Tag Archives: fathers

Masculine Mark-Up: A Father’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

15 Jun

I could settle for being a man, or I could struggle to become a human being. Robert Jensen

If they could just get over themselves, then everything might be a whole lot simpler. Izumi Suzuki

It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness, and chivalry ‘masculine’ when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man’s sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as ‘feminine.’  C.S. Lewis

We do not need to redefine masculinity. We need to reclaim it. We need to affirm the masculinity, the rough and tumble, the competition, and the discipline needed to teach boys right from wrong. We need to be able to give them safe avenues to express themselves, and to model for them what it means to accept and love people. We need to teach them things like honor, perseverance, integrity, adventure, justice, tenderness, determination, hope, love, peace, and freedom are all masculine virtues, and they are a part of what it means to be a man.  Josh Hatcher

The stronger a man is, the more gentle he can afford to be. Elbert Hubbard

This Father’s Day is replete with images which call into question whether we are up to the “struggle to become a human being.” 

While trying to be decent parents, decent mentors, decent neighbors, decent citizens we are now bombarded with images that seem to render anything we do, anything we try to teach, to the proverbial dustbin of history. Tough guys with masks and badges threatening civilians with death or tossing older veterans to the ground as though our essential freedoms did not in some measure depend on their prior sacrifices?  Politicians male and otherwise bending the knee to lawless colleagues or to foreign governments for funding their own grip on power?  Active- duty military being deployed on often angry and frustrated civilian turf asked to practice restraint that they were not trained to perform.  Weak men masquerading as strong men by getting loyalists to do the bidding they could never “bid” on their own.

 Where is the honor, you might ask?  The perseverance?  The tenderness?  The hope?  On and on, virtues which good parents, good fathers, attempt to instill in children find less and less expression in our governance structures and public institutions.  We have been lied to so often now, and lied to ourselves a fair amount as well, that the ties that bind a country, ties of trust and tolerance, barely extend beyond our own dining rooms, if at all.

What are parents, what are fathers to do?  How do we cultivate a virtuous life in our children, in our boys, when there is so little external to those relationships which reinforce those virtues?  When our erstwhile leadership is willing to say anything, do anything, to enhance their own riches and power, how do we convince children that a life of virtue remains worthy of their best efforts or even a reasonable facsimile of such?

I don’t have any answer to this question that doesn’t lapse into cliches and/or political fantasies.

Some fathers I know have merely moved the goal posts, hoping to raise decent children but not necessarily honorable ones.  Others have tried to maintain family values and spaces as a bulwark against what are increasingly predatory and violent influences, real and imagined.  Still others have chosen to focus less on the world and more on themselves and the path we all need to walk if “becoming a human being” in the best sense, a parent in the best sense, a father in the best sense, is to be realized.

Many other, of course,  have chosen to filter out as many of the implications as possible from these ideological and testosterone driven times, trying to convince themselves that it will be possible for their children to graduate from a good school and land a well-paying job amidst a world compromised by the unfathomable stupidity of officials who refuse to “get over themselves” and the wars, climate impacts and other unleashed demons such officials fail to address, in some instances, even to acknowledge.  For those willing enough to make it, this choice, sad to say, is more of a risk than it seems, a choice driven by a stubborn love than by a rational assessment of circumstance, a cross-your-fingers moment that answers only some of the responsibilities of parents to lives poised at the starting gate, lives ready to run what might well turn out to be a rigged race full of metaphorical landmines and other impediments out of immediate view.

And, especially for fathers seeking to mentor the boys in their lives, there is another potential confusion.  In searching out quotations for this piece (which is my habit), what I found is that a majority of the quotations I found under the “masculine” rubric were actually much about women, much about the “feminine” characteristics that men should cultivate and should want to cultivate.  Needless to say, I support claims of “arrogance” by C.S. Lewis in casting judgment on erstwhile masculine and feminine characteristics embraced by the “other sex,” or even other manifestations of gender.  But this is another complicating factor for parents, for fathers, trying to exercise soft influence over lives trying to adjust over and over to turmoil both internal and external.

Given all this, allow me to honor fathers who directly engage the current caldrons of affect and policy, who try their best to enable conditions for hope which is more than performative, who understand that their ability to ease the path for their children in this dangerous, difficult world means their own involvement  in that dangerous, difficult world without making more of the same. It means thinking through all that it means to be strong in ways that allow us also to be gentle, to be kind, to be hopeful, to be engaged, to listen and show compassion, to apologize and make amends.

To all the fathers out there who embrace all or some of these tasks, you have my great admiration.  Regardless of the hostile noises you might hear from others, it is not so easy now to be what you strive to be.  In my own small and inadequate way, I and others pledge to “have your back.”

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Mad Men: A Father’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 Jun

Suddenly, I’m not half the man I used to be. Paul McCartney

A real man is one who fears the death of his heart, not of his body.  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back.  Marcus Aurelius

To be a real man is to be unattached – not from responsibility or justice – but from those dependencies that inhibit responsibility and justice. Tarek William Saab

Real men don’t conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true but maintain the integrity of their own mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him. Saul Bellow

The final test of a gentleman is his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him. William Lyon Phelps

The first step to be a good man is this: You must deeply feel the burden of the stones someone else is carrying. Mehmet Murat Ildan

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.  Friedrich Nietzsche

For better or worse, and I believe I know which, this is my season of sports watching, a feast of athletes performing at levels I could only have imagined for myself, striving for tangible goals in the form of trophies and championships, tangibility which too-often eludes this current incarnation of myself.

But beyond the competition of sports there is another competition embedded in the commercials which have become more and more numerous during broadcasts, which increasingly disrupt the “pace of play” and which seek to attract business through words and images which generally portray a very different view of men than the one suggested by the quotations above.

For those of you who have better things to do than indulge in an endless stream of sports broadcasts, allow me to share a bit of what I see through the lens of corporate image making.  Men looking like complete fools as they gush over “good deals” and bungle assignments both domestic and public.  Men shooting/punching/knifing other men and blowing up public infrastructure in movie trailers, men driving trucks at recklessly high speed through natural areas with no perceptible interest in nature beyond the playground it provides, men purporting to “save the day” while failing to acknowledge that the “day” which needs saving is largely of their own making.

