditated murder complete with pre-planted bombs, fathers and grandfathers confronted the assailant, threw a chair at him, and then hog tied the guy.

That’s using the “ammunition” in that great Zelensky line.

We need these strong role models and enveloping arms of fathers to try to break the stranglehold over our children. All the children who have lost their parents — whether like a twelve-year-old Ukrainian boy to the murder of their mother and stepfather, or like so many around the world to the self-centeredness of their parent or parents — need solid and long-lasting love.

Tymofiy, we are with you!

Contact Larry Little at larrylittle46@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Larry Little: Won't someone think of the children?