A Father's Weight

The Good Father: On Men, Masculinity, and Life in the Family
by Mark O'Connell, Ph.D.

Fathering is one of the most basic and profound human activities. Yet in addition to its many joys, fatherhood is often freighted with longing, sadness, anger, and misunderstanding. Most of us, men and women alike, are acutely aware of how difficult it is to father well, year after year, until, and even after, children are grown.

At the same time, the essential relationships between men and women and their children are under stress these days as never before, subject to the pressures of work, money, divorce, remarriage, and adoption. As a result, many fathers struggle with deep uncertainties about their parenting abilities. Meanwhile, society's definitions of masculinity appear ever more fluid, negotiable, and unreachable in today's media-saturated culture, which endlessly exposes men (and women) to a stream of images celebrating violence, war, hypermasculinity, athletic ability, corporate competition, alternative life-styles, "metrosexuality," and triumphant materialism.

Who, men might rightfully ask, are we expected to be? Do various pop-cultural definitions of masculinity really reflect what it is to be a man? What in men's true natures helps them be good fathers? Can aggression be useful? What masculine traits do fathers need to guard — and guard against? How do men love their children, and how is being a father very different from and no less essential than being a mother? And how can women understand how men experience fatherhood?

This is the rich social reality that Dr. Mark O'Connell, a psychotherapist and father of three, addresses in his provocative, brilliant, and wise book. Drawing on both his professional case histories and personal experience, O'Connell describes the internal conflicts that many men feel about the difficulties of being a father but which they are often unable to discuss easily. Such issues include questions about authority, discipline, intimacy, physical contact, and sexuality.

In ways that are distinctly masculine, O'Connell says, fathers communicate standards, insist on respect for others, instigate necessary confrontations, and even engage in the kind of rough-and-tumble play that enlivens the developing neural structures in a child's brain. O'Connell contends that fathers play a crucial role in conveying the rules, expectations, and inevitabilities of life, and he describes how men can help their families by understanding and embracing their own masculinity. Men are different from women and must be allowed to parent differently as well.

The Good Father, however, is not just a very readable book for fathers struggling to find their best selves in relation to their spouses and children. Women will want to read The Good Father as well. All men and women have complex and important relationships with their fathers, whether or not those men were good fathers. Dr. O'Connell reveals how men and women alike bring these relationships to their parenting, and how we so often need to untangle these generational knots.

Filled with reassuring common sense, The Good Father opens a path toward happier, more satisfying relationships for the entire family while helping men become the good fathers they deeply want to be.

Chapter 1

Just a minute, "Dad."

Dylan, my eight-year-old son, kneels over a battlefield of knights, dragons, and fantastic beasts — each imbued with special powers that he has beneficently bestowed. I've asked that he leave behind the immense (though instantly reversible) carnage that surrounds him in order to do his homework. His answer tells me that the response I want won't occur right away.

By now I've heard "Just a minute, Dad" thousands of times — from Dylan, from Chloe, his older sister, and from Miles, their older brother. I've heard these words often enough to have acquired an ear for their music, for the very different meaning conveyed by each subtly different tone.

Sometimes "just a minute" means that Dylan hears me and will do what I ask, but I'll just have to wait a minute. This tone hints at a new order: By taking this minute's space he makes clear that his mind is emerging from mine, that his being is no longer seamlessly folded into my vision of who he is.

This version of "just a minute," with its embedded claim of selfhood, holds a hard and important truth: Time is passing. And lately Dylan's distinctive little-boy gait, with its quick patter of small feet moving across the floor, has taken on a slower and heavier rhythm. The simplicity of his smile and the pureness of his voice are still there, but a slight edge in his voice, a new curl at the corners of his lips, hint at the more complex emotions that lie ahead. His skin is still smooth and unblemished, but the biology that will change his body and mind from boy to man lies coiled within him.

Yet "Just a minute, Dad" is not always about respectful proclamations of emerging selfhood. And indeed, that's not its meaning this time.

This afternoon Dylan's "just a minute, Dad" is spoken inwardly, more to himself than to me. His eyes move away from mine, looking not so much to his battlefield but to the middle distance, away from what is happening between us. And when I find those eyes, when I try to hold them with mine, he looks away again, smiling a smile that hides more than it reveals. This "just a minute" is not about a real minute, instead it proposes timelessness; it asks that the game never end, and that homework never begin.