It’s quite a show.  It’s also a distortion of how many of the men I know conduct their lives, how they demonstrate the values and commitments which convey hopefulness, honor and compassion in their children, how they express  the desire to play without demolition, how they incarnate the will to fulfill commitments which do not require vanquishing others, commitments which are not distracted by petty annoyances or conspiratorial beliefs that have little or no foundation in reality, which do not posit grievances and associated enemies  as part of efforts to recapture a version of manhood that is as much concoction as fact, which eschews predation misdefined as some erstwhile dimension of courage.

Clearly there is no one way to be man as there is no one path to being a caring, competent father.  The stereotypes which we continue to inflict across cultures and genders do us no favors but rather rob us of options for sound living that we badly need in these treacherous times. In more ways than most of us are aware, or want to be, we have made a mess of a great many things, messes which will not be sorted successfully with automatic weapons, smarter phones or trucks with indestructible chassis. Nor will they be sorted through a bloated and even unjust financial system which practices little or no transparency even as it maintains access to all of your own personal and purchasing preferences.

As part of the current madness, there are many (as there always seem to be) who want to return to a sanitized version of the “good old days” when “men were men” and others were subservient.  I don’t recall those days as being particularly “good,” but I do remember men who did really hard jobs, day after day, in an attempt to provide for their families; men who pushed their children along in part so that they might attain some respite from war and its consequences, or lungs filled with coal and smog, or backs thrown out of whack by crumbling roads and infrastructure, even some distance from financial insecurity and class snobbery, children who might have a few more options than the fathers who helped raise them to enjoy the life they have  been granted. 

We have come a long way, but only in some ways.  We are not particularly adept at the play which encourages rather than threatens spontaneous joy and cooperation.  We are also not particularly skilled in educating and managing emotions without suppression, allowing us to feel deeply the burdens of others, to accept criticism without retribution, to fear the demise of the heart as much as the body, to stand for beliefs which are more than figments of our imagination, to smile at death as that fate which binds us all, to reject transactional living which reduces respect to utility, to examine the dependencies in our lives which impede our pursuit of more courageous living. 

I have never been a father.  And much like the world as a whole, it could reasonably be said that I am barely “half the man I used to be.”  But with the half that remains there is work to do, care to provide, values to uphold, madness to mend, faith to explore, narratives to correct, climate to heal, discrimination to expose, children to support and inspire. Half a loaf, after all, is still a loaf.

Thanks to all of you fathers, to all of you men, who have chosen to pursue a higher calling, who are trying to do more and better within the circumstances in which you find yourselves and with the people in your orbit, even those who in some instances and for whatever reason may be disinclined to honor your otherwise honorable journey.  

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Sticking the Landing:  A Father’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

18 Jun

People protect what they love. Jacques Yves Cousteau

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent. Jonathan Swift

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability – these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy. Zadie Smith

Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness. Sidney Hook

If we do not step forward, then we step back. Paul Martin

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away. Audre Lorde

There can be no lasting prosperity for our people, if we do not protect our planet. Rishi Sunak

Some of you who follow these posts have commented on their recent, relative infrequency.  This should not be interpreted as a sign of a reduced engagement but rather of circumstance as we continue to adjust in many ways – programmatically, logistically, financially to the changes brought about in some measure due to the long pandemic.  The passion persists; the urgency even more so.  But there is so much in our world generating urgency now, so many threats from which we need to offer protection, both in our own present and for the sake of our often-anxious progeny.  It is harder now to keep track, harder to prioritize, even harder to fashion cogent arguments for public consumption that don’t merely ply familiar personal and policy terrain.  

But this is Fathers Day weekend which for some reason I have long associated with protection.  Not because women don’t protect as well, but because our patriarchal worldviews have long assumed that the men would do the bulk of the protecting, occasionally through keen awareness, negotiation and compromise, but, quite unfortunately, often navigating protection at the end of clenched fists, the barrel of a gun, or worldly investments which accrue benefit only to a few.

The notion of protection seems quite straightforward at first glance, but for many of the best fathers I know it is anything but, a combination of attentiveness to matters of the moment with a lively sense of what the future may well hold for their progeny and what can be done to minimize the challenge and maximize the tools (financial, educational, personal) needed to meet the challenge or at least to give children a fighting chance to do so.

For even those fathers particularly skilled in the nuances of protection’s complexities, the words “messy and fraught” used this Saturday by the Washington Post, seem appropriate.  We can ensure that children are fed and hugged, educated and housed; that they are properly “ring-fenced with something stronger than empathy.” Moreover, we can also do much to ensure that they experience the personal skills they will need to practice over the course of their lives, the attentive understanding, generosity and compassion that they would wish for others to bestow upon them. 

But most of the fathers I know understand well that their ability to protect is limited even if bound within the domains of family and community.  To be sure, they cannot always protect from disappointment and failure, from humiliation and bullying, from anxiety and heartbreak.   They cannot always ensure that their children will embrace a calling appropriate to these difficult and dangerous times or (to quote that beautiful phrase of Audre Lorde) that they can keep girls and boys “from throwing any part of myself away.”

Beyond this, many of the fathers I know often lament that they cannot better protect children from the larger threats to their future — the new technologies and their weapons that we can create but barely control, the climate change and related biodiversity loss and ocean warming that portends more violent weather patterns and evermore silent springs, the pandemics which poise like wolves outside our seemingly-secure dwellings, waiting to blow away the plans and dreams of the unprepared and unsuspecting,

On top of all, we live in a time when fatherhood itself is contested space, when “men” are judged more and more by their most problematic examples, when even those who try to be the best fathers that they are capable of being find themselves too -often frustrated; struggling with life-partners living out a “different page,” displaced by the allures and influences of social media platforms and celebrity culture, worried that the financial and lifestyle sacrifices made to raise and educate their progeny will prove to be bets no safer than those made in Las Vegas casinos – close your eyes, cross your fingers, take your chances, and hope for the best. 

