Fathers Are Not Irrelevant

I have had this conversation, coincidentally, with several people in the last few weeks:  what it means to be a good father, the difference between a father and a mother, growing up with a bad father, overprotecting fathers of daughters, and yes, absentee fathers.

One conversation had to do with the relevancy of fathers at all.  The person I was talking to said, quite matter of factly, "fathers are irrelevant."

I did not quite know how to respond to this statement as she speaks from two different, very personal perspectives.  Her father was an alcoholic who died only a year ago.  He did the best he could, as an alcoholic, to be a dad and, like most men who fail at fatherhood, worked hard to make up for it by being a better grandfather.  At the same time, this woman's daughter's father has abandoned them, deciding to take no part in the life of his daughter, a beautiful, happy, rambunctious, innocent toddler.

What do you say to someone who has such conflicted feelings about fathers?  I simply nodded my head, taking it all in.  But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

Is the role of the mother more important than that of the father?  Before my daughter was born I might have said yes.  Now, I watch my own daughter interact with her father in ways she simply does not with me.  He is an altogether different playmate and role model than I could ever be, or even want to be.  He will teach her what a man is supposed to be like, how a man is supposed to love a woman, what kind of man she should look for in the future.  He will show her a perspective on the world that I can say I do not have because of my own particular experience with fathers.

My father too was an alcoholic for over 20 years.  Even after he woke up one morning and decided to quit drinking, my relationship with him only changed in that now he was incapable of showing real emotion without alcohol as opposed to incapable of showing real emotion with it.  And honestly, much of his own stoicism traces back to his brutal stepfather.  My stepfather, who has been in my life since I was seven, had his own set of abuse issues (yep, you guessed it, tracing back to his father) that he only really began working through when he began having grandchildren.  My daughter responds to my stepfather in ways I never thought possible, often insisting during FaceTime with grandma that she get "grandpa! grandpa! grandpa!"

Both of those relationships shaped me, made me who I am.  Would life have been easier/better/fuller if my fathers had been better fathers?  Absolutely.  Would life have been easier/better/fuller if my fathers had simply not been around?  Absolutely not.

This last answer may be surprising to some who know me and know how much I have struggled (another blog, another day) and how much hatred and hurt I carried around.  But I learned from those relationships, for good and bad.  I grew from them.

There is no child psychologist on earth who would say that children would be better off without fathers.  I take issue with women who go to sperm banks, or intentionally get pregnant by men they have no intention of keeping around.  You cannot, you should not, attempt raise a child without a father.  Period.  And saying that fathers are irrelevant is to say that they make no difference, have no impact, and would be no loss if they were not present.

In fact, this kind of thinking, and it is everywhere present (hello Jennifer Lopez in Back Up Plan), is, I believe very strongly, what leads men to thinking they do not really need to stick around.  The blame for men not living up to their duties as fathers lay partly at the doorstep of women.  We women have spent the last 50 years (thank you extreme feminism) telling them we don't need them.

But we do.  And we know we do.

Having a good father shapes your identity.  Having a bad father shapes your identity.  Having a father with issues shapes your identity.

And yes, having no father shapes your identity.

No matter what, without fail, our parents shape us.  We cannot escape this reality.  What we can do is work with it, work through it.  This particular woman I was talking to about the irrelevancy of fathers, I think, misspoke.  She is doing everything she can do reinforce positive male role models, which I fully support.  And because of her awesome and very difficult decision to entirely change her life partly so that her daughter could have a strong, constant father figure in her life, I do believe her daughter will grow up well adjusted and confident in the fact that there are good, strong, compassionate men in the world.

Precisely because fathers are not irrelevant.