Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children

Not Ann Landers — an anonymous poem she reprinted Unknown — an anonymous Father’s Day poem In print by June 1956 · author never identified
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Two things to untangle here. First, this sentence is not a quotation — it is the headline of Quote Investigator’s article about the verse ↗, written by the researcher, not by anybody being quoted. Second, the verse itself is anonymous: it was running in American newspapers around Father’s Day by 6 June 1956, under the title “Give Him a Day”, and QI found it labelled anonymous in every 1956–57 printing it located. Ann Landers reprinted it in her syndicated column on 11 June 1988 — sent in by a reader, with no author name given — which is how her byline came to be attached to it.

Last verified 2 Oct 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children” Anonymous, “Give Him a Day” (in print by 1956) — “Give him a day for his very own—just one small boy and his dad alone.” Reprinted by Ann Landers, 11 June 1988. Not written by Ann Landers. Via quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Ann Landers. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the themes of love, kindness and time. Theme: "Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Poem
Give Him a Day
Earliest located printing
Oxnard Press-Courier (Oxnard, California), 6 June 1956, page 1 — author anonymous
Also printed
Logansport Press, Indiana (1956); Millbrook Round Table, New York (1957); Augusta Chronicle, Georgia (1957) — anonymous each time
Reprinted by Ann Landers
The Spokesman-Review / Spokane Chronicle, 11 June 1988, page C2, from a reader’s letter, with no author named
Author
Never identified in any citation Quote Investigator located

What shall you give to one small boy? A glamorous game, a tinseled toy, A barlow knife, a puzzle pack, A train that runs on curving track? A picture book; a real live pet. No, there’s plenty of time for such things yet. Give him a day for his very own— Just one small boy and his dad alone. A walk in the woods, a romp in the park, A fishing trip from dawn to dark. Give the gift that only you can— The companionship of his Old Man. Games are outgrown, and toys decay— But he’ll never forget if you “Give him a day.”

The 1956 Oxnard Press-Courier text, as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗. The 1988 version Ann Landers printed differs in small ways — “barlow knife” had become “Boy Scout knife” — which is the ordinary drift of a poem passed hand to hand for three decades.

Quote Investigator: Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator’s investigation ↗ locates the earliest printing in the Oxnard Press-Courier of 6 June 1956, page 1, and records that “the author was anonymous”. Its conclusion is explicit: “The author was unidentified in all the cites located by QI.”
  • The same article lists three further newspaper printings in the following months — the Logansport Press (Indiana) in 1956, the Millbrook Round Table (New York) in April 1957 and the Augusta Chronicle (Georgia) in June 1957 — noting that “each time the poem was labeled anonymous”.
  • For the Ann Landers connection, QI cites her column of 11 June 1988 in The Spokesman-Review / Spokane Chronicle, page C2, under the title “In lieu of toys, give son some time”, where she introduces the verse as a reader’s submission and gives no author name.
  • The column that carried it in 1988 was written by Esther “Eppie” Lederer ↗, who had used the Ann Landers pen name since 1955; the column itself ↗ was created by Ruth Crowley in 1943. Neither wrote the poem.

quotle.info asserts no rights status for this verse. It was first published in 1956 — well after the 1931 United States public-domain cutoff — so it cannot simply be assumed to be free; but its author has never been identified, so there is no author, estate or publisher to name as a rights holder either. Anonymity is not the same thing as public domain, and a newspaper poem of 1956 may or may not have passed into it depending on notice and renewal, which we have not established. The verse is quoted here in full for comment and criticism on exactly the question of its authorship.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

This one is misattributed twice over: a research headline gets read as a quotation, and a column that reprinted a poem gets read as having written it.

Ann Landers Popularizer, not author

Her 1988 column is where most readers met the verse, and she wrote “I hope every father who reads it will want to keep this copy” — the words of someone passing something on. QI records that the poem reached her from a reader and carried no author name ↗, and that it had already been in newspapers for thirty-two years.