Never having had to raise children myself, I am always a bit hesitant to write about something I have never experienced, those hour-to-hour duties and worries that I can only participate in vicariously.  But I also know many fathers, some mostly satisfied, some also regretful, some eminently grateful for their blessings, some occasionally despondent at the lack of understanding and forgiveness from children who are likely to get over that difficult hump, if they ever do, only when they have children of their own.  It is indeed a “messy and fraught” business this fatherhood thing, implementing uneasy promises of protection in relatively small spaces as the bees struggle to pollinate, the fish migrate far from their biological homes in search of properly oxygenated waters, the air turns orange as the far-away forests go up in flames, the weapons continue to discharge in classrooms, and those who would deign to govern have seemingly thrown more of themselves away than any of the rest of us could possibly imagine doing ourselves.

I myself am no “father,” neither in biological nor religious terms.  But in our own “messy and fraught” manner, I and my colleagues have been consumed over many years with the responsibility to “make the world fit for children,” to enable and inspire care, to privilege equity and access across the global community, to help ensure that institutions like the UN not only assess threats to the future but act on them and do so collaboratively and decisively.  We and many others have tried despite a bevy of external and self-inflicted limitations to ensure that fathers and mothers can do their level best with children with some semblance of expectation that the world they are preparing for their children to inherit is worthy of that effort, a world that is greener, more equitable, more inclusive, more peaceful, more respectful than we have often been led to believe is possible.

This is all within the realm of the rhetorical, of course, and time spent (as we do routinely) within international organizations paints an uncomfortable picture of compromised policy urgency, endless half-truths emanating from officialdom, and processes content to examine and assess problems without a corresponding responsibility to urgently remediate the worst of their influences.  If fathers and mothers are ultimately to continue to “stick the landing” on parenthood, again to quote the Washington Post this weekend, they will need more, much more, from we erstwhile global policymakers:  more clarity and honesty about the messes we have collectively made for ourselves, more courage to move beyond petty politics and trust-related “excuses,” more determination to overcome our own follies and better translate idealistic words on a page to an embrace and support for the growing complexities and challenges associated with transitioning from one generation to another.

Happy Father’s Day, folks.  I can’t understand all that you go through, and surely do not wish to compete with the gifts some of you will get today in the form of thank-you cards, neckties and power drills, but know that we will continue to do what we we are able to help ensure that your complex and loving investments in our common future have the best possible chance of bearing good fruit.

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Boys Club: A Father’s Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Jun
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Edvard Munch from Fine Art America

That was when the world wasn’t so big and I could see everywhere. It was when my father was a hero and not a human.   Markus Zusak

No one ever thanked him.  Robert Hayden

Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.  James Thurber

I’ve learned a lot about how the male mind works, and as a result I’ve been having nightmares for months.  Yvonne Collins

Boyhood, like measles, is one of those complaints which a man should catch young and have done with, for when it comes in middle life it is apt to be serious.  P.G. Wodehouse

A boy’s will is the wind’s will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

An emphasis on fathering is necessary because of the enormity of its absence.   William Paul Young

He’s still her dad. The rest is just geography.  Jennifer E. Smith

As most of you know, today is Father’s Day, at times replete with awkward moments where, in my family at least, we struggled with perfunctory gift giving to men who had become used to not being thanked for the many subtle and even anonymous things they did for others, men who generally did not offer discernable clues regarding things they might like to have or if the day even had any meaning for them, men  who often ended up picking up the check for an erstwhile “Father’s Day” dinner held at a restaurant they would never have chosen on their own.

As fewer of you may know, today is Juneteenth, a day of marking the effective end of trans-Atlantic slavery, an effective end to men and their families chained inside the hulls of boats making the torturous and often fatal transit across unforgiving seas, the “reward” for survival being sold at auction, separated from loved ones, and now facing an ultimate test of preserving some semblance of the humanity that the brutality of “owners” and the circumstances of enslavement were conspiring  to break down altogether. 

Father’s Day indeed.  Even the simple recognition that those working in the fields were of greater value than the horses and dogs that roamed the property was often more than anyone could expect.  After all, once such value is acknowledged, it becomes morally problematic, even for the most abusive, to see slaves as mere conduits for sexual satisfaction or a bumper crop at market. 

In this precarious time, it would be reasonable, if a bit cheeky, to start drawing lines, the ones that bind ingratitude to grievance, and then to disinformation and then to hate speech, and then to discrimination, and then to outright brutality, sexual violence and even enslavement.   These lines are not tight but neither are they irrelevant.  We reap at least some of what we sow in this life, and much of what we sow now is with inattentive, ungrateful and self-interested hands.  Gratitude, whether to fathers, other family members, or the wider community of interests which sustains our complex lives, remains the first principle in diverting those aforementioned lines towards more productive and dignified sojourns. It is now a principle too-rarely grasped.

But not only now. When I was younger it seemed commonplace to blame mothers for all that was wrong in society, all that was wrong with children who had strayed from whatever path was deemed normative within the family and the wider community.  Having so strayed myself, it was indeed difficult to face a bevy of challenges I was largely unprepared for without casting blame on one or both of the parents to whom I was biologically and culturally tethered.  But there was little doubt in that time that mothers bore the brunt of the liability for who and what their children were to become and that much of that was unfair, in part the consequence of some overly-enthusiastic male psychologists who forgot to remove their own blinders before issuing their pronouncements.

In more recent times, certainly within the policy bubbles which I find myself, while individual males could be honored for their accomplishments, their bravery, even their humanity, the notion of “male” itself has taken a serious hit.  At the UN, the amount of time spent on issues of women’s participation and violence committed against them is quite formidable, not inappropriate at all given levels of abuse perpetrated against far too many women and girls in conflict settings and given the backhanded manner in which the guardians of patriarchy dole out their concessions to women who have in many, many instances outgrown any need or desire for such patronizing largesse.

That said, there is little spoken in UN policy spaces about men and boys, even less that is as thoughtful as it is critical.  For the most part, we don’t have “gendered” policy interests at the UN.  We have women’s interests.  And while the unmet needs of and abuses experienced by men and boys are slowly re-entering the discourse – including surprisingly this week at a good UN event on sexual violence in conflict – we have a long way to go to replace the stereotypes which are now, in my view at least, actually impeding the arrival of a time  when the daughters and sons of fathers can make their way in this wildly unequal world with some hope of finding meaning, purpose and accomplishment during their time on this earth.