These days Dylan's messages are reassuringly familiar. Yet years ago, when Miles, my older son, would say "Just a minute, Dad" in this same reality-bending way, I often didn't know what to do. I knew my son hadn't really heard me, didn't really want to hear me. His opposition made me angry, though it was not a useful kind of anger. I didn't feel solid or rooted, like a man and a father who had been through this before; rather, I felt edgy, ungrounded, like a fatherless boy trying to be someone he had not yet become. I knew that I needed to do something in response to "just a minute" but I didn't know what. So either I'd let things go, or I'd find a frictionless way to coax Miles into doing what I wanted. And with this lack of contact I lost touch with him, and our relationship vanished into a fuzzy world of pseudo-niceness.

But over time, I began to do things differently. I forced myself to confront as well as to coax, to seek out my son's eyes rather than look away. At first my uneven efforts felt like paternal prosthetics; strategies and techniques aimed at working around those places where I felt no guidance from the memory of my own father. But, organizing myself within the exoskeletal belief that as a father it was my responsibility not only to love my children but also to use my power and position to help them grow, I began to find my footing.

These days the psychic landscape around "Just a minute, Dad" is less daunting. For one thing, I have learned that Dylan, like all children, needs his father's help. The private battle that lies on the floor around him is a valuable one to him; it is a place where his mind can play with truly important things — death, violence, triumph, and defeat — without flesh-and-blood consequences. But eventually he will have to move outward from it, to real-world struggles that require the backbone that accrues from having done homework, to jobs and relationships that are lived in real time, and to a life from which he does not avert his eyes, his mind, or his body. So I know, now, that I have to find him with my eyes, my voice, my mind — with my self. I have to lead him, through the friction of our contact, away from the infinite minute he proposes, and introduce him, again and again, to the finite minutes within which we all must live.

He doesn't need a heavy hand right now. But he does need a quiet and firm, "No, not just a minute, now. You've got homework to do."

Fatherhood and Authority

What does it mean to be a father? A good father? These days the answer is not so clear. Indeed, every week all manner of fathers, from the newly minted to those near the end of active duty, from men who are successful in many areas of their lives, to those who are struggling, come to my office with painful worries and confusions about their fatherhood and, by extension, their very masculinity. Often their concerns and doubts flow from a common source.

Consider Jeffrey, a forty-five-year-old father of two. Jeffrey came to talk with me about trouble he was having with his teenage children, who were failing at school, getting into drugs and alcohol, hanging out with a bad crowd, and generally spinning out of control. Jeffrey was at loss. "I listen to them, I love them, I took them to their Little League games and all that, but it seems like I've lost them," he said. "I don't see what more I can do." I could tell that Jeffrey cared about his kids, but I also noted that he seemed to be timid and helpless in the face of the chaos. Indeed, as he spoke he slumped his tall, thin frame ever deeper into his chair, averted his eyes, and spoke haltingly, a man tumbling into himself. I noted how defeated he seemed, and I wondered aloud, gently, had he ever considered tightening things up a bit? Perhaps some rules, a curfew, and a generally firmer attitude might help. Jeffrey became instantly more alert, but only because I seemed to have horrified him.

"I'm a father," he answered testily. "Not some kind of 'tough love' tyrant."

Jeffrey was struggling with what it means to be a father, and, what was more, with a dilemma that is familiar, indeed, I will argue, defining, to many men these days: What kind of man am I? And who could blame him for wondering? The world in which we live is replete with pill-form enhancements and strap-on accoutrements of male power — Viagra, bodybuilding magazines, advertisements for penis enlargement, hormone supplements, power tools, power suits, Hummers, and more. Yet all of these products are emblems of our confusion about masculine power, not viable paths toward it. There is tremendous pressure on men to be strong and powerful, but simultaneously there is overwhelming uncertainty as to how to do that, whether it is okay to do that, and, indeed, what exactly "strong and powerful" even means.

And nowhere is this uncertainty more evident than when it comes to the question of what role, if any, a father's masculine, paternal power, his authority, should have in the raising of his children.

