Fathers’ Day
By Mitch Berg
I’ve written about this in the past. It’s worth another visit.
I’m very ambivalent about Father’s Day. I used to say I was of two minds – but it’s more like three minds these days.
On the one hand, I’m thankful for the father I have. My dad was just about the best father a guy could ask for (and still is), in just about every way. The part I didn’t appreciate about him until I had older kids of my own? Most guys learn about being a father, for better or worse, from their own fathers. My grandfather died when my Dad was five, though. My grandma raised Dad, and as good a job as she did, she wasn’t a father. Fathers bring different things to their children than mothers do – including the whole “How to be a dad” thing. So Dad was kinda winging it. And I’d like to think that, in the immortal words of Dr. Perry Cox, “he could have done a lot worse”. Part of the spirit of Father’s Day for me is acknowleding him. So thanks, Dad!
As to me? Having kids, and getting to raise them, was the most important thing in my life. Still is. And up through about age 11, it was almost purely wonderful and rewarding. Now, getting my kids through their teenage years and into their twenties has been – I’ll be diplomatic – a challenge. But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they? On that level, Father’s Day means saying “We survived another year!”. And that’s not so bad.
The third thing, though? Father’s Day makes me angry.
Our society systematically devalues fatherhood. It’s the most flagrant in our current urban culture, where a strong majority of babies are born into fatherless homes, where teachers are reporting an epidemic of risk-averse kids afraid to go outside because they’re being raised by risk-averse single women, where entire generations of young men are growing up with no masculine role models in their lives until they get into their teens – when all the role models are bad.
But it’s not just in the neighborhood. It’s all over our society. Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s model for the mainstream father is Homer Simpson – incompetent, borderline-depraved, saved only by his preternaturally competent, all-enduring and (at least on TV ads) improbably out-of-his-league wife (and sometimes daughter and, occasionally sons before they get the lobotomy that seems to go along with fatherhood in that special little world).
The current trend in feminist-dominated academia echoes Margaret Mead’s quip from fifty years ago – “men are a biological necessity and a social accident”. The education system is increasingly marginalizing boys and men of all ages; medicating their masculine traits and treating them as social disorders, shunting boys who refuse to comply and conform onto the “Special Ed” track, making “education” a punitive death march for boys who don’t get the message “go along, get along, conform, keep your butt in the seat and speak when spoken to”. And that policy is bearing rancid fruit; before long, women will outnumber men in higher education 3:2, with the margin even more grotesque in Education (ensuring the vicious cycle will continue) and the social “sciences” (ditto).
And while the situation has improved in recent years in many states, the fact is that for many men, “fatherhood” is a legal state of eternal debt and denial; ejected from any meaningful presence in their childrens’ lives by a court system that spent a few decades acting as an agent of Big Feminism and county social service bureaucracies that still largely do, men are relegated to the role of occasional visitors and ATM machines and, often, much worse; a shocking percentage of “domestic abuse” allegations are brought purely to manipulate the system during divorce actions.
So for a fair chunk of the fathers in our society, “Father’s Day” is a cruel mockery. And it’s a symptom of the current system that I find I need to hasten to add “I’m not talking about the abusive ones, or the fathers that are nothing more than sperm donors”, as if they’re the majority.
I focus on the first two views of the holiday, because I’m a lucky guy on both counts. But let’s be mindful, on this most tongue-in-cheek and pollyannish of all the Hallmark Holidays, that there’s another side to the story.
June 16th, 2013 at 6:07 pm
They say, “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged”.
My mugging took place in the waiting area of The Carver County Social Services Office. The occasion was a mediation appointment with my ex-wife. As I waited, I listened to the receptionist crack jokes with a friend. The quip that still sticks in my mind was the conflating of “voice mail” and “male voice”. In other words, when the receptionist heard a male voice, she put him into voice mail.
During the mediation, I was to learn that although my bi-polar ex-wife had a tendency to wander off without notice for weeks at a time, this in no way prevented her from being awarded sole physical custody of the children – and the attendant child-support.
I don’t know if many people know this – but there is no statute requiring child-support to actually be spent on children – and it never was. It was simply gravy for my ex because I picked up all expenses.
But that was twenty years ago and my children are happy and healthy – and now are my best friends.
Don’t fret the teen years, Mitch. It passes too quickly to worry about.
June 16th, 2013 at 11:10 pm
I remember what must have been over 50 years ago thumbing through the “mens” magazines like True or Argosy at the barber shop. I remember reading an article about how TV back then was usually portraying fathers as inept, clumsy, unrefined, unfeeling, etc, even on shows like Father Knows Best and Dick Van Dyke. Dare we mention Amos ‘n’ Andy? Or earlier to The Life of Riley (both radio and TV)? What a revoltin’ development this is! The War on Men began shortly after World War II ended.