It is worth noting here that in the search for quotations for this post, it was necessary to wade through many which were alternately bastions of sentimentality or “clubs” of incrimination, and more of the latter than I might have expected. Indeed, many of the quotations uncovered ostensibly focused on boys were actually offered by young women communicating in one way or another their “nightmares” courtesy of a male mindset which, I suspected at least, they had invested little in understanding beyond how it impacted them.  Let’s be clear. When fatherhood is interpreted through the lens of an absentee and boys are equated with sleep disorders or communicable diseases, whatever pathologies are being cleverly “exposed” are only likely to spread.  After all, most of us of all genders and backgrounds have a hard enough time weaning ourselves from the expectations that others have of us. 

As some of you know, though it is not much in the grand scheme of things, I’ve been funneling money in modest increments for years to organizations accompanying farm workers through their difficult and compromising labors, providing assistance for health and legal access needed to sustain themselves and their families.   I love the painting by Munch adorning this post because, despite current stereotypical limitations, it captures the essence of so many parents I know, so many fathers and mothers who work themselves to the bone in exchange for the affection and respect of their children, conveying an herioc promise to them each day that they will return to the sometimes-dehumanizing fields and factories, even to zones of conflict, to ensure that they have enough, that they are safe enough, that they can navigate the world well enough, that they are loved enough in terms both sentimental and (especially) practical.

Just as I know many boys undeserving of even an analogical whiff of pathology, so I know many fathers who remain resolutely present and active, who strive however they know to keep their promises to their children; to do what they can and guide as they are capable in order to ensure that the “long, long thoughts” of their progeny can lead to dignified and sustainable futures as we pass through these multiply undignified times.  I honor those efforts on their face, but also in the hope that such honoring can lead to a more abundant replication of the best of what I know fathers to be and do.

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Father Fear: A Fathers Day Reflection, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Jun
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For generations fathers had watched earth and sea.  Pearl S. Buck

Was Father getting sadder, or was she just getting old enough to see it?  S.D. Smith

Perhaps that is what it means to be a father-to teach your child to live without you. Nicole Krauss

One of the biggest things that hold men back from being the fathers, husbands, and leaders they are meant to be is that we are often unfit, unhealthy, or otherwise limping along.   Josh Hatcher

He needed me to do what sons do for their fathers: bear witness that they’re substantial, that they’re not hollow, not ringing absences. That they count for something when little else seems to.  Richard Ford

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.  Fyodor Dostoevsky

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.  George Orwell

“Are you a devil?” “I am a man,” answered Father Brown gravely; “and therefore have all devils in my heart.”  G. K. Chesterton

A couple of weeks ago, a favorite cousin of mine died from a sudden and gruesome bout with cancer.  His life was like many men I know, complex in its core, attempting to blend families and his responsibilities to them, attempting as well to overcome impediments – including to his own sight – that made many of the things he did more of an ordeal than they might have been, including the challenge of landscaping from which he made a living and to which he gave his most grateful soul.

My cousin was in great physical shape which likely prolonged the ordeal of his cancer but also made it possible for him to have the kinds of conversations with loved ones that help the dying to let go of life.  As his daughters occasionally reminded him, in ways subtle and not, he was not always the father of their dreams.  And like myself and many others, my cousin often “limped along,” in a world which disposes benefits and good fortune unevenly, trying to figure things out for himself and others, offering coaching guidance as he was able regarding how to persevere through adversity which is, after all, the lot of most of us in this world.

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, the mask he wore was not particularly thick or meant to deceive.  He was more transparent than he might have needed to be, perhaps more so than his corner of the world was prepared to accept. He also evaded that all-too-frequent demon of ingratitude, the assumption that the world owed him more, owed him differently.  And he avoided that curse of our modern age, the error of exalting judgment at the expense of reflection, the knee-jerk reactions of too many of us to situations that just don’t seem right “to us,” reactions that grant us the arrogance of verdicts without trial, verdicts generally devoid of context. 

I raise up the image of my deceased cousin not because he was unique, but because he was not.  The responsibilities he assumed, the holes in his life that he tried to fill, the matrix of complex relationships he attempted to navigate, the impediments he sought to overcome – including some self-imposed – this constellation of challenges and, if you will, demons, are representative of many of the men in my life. It is perhaps a function of our longer-than-anticipated pandemic bubbles that so many of us now indulge in acting out, including of our ideological predispositions and prejudices.  But it is also true of how many men I know, including my cousin, who are genuinely trying in more controlled ways to figure things out, including figuring out how to support the fixing of racial, gender and social class discriminations that impede our social development and, in some core ways, threaten the very existence of our species.

These men have, at least to some extent, sought to understand their privilege and overcome the cultural conditioning which, in the US at least, simultaneously critiques and reinforces the narrative of men as predators, men as habitually self-absorbed, men as the reinforcers of a manifestly unjust social order that privileges the needs of the few over the needs of the many; men who take more than their share and give less than they claim; men who imagine themselves as some sort of “gold standard” even when others see mostly fools gold.  This is a deep if self-deceptive conditioning, one which is often reinforced across gender and economic lines, one which allows only a few to prosper as privilege leaks inexorably into entitlement.

And as our societies shift, slowly but inexorably like the tides of the sea, there is positive momentum to report, even to celebrate. At the UN we routinely discuss the gendered dimensions of food insecurity and counter-terror operations; we routinely discuss the importance of reproductive rights for the health, well-being and educational and social opportunities of girls; we spend much time and energy, albeit at times beset with numerous frustrations, attempting to end impunity for the commission of sexual violence crimes in and out of conflict zones. During my annual lectures for NATO School I also do my part to hold brass to the commitments made to the UN by NATO both to small arms proliferation and to their Women, Peace and Security responsibilities.  On both counts, there is less and less resistance to changes that they know they need to make, that it is in the best interests of everyone that they make. 

But there is no patting ourselves on the back here on gender (nor or on racial, cultural or religious discrimination) any more than the fathers (and mothers) I know seek to glorify themselves for upholding basic obligations of parenting.  We know full well that change has come too slowly.  And we know that we have not always put the authority and leverage at our disposal to use in making it come more quickly, in balancing the leger sheet and creating horizontal space within and beyond our perpetually vertical structures.  Moreover, we have not been grateful enough for our own circumstances nor sufficiently attentive to the cries for relief from others.