Fatherhood and authority: These subjects have long depended on each other for their meanings. If there is such a thing as a bedrock paternal function, it may well be authority. And if there is such a thing as an archetypal representation of authority, it is a father. From the strong and usually (but not always) fair hand of God the father, to Oedipus usurping his father's position and thus breaking the rules that are the foundation of civilized life, to Lear's failure in paternal authority, all the way to the mileage the late Ronald Reagan got from his seemingly benign paternalism, fatherhood and authority have been intimately linked.

But what do the words "fatherhood" and "authority" really mean?

Let's start with "fatherhood," a word essential to all of us, yet one that evokes remarkably different feelings. For some of us, fathers are kind and protective. For some, fathers are loved and loving. For some, fathers are agents of discipline. For some, sources of strength. For some of us, fathers have been harsh, critical, and even violent. And, of course, for all too many of us, fathers have been absent.

This latter phenomenon is central to our modern relationship with fatherhood. As we all know, many families are currently without fathers, because fathers are either emotionally unavailable or physically missing by virtue of long work hours, divorce, estrangement, outright abandonment of mothers and children, and even death.

This epidemic of fatherlessness and father hunger has generated revived awareness of the importance of fathers. Indeed, many fathers have made a conscious attempt to be more involved with their children. But these well-meant efforts have been accompanied by, if not stimulated by, a cultural prescription for fatherhood and masculinity that, while in some ways valuable, is also incomplete and flawed. These days many men and women believe that to be a "good father" means to act in a way that could best be described as a caricature of a "good mother." Meanwhile, in a related development, many of the basic qualities we have long associated with masculinity are coming in for heavy criticism. Men's strength and stoicism are now seen as the root of numerous ills, and so men are exhorted to renounce these "archaic" aspects of their masculinity for such "feminine" attributes as empathy, connection, and attunement.

It's news to no one that this is a complicated and confusing time to be a man and a father.

And then, what about authority?

Webster's defines "authority" as "the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues; the right to control, command or determine; an expert; persuasive force, conviction," and, in earlier editions, "power [that is] derived from opinion, respect, or esteem," and "power exercised by a person in virtue of his office or trust." These definitions, with their emphasis on power and position, are consistent with Machiavelli's assertion that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved, and Weber's belief that the power of authority derives from its legitimacy. These familiar ways of thinking call to mind people and institutions invested with keeping the social order — judges, policemen, clergy, doctors, politicians, teachers, and others — and they certainly call to mind the traditional image of a father.

But beyond these definitions, the word "authority," like "fatherhood," evokes a wide range of individual responses. To some it speaks of structure and order; to others it brings to mind discipline; to others, it conjures images of oppression and tyranny; and to still others, it elicits the urge to rebel.

And, as with fatherhood, there is evidence of a dramatic shift in our relationship to authority. Whereas most people once located themselves clearly within accepted, if sometimes begrudged, hierarchies, these days we consider the lines of these power structures to be fluid and negotiable. Teachers' knowledge, judges' judgments, politicians' motivations, the wisdom of the elderly, parents' right to discipline, priests' moral rectitude — all were once accorded institutional status, and we organized ourselves around and even underneath them. Now they, and many more, are subject to scrutiny and skepticism. Indeed, even authorities of a different order are being disenfranchised. I'm talking about the underlying realities that surround us — physical realities of time, space, our bodies, and so on, and more conceptual realities like science and God. In generations past we lived our lives within their immutable confines, and we understood ourselves to be subject to their relentless demands and expectations. But now we have developed schools of philosophy and cultural analysis that claim that moral truths are relative, that biological imperatives such as gender and life span are negotiable and contextual, and that scientific givens are really uncertain matters awaiting refutation by yet more perspicacious investigators. Now technology allows us to imagine that the inexorable march of time and the nonnegotiable reality of distance are not the obstacles that they once were.