“Fathers should give the gift of time to their children” Not a quotation — a research headline

These words appear in no newspaper, no column and no poem. They are the title Quote Investigator gave its own article, in the site’s house style of capitalising headlines. Quoting them as though someone said them, and then attaching a speaker, manufactures a quotation out of a bibliography entry.

Unknown No source

Four separate newspapers printed the poem in 1956 and 1957 and not one named a writer. QI located no attribution in any citation. The honest answer to “who wrote this?” is that nobody knows.

“Boy Scout knife” Wording drift

The 1956 text has a “barlow knife”; by 1988 it was a “Boy Scout knife”, and a 1994 anthology had replaced the closing couplet with “Give the best gift to that bright lad— The companionship of his dear dad.” An anonymous poem with no copyright owner to object drifts freely.

The verse is an anonymous American Father’s Day poem, “Give Him a Day”, in print by 6 June 1956. Ann Landers reprinted it in 1988 and named no author, because she had none to name — as Quote Investigator documents ↗.

Context

Why it mattered

The poem is a small piece of mid-century newspaper filler that worked: a list of presents a father might buy, each rejected, ending on the one thing he cannot buy. Papers ran it in the week before Father’s Day because it fitted a column inch and said the thing everybody wanted said, and readers clipped it out, which is why it kept reappearing.

Clipping is also how it lost its author. A poem that travels by scissors and envelope arrives with no byline attached, and the last person to print it inherits the credit. Ann Landers was simply the most famous link in a chain that had been running for three decades.

Give him a day for his very own—just one small boy and his dad alone.

Read the full story

The reader who wrote to Quote Investigator remembered the poem from an Ann Landers column and misremembered one line, recalling a “tinker toy” where the 1956 text has a “tinseled toy”. That is a fair illustration of how the verse survived: in people’s memories and in cuttings, not in any book of record.

Worth separating the two claims this page handles, because they fail differently. “Ann Landers wrote this” is false and can be shown false. “Fathers should give the gift of time to their children” is not false, it is simply not a quotation — it is a description of a poem, written in 2012 by a researcher, which has since been passed around inside quotation marks.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love Kindness Time

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Childrenquoteinvestigator.com

The full investigation: the 1956 Oxnard printing, three more anonymous printings, and the 1988 Landers column.
Ask Ann Landersen.wikipedia.org

The column, created by Ruth Crowley in 1943 and run by Eppie Lederer from 1955 to 2002.
Esther “Eppie” Ledereren.wikipedia.org

The woman writing as Ann Landers in 1988, when the poem was reprinted.
Ruth Crowleyen.wikipedia.org

The journalist who created the Ann Landers pen name in 1943.
Father’s Dayen.wikipedia.org

The June holiday whose column inches the poem was written to fill.
The Spokesman-Reviewen.wikipedia.org

The Spokane daily in which Ann Landers’s column ran; Quote Investigator cites its 11 June 1988 edition for the reprint.

The author

About Ann Landers

Ann Landers

Pen name, created 1943 · American newspaper advice column

Ann Landers was never one person. The pen name was created by the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Ruth Crowley in 1943 and taken over in 1955 by Esther “Eppie” Lederer (1918–2002), who wrote it for forty-seven years to a readership of some ninety million. A column that ran every day lived on what readers mailed in — poems, jokes, homilies, mostly unsigned — and reprinting them under a famous byline is how a great many anonymous pieces, this poem among them, ended up credited to her.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

The earliest documented appearance (Chicago)

“Give Him a Day” (anonymous poem), Oxnard Press-Courier (Oxnard, CA), 6 June 1956, p. 1. Cited in Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children,” 21 August 2012. Reprinted in Ann Landers, “In lieu of toys, give son some time,” The Spokesman-Review / Spokane Chronicle, 11 June 1988, p. C2, with no author named.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Fathers Should Give the Gift of Time to Their Children’?” Last verified 2 Oct 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/fathers-should-give-the-gift-of-time-to-their-children/

Something wrong on this page?

Tell us what’s off. A link helps but isn’t required — “this is the wrong person” is a useful report on its own. Nothing here changes the page directly; it goes to our review queue and a human checks it.

Only used to tell you if we act on your report. We never sell or share it.

Copied