None of this is to our credit, and yet I wonder about the implications of the current narrative that, within the UN to be sure but also outside it, privileges judgment over thoughtfulness, judgment that rightly assumes a gendered dimension to the world’s many problems but which also implies that the value of men is solely a function of their ability to support and sustain others, that the intrinsic value of their activities is up for grabs, and that no matter what their journey or context, they remain directly accountable to the worst of their kind, the worst forms of patriarchal entitlement, the worst forms of violent recourse, the worst forms of inattentive and degrading parenting, the worst forms of predatory economic decisionmaking.

All of these conditions are real and all of them must cease.  However, in certain circles at least, much of this assigned only to the actions and priorities of men.  In addition, much of this is divorced from context, assuming that the demon-load residing in some can be attributed in the same measure to all, thereby justifying judgments that ascribe the worst to mostly all and the best to relatively none.  In too many of our policy settings, we don’t talk about men, we don’t ask probing questions of men, we don’t show much interest in their well-being or growth edges aside from how their lives might negatively impact others.  We tend to assume that we know all we need to know about men when what we actually know is clearly at low tide.

I don’t know entirely what to do about this condition, but on this Fathers Day when it seems safe enough and useful enough to speak of men, it also seems relevant to raise such concerns.  

Because I know so many men who are not lording it over others, who are not trafficking in hostility, who are not venting their patriarchal spleens on a no-longer unsuspecting world; who are instead trying to understand and then off-load their unearned privilege. I know many men who spend more time wondering if they did the right thing coaching their children and investing their own life energy than wondering how they can separate yet another community and its people from their worldly assets.  Whether others want to hear it or not, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, there are glimmers of sadness in the eyes of more than a few of the men I know, a sadness that things have simply not worked out the way they could have, the way they imagined they might – not for the self-sufficiency of their children or the strength of their marriages, not for the impact of their careers nor for prospects to reduce the misery load of a world which is arguably and generally in worse shape than it has been in some time, worse not primarily for men, but surely for many men also.

These are some of the people we have yet to engage in a larger social purpose, a purpose which can level and empower, can inspire and reassure.  This Father’s Day, or any day for that matter, I urge you to reach out to those men for whom sadness is possibly crowding out ambition, those anxious to stop limping and get back to full living, those who need reassurance that they are more than “ringing absences,” that they indeed count for something and can count for more in this broken, screwy, patriarchy-saturated planet given the right assurances and contexts.  For many of the men I have been honored to know, for many of the Fathers I have been honored to watch, most need something different to become their better selves, different than neckties and power equipment.  They need to be asked better questions; they need fair and thoughtful judgments; they need persons around them sensitive to context including the context they have helped men create for themselves and others. Such men may also need help, while they are still on this earth in “calculating their happiness,” in translating sadness and fear into gratitude and thereby finding the energy to create more harmony and justice in this world until their time has passed.

My cousin’s time has passed. He tried as best he knew to create beauty and honor his responsibilities. He would want others to try also.

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Nightwatch: An Ode to Fathers and Their Complex Roles, Dr. Robert Zuber

21 Jun

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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Major Dad:  Sharing the Burdens beyond the Weapons, Dr. Robert Zuber

16 Jun

Fist Bump

Do you really believe that your child is an idiot?  Because you said it, she now believes it.  Dan Pearce

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

We are not bonded to our fathers’ fate, but rather called to build on their trespasses or triumphs for a better future.  Cristina Marrero

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.  Marilynne Robinson

That was the first time, months after his birth, I felt like Sam’s father. In a chair I never wanted, holding the child I desperately did. Aaron Gouveia

I’ve come home from another journey at the cusp of Father’s Day, a bittersweet remembrance for many (including those facing a first Day without a father), a time to recall both triumphs and trespasses, words that stung and words that healed, teachable moments and pedagogical awkwardness, the “hole” that for some was small and deep, for others broader and more shallow.

Pedagogical awkwardness was certainly on order for me and my brood of brothers.  We were idiots, it seemed, not absorbing what we were taught and generally not wanting the lesson to continue.   There was plenty to learn, to be sure, certainly from a dad who seemingly could fix anything and who did so routinely and without asking for family and neighbors alike.  But the lessons were often pitched a bit too harsh; it wasn’t always palatable to play the idiot within those pedagogical moments, to be little more than the conduit for disconnects that could have been more fruitful than the mutually-incomprehensible annoyances they mostly became.

But there are times looking back when we see things that weren’t clear when we were younger, the learning that we thought we missed out on but actually bored deep inside us, making us the persons we are, for better and for worse.  I did learn things from my father that turned out to be of great benefit in my later life – to hit a baseball and catch a football, to plant vegetables and catch fish.

And to use and care for guns

I haven’t cleaned or fired a gun in many years, but the echo of weapons respected but not feared has stayed with me.  Now, I and my UN colleagues are more concerned with the policy surrounding our weapons-saturated world than with their maintenance and uses, but there has been value in being able to connect with persons in the security sector – military and police, peacekeepers and guardsman – for whom weapons in some form are as indispensable to their work as a laptop computer is to mine.  And not only to connect, but to make the sector inclusive of women and others, and to make good use of the platform from which we can remind the sector that “security” is increasingly more complex (and more urgent as well) than weapons and their threats alone.

This past week, during a period at the UN defined by Kuwait’s fine Security Council presidency and important treaty bodies on oceans and persons with disabilities, I was honored to be overseas, acting as “copilot” for a course in small arms and light weapons conducted by Roman Hunger who now works with NATO but was once a fixture in the UN, including in the office of the President of the General Assembly.   The course was held at a NATO facility in the German Alps and brought together a group of 27 military officers and diplomats from 20 or so countries.   It also brought together officials from the UN, NATO, the OSCE and the European Union to comment on agreements to manage the arms trade and threats of weapons diversion, and included as well technical experts on weapons destruction, landmine removal, stockpile management and other practical skills.  And, while there were only four women participants in this particular course, there was a welcome NATO focus on Women, Peace and Security, reminding officers of their/our responsibility to make safe and secure spaces for women that they might finally bring to the security sector the full complement of their skills and vision.

