{"id":20602,"date":"2011-06-17T11:00:52","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T17:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=20602"},"modified":"2011-06-17T06:34:28","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T12:34:28","slug":"fathers-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=20602","title":{"rendered":"Father’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

My oldest was born almost 20 years ago. \u00a0I’ve had a few Father’s Days. \u00a0Of course, I have a father – a great one, as it happens. \u00a0I’m a lucky guy.<\/p>\n

As Bob Collins notes over at News Cut, not everyone – fathers or <\/em>kids – is so lucky:<\/p>\n

I think being a father is way harder than anything else in the world, but all I take away from that is a new appreciation for my father, who passed away some years ago, shortly after I wrote him a letter telling him so (I’m still waiting for my letter, kids).<\/p>\n

The survey presented some interesting data, but shied away from the deeper questions about the role of fathers. If 1 in 10 fathers lived apart from the family in 1960, and now it’s 1 in 4, is that a failure of fatherhood? Is that why fathers think it was easier to be a father way back when?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s certainly a part of it.<\/p>\n

Margaret Meade once wrote that “Motherhood is a biological necessity, and fatherhood is a social accident”. \u00a0And for the past couple of decades, society has been putting its money where Mead’s mouth was. \u00a0I couple of years ago, I wrote about my own ambivalence<\/a> about Father’s Day:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So while raising kids is probably no harder now than it was then, I think it’s fair to say that legally, culturally and socially being a father is a lot more fraught than it used to be.<\/p>\n

Anyway – here’s hoping everyone has a fantastic Father’s Day this year. \u00a0Beer, baseball and brats for the house!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My oldest was born almost 20 years ago. \u00a0I’ve had a few Father’s Days. \u00a0Of course, I have a father – a great one, as it happens. \u00a0I’m a lucky guy. As Bob Collins notes over at News Cut, not everyone – fathers or kids – is so lucky: I think being a father is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20606,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20602\/revisions\/20606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}