Tell Hallmark To Wait In The Hall

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

Father’s Day is one of those holidays that I’m very ambivalent about.  Not because it’s a Hallmark Holiday, per se – but much more because of the way fatherhood has been devalued in our society.

At the core, of course, I have little to complain about. I grew up not only with a father, but a really great one, the kind that, for whatever his shortcomings, was the kind of father any kid should have, someone who passed along not only genes, but values and traditions and the little things that helped him in his own life.  Dad wasn’t like a lot of dads in my neighborhood; he couldn’t tear down an engine, and he didn’t hunt.  A lot of that, of course, comes from his own childhood; his father, my grandfather Oscar, died when he was a toddler, long before I was born.  So Dad didn’t learn a lot of that kind of stuff.  And his love of sports certainly didn’t rub off on me.  But he was a speech teacher – as noted in this space many times, one of the best teachers ever – and his love of the craft and art of giving a great speech, and of writing, and communication, certainly did.  Although he only really held two jobs in his adult life (teaching with two different districts), and always had a hard time relating to my post-industrial, new-job-every-year careers, it was the skills he gave me – communicating, reading other people, knowing that making an impression on people was a matter of careful planning and not happenstance – made my career(s) possible.  I despair, at times, of being able to do as well with my own kids; but having my own, I suspect he must have felt the same way at least once or twice.

Anyway – thanks, Dad.
Not everyone is so lucky, though.  24 million Americans are growing up without fathers.  Some of it is due to cultural shifts; big swathes of our society are being born into “fatherless” families; “Urban” culture in this country exalts skipping out on ones’ kids; it sounds tragic, and it is, but it’s a natural offshoot of the devaluation of men, and fathers, left over from slavery and the matriarchal nature of most African societies (which was, in return, reinforced by the rootlessness and destruction of families under slavery).  Marriage is an otion rather than the expectation for many in our society – in some quarters, most of our society.

Madison Avenue doesn’t help.  The standard archetype of the father in American advertising is the bumbling, inept,. schlubby oaf who’s lucky to be saved by his gorgeous, competent wife (and children – usually girls, of course, since the boys are going to grow up to be fathers one day, too – right?).  And if the schlub and Mrs. Fix-It break up?  The nation’s family courts systematically undercut the rights and value of fathers in divorce and custody settlements nationwide.

I’ll chalk this one up for President Obama; he’s not much of a President, but when it comes to fatherhood’s meaning and value, he knows a thing or two:

The president showcased fatherhood in a series of events and a magazine article in advance of Father’s Day this Sunday. He said he came to understand the importance of fatherhood from its absence in his childhood homes — just as an estimated 24 million Americans today are growing up without a dad.

A Kenyan goatherder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships and Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. left a family behind to get his schooling in the United States. He started another family here, then left his second wife and 2-year-old Barack Jr. to return to Africa with another woman.

His promise flamed out in Africa after stints working for an oil company and the government; he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was 21, a student at Columbia University.

“I don’t want to be the kind of father I had,” the president is quoted as telling a friend in a new book about him.

And in an interview Friday with CBS News, Obama said: “It was only later in life that I found out that he actually led a very tragic life. And in that sense, it was the myth that I was chasing as opposed to knowing who he really was.”

His half-sister, Maya, called his memoirs “part of the process of excavating his father.”

Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers — not the kind who must be unearthed in the soul.

Which is certainly something to strive for – not only as individuals, but as a society.

3 thoughts on “Tell Hallmark To Wait In The Hall

  1. Something I certainly respect in the President. He is an involved father and he is a prominent role model for minority Americans. Be a dad, be there.

    One of the very few things I ever agreed with Al Franken on: In one of his books he called out the bullshit of spending “quality time” with children. He said “I spend big huge piles of quantity time with my kids.” There is no substitute for attendence.

    Kudos to Mitch Berg. Being a parent (especially of teenagers) is not for the weak or faint-hearted. Going it alone is twice as hard. Doing so makes you a hero.

    God bless and have a really good day.

  2. Pingback: Shot in the Dark » Blog Archive » Father’s Day

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