As regular readers of this space could well imagine, the role of Global Action in this setting was intended to move the room a bit beyond the “tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it” mode that understandably characterizes much of the discourse of persons in uniform.   I talked about our need to be better “promise keepers” when it comes to the international agreements we craft and the commitments we publicly espouse.  I talked about the many stakeholders at work in the security field – including NGOs like mine seemingly in eternal “doggie paddle” mode – organizations that identify and address a range of security threats that are related to our seemingly unquenchable thirst for weapons procurement, but are more broadly related to issues like climate change and economic inequalities.   I talked a bit about the need for restraint in security matters, especially when we are unsure – as we often are – that armed violence in any form won’t simply make matters worse.  And with Roman Hunger in the lead, we discussed the government corruption that leads to weapons diversion or to the accumulation of new weapons that waste precious resources and, in some instances, represent “gifts” that national militaries have not themselves determined a compelling need for.

There was plenty more from us over the week, mostly filling around the primary task of introducing officers and diplomats to the current “state of play” on small arms and light weapons, the weapons we produce in huge quantities that intimidate households and communities, the weapons favored by non-state actors seeking to sow discord in societies, the weapons we procure without a firm grasp of how we will manage the armaments they’ve replaced over what is often a longer lifespan than our own careers.

Fortunately, as the week progressed, participants used the afternoon discussions (what NATO calls “syndicates”) to raise and debate some of the issues both within and adjacent to the small arms and light weapons field.   These (mostly) men thought harder than they might generally about how to ensure a respectful place for women in uniform.   They applied some nuance to the threats that they are duty bound to defend against, threats that come in different shapes now, threats that harbor no recognizable artillery or air assets.  They even interrogated their own views of human nature/potential beyond the cynical (and at times even dystopian) worldviews that still come just a bit too easily to men (and women also) in uniform.  They located the keys to open their minds without compromising their duty.

A few even brought their children along for a bit of holiday, basking in the refreshing air and copious ice cream parlors in the nearby village.  I hope that someday these children will one day come to appreciate how hard it had once been for parents and all of us to protect them in this weapons-riddled, plastics-inundated time of rising seas and falling trust, of corrupt governance and our equally-corrupted sense of honor. I also hope that while they are being raised and protected, while they are being taught and nurtured by the people who have literally incarnated and magnified their spirit, their fathers will never forget how “desperate” they have been to hold these children close.

I wish I could have had conversations like this with my own father, conversations about the world and its blessings, its possibilities and threats, the duties he accepted and laid down, sharing beyond the guns and sports and fishing gear that kept us connected in real time by an often-thin thread.  We certainly could have used a family-friendly version of the NATO “syndicate.” But the interactions we managed to have also served me well even though I wasn’t as open to the learning as I could have been.  Our communications flaws could not be laid at his doorstep alone. They never can be.

To all those “Major Dad” types who are stretching to connect with their children while worrying about our threat-saturated world, please allow something nice to happen to you today.   Maybe an ice cream in a mountain town, or maybe a conversation with someone younger about our current, uneasy state of affairs; perhaps even to share what might still be done to overcome the violent distractions that sap our resolve to create a more “triumphant” future, one that can keep both our fragile planet and its human aspirations buoyant.

Happy Father’s Day

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Modeling Agency:  The Gift of a Father’s Inspiration, Dr. Robert Zuber

17 Jun

My father would take me to the playground, and put me on mood swings. Jay London

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.  Umberto Eco

Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.  Shannon Alder

I should no longer define myself as the son of a father who couldn’t or hasn’t or wouldn’t or wasn’t.  Cameron Conaway

A few weeks ago in this space, I posted an essay honoring mothers for their sometimes heart-wrenching task of accompaniment — helping children to overcome the challenges that we can no longer “fix” for them.   The images of refugee mothers dragging their children across hostile terrain, away from everything familiar but no longer safe, is a gut-clutching narrative that is repeated, in tone if not in substance, millions of times over in our fragmented world.

Fathers, of course, are hardly excluded from such painful and emotionally-draining experiences.  Indeed, two images in these past days have moved me beyond the dull ache that often results from long days in UN conference rooms.  The first is perhaps the more familiar:  a Honduran man who brought his child across the US border only to have them immediately separated by US agents. The man was subsequently taken to some sort of prison facility where he apparently hanged himself, taking with him we can only assume portions of shame and remorse for daring and then failing to seek a safer and perhaps even more prosperous environment for his family.

As angry as this story of separation made me, the other image was in some ways even more tragic.  A young Syrian boy awakens after surgery to discover that the landmine that prompted the surgery in the first place has left him dazed and confused, but also blind.  As he flails away in his makeshift bed, his father attempts to comfort that which might never be comforted, a boy who must now deal with the double trauma of injury and darkness, and the father who knows that, despite the destruction all around punctuated by the threat of more landmines, his son will now need more from him – and for a longer period — than he ever imagined.

The insights here for me are twofold and apply to most all parents and caregivers. The first is the extraordinary violence and indifference that characterizes our treatment of so many children in this world. How do we rationalize children forcibly separated from parents, having to play in a field with un-exploded landmines, recruited into armed insurgencies and brothels, forced to beg for provisions that might sustain their lives but won’t allow their brains – let alone their hearts – to grow?

And the second insight is the burdens that all of this places on caregivers – on fathers who take their protective and provider responsibilities seriously – parents and others who must bear to watch an often heartless world plunging their children into darkness and despair.  As many parents now recognize, we can stand sentry on the porches of our homes, but the storms that make more of our eyes suspicious and our souls frustrated are unlikely to be frightened away.  The wolves, it seems, have gained strength of wind and a more strategic predatory interest since they first appeared in our fables.

And our now-apparent propensity for short-term policy fixes is only likely to make our long term prognosis more alarming; that time, past our time, when our collective lack of vision and kindness that jeopardizes any sustainable peace will come home to roost.

I am not a father myself, and many of my closest father-friends know to take some of my reflections on fathering as worth only the smallest grain of salt.  But I think most would agree that if we want children of character, children who care about things other than themselves, children who have the courage and resilience both to face up to the threats from storms and rebuild better in their aftermath, then we have much that we now need to model for them.