Every day I see these disorienting shifts ripple through the men, women, and children who come to my office to talk. I see them in men like Jeffrey, who worry that they will become "tough love tyrants" if they discipline their children. I see them in men like Jake, a forty-two-year-old father of two, who said: "After being driven crazy for half an hour about whether my son was going to get dressed for school I'd had enough. I put my hands on his shoulders, I walked him to his room, and I told him not to say a word until he was dressed and ready. It felt great to me, and I could tell my wife was relieved too, because the kids' routine drives her nuts every morning. But that night we wondered: 'Was I too hard on him? If I make him do it, will he never learn to do it himself?'" And I see these questions arise not only in men, but in women and mothers. Consider Phyllis, a thirty-nine year-old mother of three, who told me: "I'm sick of the chaos. I know our children need rules and structure, and that happens when Hank [her husband] weighs in. I know I shouldn't say this, but his voice is different from mine — stronger and heavier. They hear it differently. But I worry. He's so big, sometimes I think he scares them."

Fatherhood and authority: two ubiquitous and important phenomena, often linked, whose meanings are, perhaps as never before, fluid and uncertain. These days fathers, mothers, and families are struggling with basic uncertainties regarding whether to shape children or leave them alone, whether to speak softly or firmly, whether to discipline or support, and whether the words "Just a minute, Dad" signify an emerging selfhood that needs to be respected, even promoted, or whether they communicate a stance that begs to be opposed and redirected.

In the end, fatherhood and authority, alone and in their convergence in a father's authority, are such deeply human and personal matters that they cannot adequately be understood by looking in Webster's, or by turning to even the most well informed of the experts. So if we are going to understand this issue in a useful way we'll have to go further. We'll have to find the meanings that help us apprehend things not just cognitively and semantically, but genuinely and experientially. Which means that we'll have to get personal.

Gary Palmer

When Gary Palmer first came to see me, neither he nor I could anticipate how much his story revolved around fathers, both his children's and his own.

Gary was a brilliant mathematician with a good job, a wife, and two children. In his forties, he was a study in contrasts. Handsome and well built, he could be engaging, particularly when he brightened with interest. However, he often retreated, and became boyish and unassuming. At times he went even further away, and would hide behind an ironic, nihilistic detachment.

Gary and I had something in common. His father had been older when he was born (mine was sixty-three when I came along), and, when he was a little boy, his father, like mine, had vanished (mine died when I was five). In Gary's case this absence involved nothing so straightforward as an outright death; rather, it was an emotional disappearance. What was more, the cause was a mystery. Maybe it was his father's frustration with his career, or maybe his unhappiness in his marriage. Maybe it was due to something so bedrock as a chromosome loaded for alcohol or depression. I often wondered whether Gary's father's pain had grown out of his having been a bomber pilot in World War II. He had flown many missions over Germany, and had never talked about the war. In any case, Gary's father had become depressed and discouraged. His once promising military career came to a dead end, and he gave himself over to drink and to unhappiness. As Gary told me, "My dad was like a ghost. I know he was important once, but by the time I came along, he was pretty much a shell of a man."

Gary had been a good kid — he didn't get into serious trouble and did well in school. Still, like most boys, he had his moments — of disobedience, of disrespect, of getting out of line. Occasionally his father would lose his temper with Gary, but he was never much of a dependable disciplinarian. Gary spoke of this shortcoming with regret. "I have a love-hate relationship with rules," he told me. "Aren't they amazing? Rules, I mean. I have a friend, another mathematician. He calls mathematical rules the Great Fascist." Gary became somber. "A father has to embody the rules. But to do that he has to be steady and fair. My father was in and out. Drunk, angry, and remote. I have a lot of anger at him, and at rules. I didn't take him seriously, and I don't take rules seriously either."

By the time Gary was a teenager he came and went pretty much as he pleased, having very little to do with his family. He remembered his father as a ghostlike presence during these years, floating around the edges of his life, physically there, but having no impact. And he also told me about a shift that took place, one that was to have great repercussions. Gary came to realize that he could think circles around his father. He later learned from his mother that his father had been painfully aware of this, feeling that he had very little to offer his gifted young son. But Gary, caught up in the heady intoxication of it all, wasn't aware of how his father felt. It simply seemed that outsmarting his father was a "cool" thing to do.

Copyright © 2005 by Mark O'Connell, Ph.D.

About the Author

Dr. Mark O'Connell received his doctorate in psychology from Boston University and his postdoctoral training in psychoanalysis from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife, Alison, and their three children. He has a psychotherapy practice of adults, adolescents, and couples, and serves on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and the Harvard Medical School. He writes and speaks about fatherhood, family life, and masculinity.