A father (or dad) is defined as a male parent or Individual progenitor of human offspring. The adjective "paternal" refers to a father and comparatively to "maternal" for a mother. The verb "to father" means to procreate or to sire a child from which also derives the gerund "fathering". Fathers determine the gender of their child through a sperm cell which either contains an X chromosome (female), or Y chromosome (male).
Read more about Father: Etymology, Relationship With Children, Determination of Parenthood, History of Fatherhood, Father–offspring Conflict, Categories, Non-human Fatherhood
Famous quotes containing the word father:
“If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.”
—Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
—Bible: New Testament James 1:27.
“And mother almost always sighs,
When father carves the duck.
Then all of us prepare to rise,
And hold our bibs before our eyes,
And be prepared for some surprise,
When father carves the duck.”
—Ernest Vincent Wright Wotton (1872–1939)