June 17th, 2013 at 7:32 am
My pop taught me some very valuable life lessons….by leaving his 5 kids for his wife to raise while he went to the party.
Never forgot it, and neither did my brothers and sisters. We all learned nothing is free in this life, you get what you work for; we did what we needed to to get through high school and college, we stick tight to each other, and through hell and high water, we never took our attentions off our kids.
Thanks Dad!
June 17th, 2013 at 8:28 am
Very well-written Mr. Berg.
Part Three perfectly sums up the role of men in society today. Watch any TV show. With the exception of the old (good) Bill Cosby show, and maybe Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing,” the father is just the oldest, least intelligent, and incompetent kid in the family. There are other shows, too, but the general trend is obvious.
Thank you for pointing it out and for your fine illustration of it. Unfortunately, many are willing accomplices to it. Human sexuality is proof that there is a God and that God has one wicked sense of humor.
June 17th, 2013 at 10:29 am
Huh?
Those shows are now public domain, you need to watch them again. Series like “Father Knows Best”, “Bachelor Father”, “Leave It To Beaver” and “My Three Sons” portrayed fathers as anything but inept, clumsy and unfeeling – that came along later during the 1960’s when the counter-culture and feminism sought to undermine The Greatest Generation.
June 17th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
Don’t forget the quintessential single parent, Andy Taylor.
Conversely, a liberal is a conservative who’s just been arrested (Tom Wolfe).
June 17th, 2013 at 3:32 pm
I apologize for over-posting and will refrain in the future. However, I found this Reuters’ story additional proof of the defining down of fatherhood:
“NEW YORK, June 10 (Reuters) – He’s been commander in chief, Time magazine’s 1993 man of the year, had hopes of becoming “First Laddie” of the United States and now former U.S. President Bill Clinton is in line for a new title – Father of the Year.
The non-profit National Father’s Day Council plans to award him that honor at a New York fundraiser for Save the Children on Tuesday.”
Ranks up there with President Obama’s Nobel prize. Any bets on next year?Kanye West-Kardashian?
June 18th, 2013 at 6:31 am
Good one, Joe!
But I would qualify it with an “arrested for…..” because it does make a difference. Case in point, our eminently sane and reasonable legislature just passed a bill making it possible (probable) to be charged with a felony for violating an order for protection that one has no knowledge of.
Yup, you read that right. So if at 9:00 am, a judge orders that you cannot go near your workplace and at 9:01 am, you are still there – you’re screwed.
For all the second amendment fans out there…. California has a statute requiring the respondent (usually the guy) to surrender or sell all of their firearms within 24 hours of the issuance of an order for protection(OFP). Keep in mind that OFP’s are issued in the absence of proof and testimony by the respondent.
June 18th, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Thank you.
The law described as being instantly enforceable sounds like quite a departure from current practice. In order to be enforceable, the order for protection (OFP) must first be served.
That is, an officer must make the respondent (for whom the order is against) aware of it by providing him (usually) with a copy, explaining the prohibitions, the date for the hearing, and allowing him (usually) to gather enough belongings to live elsewhere. Then a service document must be filed with the court. The process is much like subpoena, or other legal document, service. The OFP is not valid until served.
It has even been made possible for a person to be served electronically. That is, if you’rr stopped for speeding and run in the computer, a “hit” can come up showing that you have an unserved OFP. The officer then has electronic access to the OFP so she/he can read it to you, or show it, and the certify that it’s been served. This was done, using newer in-squad computer technology, to insure service can be made (and the respondent excluded from the premises) anywhere in the country.
The law was quite clear on this – as it rightly should be. Can’t blame a person for violating something that he (usually) doesn’t know exists. Interestingly, it was one prosecutor’s opinion (honest) that the person could be arrested if served while he was in the prohibited premises. Logic being, once he gets it, even if he’s in his pajamas, on his doorstep, at 3AM, he was instantly in violation.
Great outcry from the officers present at the training, and their supervisors, caused the prosecutor to back off her stand on the issue.
Then again, after last Nov. 6th, I guess anything’s possible …
June 19th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Not to pound this topic into the ground, but has anyone out there read Walter Russel Mead‘s blog?
Today, he featured an interview by Dr. Helen Smith on Why Men Are Going Galt.
In a nutshell, men are bailing out of social institutions that no longer serve their best interests. They are opting out of marriage, college and broad areas of employment (seriously, what guy would work at the Strib?)