Modern Fatherhood A Struggle

There’s a set of railroad tracks in our neighborhood, and when I walk over them, I often stop for a moment between the silver-blue rails, and watch as they head south for a few hundred yards before curving sharply to the left and disappearing into a clump of trees.

Whenever I take this mental trip, I get a stubbornly strong urge to leap onto the next freight train that comes around, head toward that distant curve, and leave my current life behind.

I don’t intend to carry out this fantasy. But this much is certain: The urge to flee has never been stronger than since I became a father.

Part of me wants to slap myself for even considering this flight. Abandon my wife and 18-month-old son? Shirk my responsibilities? I must be defective.

But another part of me understands. Despite the enormous cultural changes over the past 30 years, fathering remains an ambivalent avocation for many men - part joy, part dread, allconsuming. As psychologist Sam Osherson writes in “The Passions of Fatherhood” (Fawcett): “Fatherhood can feel like something added on to our identities, not a normal and natural part of being a man. How will we make a place for it?”

Some mothers surely have similar thoughts. Yet, whether it’s due to biology, history or cultural pressure, women tend to stay. It is the men who, in record numbers, are leaving their families, disappearing on some figurative freight train around a distant curve.

What accounts for this phenomenon? Biology plays a role. Because of it, men have always felt awkward in the family. The motherinfant bond is so intense, physically and psychologically, that fathers throughout time have struggled to feel included in the family unit.

To convince men to stick around, most cultures created for us the roles of protector and provider. Our sense of self-esteem came to depend on our ability to keep our families housed, fed and safe.

For nearly two centuries, American culture has operated on this principle. But then the late 20th century arrived. Women have discovered that they can protect and provide for themselves. A flagging U.S. economy has left many men out of work or underemployed. Suddenly, men’s traditional role in the family no longer applies, and we’re looking for other ways to be of use.

One way is to become more intimately involved with the children. But that’s easier said than done. In some cases, women reject men’s offers to contribute more to child care. This usually takes the form of criticizing a man’s way of parenting, of telling him how to do it “right.”

Mostly, women welcome the help, but some fathers struggle anyway. To prepare for traditional fathering (i.e., breadwinning), we have learned to compete, perform and achieve. The new fatherhood, however, demands cooperation, acceptance and the willingness to read the same storybook 57 times.

Most of all, it requires men to let go of control. For generations, one of men’s primary assignments had been to remain unflappable and unemotional. This mind-set, it was believed, allowed us to make “rational” decisions for the good of our families.

Yet remaining in control is impossible when one spends time with children. Children’s needs are urgent and unpredictable. They require us to be tender, patient and flexible, skills that men rarely learned in our traditional upbringings.

In the long run, the new concept of fatherhood will certainly enhance men’s lives, permitting us to share in the emotional satisfaction of raising our children. In the short run, we’re struggling. And in that struggle, the train to freedom will always be alluring. xxxx