The best fathers and others who accompany children known to me do this as a matter of course.  They eschew the “do as I say not as I do” method of child influence for lives that are transparent and accountable, lives that seek to demonstrate the perseverance, resourcefulness, kindness, duty and integrity that they would be pleased to see more of in the world, certainly more of in the children they raise and know.  These fathers and others inspire lives of sustainability and service by living lives of sustainability and service, lives of strength and resilience by adapting and persevering.  They know to fill an increasingly barren and distracted landscape, not with words but with active hands and a big heart.

If there was ever a time for us to reboot our responsibilities to the next generations, this just might be it.  As it turns out, the “little scraps of wisdom” that fathers impart are often the very scraps that get children out in the world rather than shrinking in the corner, that help them create circles of concern as large as their hearts can bear, that help them cash in their anxiety and suspicions for a curious, compassionate and confident engagement with life.

Today is the World Day to Combat Desertification, a day for me to reflect on both the reality and the metaphor of our creeping deserts; the lands that can no long support a harvest, the souls that can no longer sustain meaningful connection, sometimes not even to our closest of kin. In our climate-damaged world, we are losing more and more precious land by the day, thus sending more and more families on a perilous journey to find safe spaces for children, land that will yield its fruits and strangers willing to risk becoming neighbors.

At the end of our days, as those of us who dare to make policy for others will also discover, our children are unlikely to ask why we didn’t buy them the latest gadgets to distract them from life, but why we didn’t do more to fix what’s broken in our world and why we didn’t prepare them better to fix things once we’re gone?

For all the fathers out there who are prepared to fully and lovingly answer those questions, we are forever in your debt. Through your strength of character and willingness to model, you are doing your part to make the desert bloom again.

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Throwing a Wrench into Another Father’s Day, Dr. Robert Zuber

19 Jun

One of the interesting things for me over the years is noticing the difference in moods leading up to the “days” we set aside to honor parents.   Mother’s Day is a huge emotional and commercial undertaking which fathers, lovers and children ignore at their mortal peril.  Father’s Day, on the other hand, barely registers interest:  somewhat greater than National Gingersnap Day (July 1 in case you care to celebrate) and about the same as the dreaded (for many of us in the US) Columbus Day.

I started Father’s Day weekend in the same way that I start most weekends – with my church family at the All Saints food pantry.   On the pantry line, most of the people (and most of the women) seemed to have little recollection of or interest in this ritual time to honor fathers.   Back home nursing sore muscles, those few TV commercials that bothered at all focused on dad’s apparent unending need for tools – wrenches seem to be a popular choice this year.  I like wrenches, especially their metaphorical capacity for tightening and loosening, but again neither grateful recognition nor other emotional content was present.  Checking my policy-oriented twitter feed it was filled, even on this day, with gendered discourse focused primarily on the (legitimate) concerns of women and girls.

Not much at hand to encourage today’s message. Fortunately, I was inspired to start thinking earlier about fathers during a busy UN week punctuated by persons possessing and/or insisting on attention to an array of physical and mental disabilities.  They came to the UN in large numbers from around the world to advocate for more rigorous and comprehensive compliance by states to their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

This may be my single favorite event of the UN year, in part because of the compelling messages that people in wheelchairs or “speaking” in sign language are particularly well suited to communicate to the rest of us. Messages about pushing through limitations. Messages about the blatant inadequacies of our notions of success, beauty and perfection.  Messages about seeking equity and inclusion, about reaching beyond comfort zones to touch the needs and aspirations of persons habitually marginalized due solely to limitations of mobility, learning, communications or psychology, limitations that are only more visible than our own and often seen as a bigger “problem” by those around persons with disabilities than by the persons themselves.

During this particular week at the UN, not everyone could go out for buffet lunches or run on treadmills at the gym.  Not everyone could be fitted for clothes off the rack at Saks or drive to the ocean for the weekend.   These delegates on disabilities weren’t here to impress others or see the sights, but rather to see to it that people like themselves matter, and matter fully.

And my how they did so!  The events surrounding the formal meeting of States Parties were among the most issue-diverse and courageous I have seen at the UN, linking persons with disabilities to needs and concerns across the UN’s vast agenda – from sustainable development goals and employment discrimination to war-related disabilities and involuntary limitations on freedom of movement.  Controversies over “consent” were particularly paramount this week, with disabilities advocates seeking to ensure (rightly) that they have control over any and all decisions made about them, including all those decisions allegedly made “in their best interest.”

The quality of discussions and interactions this week within the disability community, in some ways, reminded me of the best of the fathers in my life:  Willing to ask the next question; willing to push through the latest challenge; willing to explore beyond the immediate horizon; willing to work with people’s limitations (we all have such) to put them in the best positions to succeed; willing to accept the obligations that stem from being the responsible party; willing to honor promises (including one this week to gender balance the CRDP) and not just make them; willing to use wrenches (real and metaphorical) to loosen and tighten the screws that bind us together with the goal of ensuring more fair and efficient public institutions, and more competent and inclusive communities.

I know so many fathers who embody such interests and traits of character.  I know so many fathers who also teach other peoples’ children, bind other peoples’ wounds, open doors to the homeless and hungry, mentor youth through difficult times; even attend to jobs that are literally killing them so that their children (and others in their communities) can have a chance at a better life in these challenging and sometimes discouraging times.

I see fathers in my life pushing their children to be better people, to neither give up nor give in, to resist dependencies that convert character into comfort, to stay both humble and focused, to take the risk of pulling others up short when they wander too far off course.

These are a few of the many things that so many fathers (and other nurturing men) in my life – family, friends and colleagues – bring to this world still very much in-progress.  My “Waffle House” cap, the one which I’m now wearing in my office, is hereby and mostly gratefully tipped to each of you.

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Fatherhood, Care-giving and its Caveats, Dr. Robert Zuber

20 Jun

For those of you who have endured years of my Father’s Day commentary, this might seem like an outlier message.  Bear with me, if you can stand to do so, as I attempt to blend a tribute to fathers with a bit of what I hope at least will seem like relevant policy analysis.  You can let me know if you approve of the results – with caveats of course.

