We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. Umberto Eco
Once, at the hardware store, Brooks had shown me how to use a drill. I’d made a tiny hole that went deep. The place for my father was like that. Elizabeth Berg
Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail. Aimee Bender
He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. Kurt Vonnegut
I’d only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalogue of my mistakes. Ann Patchett
We never get over our fathers, and we’re not required to. (Irish Proverb)
No, he would never know his father, who would continue to sleep over there, his face for ever lost in the ashes. Albert Camus
Today is Father’s Day, another opportunity for those in my society (and others) to sentimentalize a role that is the focus of much attention but little understanding, a role about which we tend to have many expectations but about which we are, collectively at least, essentially incurious.
This day also provides a rare opportunity for me to write about men, not as genre or essence, not as an embodiment of some larger, nefarious, patriarchal imposition on the unwary, but as beings with many layers of complexity – of privilege and discrimination, as perpetrators and victims of violence, of the bearers of unearned power and influence and those many men whose lives and aspirations have been undermined and even ridiculed in both social and economic spheres.
While we rarely talk about such things in multilateral spaces, spaces in which “gender” has come to mean “female” or other, non-male incarnations; spaces in which we speak of “disproportionate impact” at every turn as though we know enough about “impact” to determine the who, how and what of that; it is clear, to me at least, that the wholly-appropriate attention to women’s inclusion has pushed to the side the uncomfortable reality that “leaving no-one behind” will also require much more policy attention to the lives of men and boys than we are currently paying.
The fatherhood that is, for many men, at the heart of their complexity is casually celebrated on this day and little regarded the rest of the year. Indeed, being a father still ranks as one of the easier things to become and one of the harder and more thankless things to do well. For those who willingly discharge their biological function but subsequently neglect the social and nurturing consequences, we have appropriate means of social approbation. But most fathers don’t fit that mold. Most want to do some approximation of the right thing by the children they sire, even if they are at loose ends regarding what that might imply in practical terms — how to protect, how to discipline, how to educate, how to fulfill largely unstated expectations amidst an often-bewildering and rapidly-shifting cultural and gendered landscape.
Much like with mothers, there is no blueprint for fathers. We have collectively compiled a longer list of things we “know” that fathers have neglected to do for children than what they have done and could do more of, a list that mostly recognizes what is best for children but which offers scant guidance regarding how to cultivate relationships with children that can persevere through all the social upheaval of our times, all the social and technological shifts that promise empowerment for some and an undignified marginalization for many, including many fathers.
This fatherhood thing is no simple task, and it is made even more complex as the substance and iconography of “maleness” shifts (as it should) while many expectations of “father” remain largely intact, expectations both numerous and largely lacking in sensitive interrogation. We don’t ask many good, emotionally-probing questions of fathers, even when we are older and able to do so, and especially within the families where most of these expectations occur. This discursive deficiency is equally notable in families of limited means or of cultural minorities, the millions of families with fathers who don’t have the luxury of staying home during a pandemic to “bond” with their children, who instead have to get up and ride the buses and trains to “essential” jobs that aren’t paid or protected “essentially,” jobs that confer little or no dignity, that leave people drained of emotional and physical energy after long shifts, and that then consign them to their worry throughout the return ride, praying to some deity or other that they aren’t bringing the virus home with them along with their barely adequate paychecks.
Are these “essential” but multiply-exhausted workers deemed to be “good” fathers or not? Are they responsible fathers or not? And how much do any of the rest of us actually care about their journeys, how they actually feel about their roles and obligations, the toll exacted on these men who, in some cases, are trying to fulfill a challenging responsibility incompletely understood, and trying to do so in a society that privileges neither themselves nor their progeny, a society that devalues their social class every bit as resolutely as it now devalues their migration status or racial and ethnic origins?
The title for this post was appropriated from an iconic Rembrandt painting (which was actually renamed long after the artist’s death as its multi-layered varnish darkened) and which had previously become the inspiration for an overnight program for kids and their guardians that I ran for a few years (many years ago) at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. The program was characterized by diverse activities for kids, religiously-focused and not, in what still represents an overwhelming, mysterious space, especially so at night.
For the adults present it was also a time to reflect on how and what we “watch” for our own sake and to enhance the well-being of children. And what we often concluded is the importance of “watching” in at least two aspects: first to be attentive to the protection and other needs of children as they grow, including the ways in which our relationship to them needs to evolve as their personal and social contexts evolve; but also to ensure that those young people who “watch” us, who look to us to model the “scraps of wisdom” that will help define their future lives, are hopefully seeing in us at the very least a good measure of what we want them to see in the world; are able as well to take away from their years with us the skills and life-lessons that we most wanted them to learn.
Successful “watching” in this sense requires in part a different type of conversation. Many of us after a certain age can admit that we still routinely judge our fathers but typically fail to see the person behind the role, fail to ask the sincere and probing questions which can get behind the scenes of their original aspirations for their children as well as their best (and worst) attempts at modeling, questions which acknowledge that fatherhood is a complex human endeavor more than a role to play, more than a caricature of caregiver, critic and/or provider.
Indeed, we collectively tend to avoid questions such as these all year long including in our hallowed halls of policy. But on this day, while with family members and other loved ones, as fathers in many settings open their Father’s Day cards and even pick up the checks for their own Father’s Day lunches, let’s all pause for a moment to consider how an always-challenging and often under-appreciated presence is increasingly and unhappily being pushed towards even greater challenge and emotional isolation.
The people who cherish their fathers and the people who disparage them align with the view that fatherhood still matters profoundly, that the “hole” fathers metaphorically drill in their children is often quite deep. We may never get over our fathers, and may never want to, but we can commit a piece of ourselves on this day to understand more about how and why they drilled, how and what they watched, day and night, for the sake of their progeny. For those old enough to ask and fortunate enough to have fathers around to respond, such indication of interest, I suspect, would be among the greatest gifts that any father could possibly receive.
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