Jim missed the moment, but communists celebrate the contribution that working-class fathers make to raising children and to family life all year long.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers of the Party and of the world!

I’m a member of the Communist Party USA and a proud father of two wonderful kids. My son is 11 and my daughter is 7 — both happy, healthy, and remarkably kind little people.

My son lives and breathes baseball, playing on a tournament team for the past two years. He’s also a drummer in the school band and a pianist, and he recently qualified for an honors recital to showcase his musical skills.

My daughter is all about singing — she sings constantly! Her pitch is excellent, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she eventually surpasses her brother musically. She also plays softball, and a few times a week she gets to show off the pitching, catching, and hitting skills her big brother has helped her hone in the backyard.

When I’m out with our Party club or among friends, I’m often asked how I talk to my kids about politics, about being a member of the Communist Party, or about communism more broadly. I’ve thought a lot about this question, but unfortunately don’t have a simple answer. Nevertheless, I’d like to offer a brief Father’s Day reflection.

While I’m a Party member, my wife is not. She’s progressive and left-wing — more in the DSA vein — but she doesn’t identify as a communist. As co-parents, it’s important that we approach conversations about the world and politics with unity and clarity. Fortunately, our kids are still young, so most of their questions are broad and not tied to specific events. Young children also haven’t yet been bombarded for decades with the full onslaught of political propaganda coming out of the State Department and corporate-owned media.

At the same time, the open‑ended nature of children’s questions can make answering them harder. “Dad, does being rich make you a bad person?” is a very different question coming from an eleven‑year‑old than from a thirty‑seven‑year‑old. Adults usually understand the difference between moral judgment and systemic critique. Kids don’t always have that framework yet.

I’ve found that the best way to handle big political or philosophical questions is to respond with questions of my own. When my child asks, “Dad, does being rich make you a bad person?”, answering with “I’m not sure; what do you think?” often leads them to articulate ideas that sound like they came straight from the Party Program. A simple dialectical back‑and‑forth reveals that children naturally value fairness, justice, equality, and community. They instinctively reject inequality and arbitrary hierarchies, and they believe the earth’s bounty should be shared widely.

These conversations with my children reinvigorate me and my commitment to the struggle. In many ways, conversations with my kids reaffirm that we are all born with a sort of proto-communist instinct — that our natural state of being is one that largely reflects the aims of our Party. My experience as a father suggests that greed and selfishness aren’t innate; rather, they are cultivated by the unnatural anticommunist fervor of reactionaries and ideologues who seek to divide humanity along imaginary lines.

To be a father is to love your children and to nurture their best instincts. To be a Communist, I would argue, is to extend that same care to the entire human community. As I said at the outset, I don’t have a perfect formula for talking to children about politics, the Party, or the struggle for a better world. But reflection would suggest that perhaps we parents overestimate how much we need to teach these ideas to our children. In truth, children may already carry the revolutionary spirit necessary for building a better world within them. Simply allowing them to express their ideas in a safe and nurturing environment may yield more fruit than lecturing them on Marxism ever could.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there: may you continue to nurture and learn from those wonderful little revolutionary minds!

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA.

Images: Families Belong Together – San Rafael Rally by Fabrice Florin. CC BY-SA 2.0.