Like many of words we use, misuse and overuse, “caveat” has a range of meanings, but mostly related to declarations or even warnings of stipulations or conditions that might impact our commitments; or alternatively it refers to “limitations,” as in ways in which what is presented to us as sufficient ‘truth’ is more accurately a restrictive (sometimes dramatically so) viewpoint on a situation or incident that begs for a more comprehensive and thoughtful lens.

“Caveats” in both senses have long been a part of the UN’s nomenclature, used by states to contextualize their investments of funding and personnel, and by NGOs and policy experts to assess the “missing elements” in what might otherwise be helpful analysis of security, development or social issues.

The conditions/stipulations aspect of “caveats” was on display Wednesday in the UN Security Council where members were given candid and thoughtful briefings by Force Commanders on the state-of-play in peacekeeping operations.   In our view, these briefings are not held frequently enough to accomplish what Nigeria noted were more flexible adjustments to what at times could be seen as peacekeeping mandates with eroding relevance.  Briefings are also not held often enough to allow some of the women who were in uniform in Council chambers to share assessments and experiences through their own, still-too-often-ignored perspectives.

One notable feature of this briefing was the practice by some troop contributing countries to issue “caveats” to full and unconditional participation in peacekeeping operations. These contributors, in essence, maintain the right to identify “conditions” based on judgments of operations that needlessly jeopardize the well-being of seconded troops; conditions which would therefore exempt such troops from obeying to the letter relevant orders of Force Commanders.

The need for such caveats, as noted by New Zealand (which has recently revoked its own), relates in part to the perception of some states that UN peacekeeping operations are burdened by mandates the complexity of which overwhelms training and capacity in the field, thus exacerbating relevant security threats.   But as other states and commanders noted, if caveats are warranted, there is a proper time and place for them.  Such stipulations should be stated as early in the process as possible.  Moreover, caveats must remain flexible enough to accommodate shifting circumstances, including successful UN efforts to address field concerns.  In other words, reasonable caveats should not be posed as last-minute, categorical demands but as timely and flexible responses to conditions that are not yet sufficient to warrant unconditional assent.

The UN will continue to grapple with the challenges of caveats in peacekeeping operations. Like that or not, we can all at least acknowledge that, in some form or other, we have our own caveats; we all have “conditions” for things, even important things like marriage and family.  Some of those conditions even apply to our erstwhile caregivers, specifically regarding the ways in which we want to be cared for — and ways we don’t — that are independent of others’ need to “care” for us.   Many of us have overwhelmed others, and been overwhelmed ourselves, in caregiving scenarios that were much more about the one setting the terms of care than about the one receiving the caring attention.  Not all “caring” feels like caring and such feelings are not always unwarranted: a bit like the security assessments of UN member states, the conditions for and benefits of caregiving are to a significant extent in the eyes (and hearts) of its recipients.

Beyond conditions, there is the scenario of “caveats” as limitations. Last Tuesday at the UN, Chelsea Clinton headlined an event co-sponsored by MenCare Advocacy and @UNFPA at which a report was released entitled “State of the World’s Fathers.”  The full report can be accessed at www.sowf.men-care.org.

This latest iteration of our “state of the world,” which I must say I was a bit reluctant at first to pick up, painted a generally positive (if limited) assessment of the status (and potential benefits) of fathers as caregivers, a role important for childless men (such as myself) to assume as well.  My reluctance was related in part to the increasing tendency within UN (and other) circles to assume generic caregiving deficits on the part of men (based on restrictive definitions as much as on male sloth) along with the notion that the value of fathers lies primarily in their willingness to be engaged, as the report puts it, “in ways that women want.”  Given that the report fails to highlight let alone enumerate the manifold outcomes and contexts of “caregiving,” the report seems to “patronize” male caring capacity more than explore, encourage and even celebrate its diverse manifestations.

The report utilizes as its one, relevant lens for caregiving, father interactions with young children and domestic chores, citing (quite rightly) that worldwide such men spend less time at these responsibilities than women do.  This is a gap that most fathers I know (across many cultures) both fully acknowledge and have done something to address, in some limited instances a lot to address.

It is useful for this report to identify caring gaps and to suggest remedial options in the (still too many) situations where remediation is warranted. But it is surely a bit disingenuous to create some essentialist equivalence between “caregiving” and time spent with young children and ironing boards.  Caregiving is of course very much about those things, including for fathers; but it is also about vocational and life mentoring, about getting up at 2AM during a thunderstorm to patch an elderly neighbor’s leaky roof, about inspiring people through classrooms and religious institutions, about offering assistance to a lonely traveler, about making personal sacrifices to enhance the educational prospects of family members, about holding the hands of people suffering from grief or tragedy, about being reliable to others and faithful to our word, about adjusting ourselves to the new conditions (caveats, if you will) of evolving young lives rather than forcing youth to become imperfect replicas of our imperfect selves.

There is so much more that could be listed here.   Caregiving by fathers and others is incredibly multi-faceted.   It requires a flexibility and fairness of spirit.  It involves an ability to process kindly and attentively the (sometimes maddening) demands and limitations of others, including of course, partners and children.

Many of the fathers I know do these and any number of related things.   They might wish to have more time with their children – or to assist the children of others – but they are often doing things that bring value and benefit to the home, and also to the world, our world, the world that any children they have sired are soon destined to inherit.  If preparing and guiding people, young and old, to face and cope with challenges in these messy times cannot be fully acknowledged as “caregiving,” I’m at a loss to understand its meaning. If providing materially (and hopefully emotionally) secure contexts for growth and challenge is not “caregiving,” regardless of whether it corresponds neatly to what some others might “want,” then we need urgently to find new terms to honor this service.

As most of us can attest from our own life experiences, father doesn’t always know best.   But just as clearly, many fathers and their male surrogates do much to help children and others prepare for hopeful, thoughtful, independent participation in a complex, rapidly shifting and too-often unsettling world.  The specifics of this caring might at times seem out of context and rather “old-school,” and those specifics might well include too many baseball practices and too few dirty diapers. Still the reliability of this caregiving and the willingness to work through the many stages and caveats of others’ lives are essential to positive growth and development.  I am personally and extraordinarily grateful to the many fathers in my own contexts and around the world who, through their actions and values, stay this challenging course.

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