Fatherhood

It was 7:43 in the morning, and I had been up on my feet in the hospital room all night, letting my wife dig her fingers into my arm. I offered loving words, wanting to help but not seeing much else useful that I could do. One time during the night I turned on the camcorder, but my wife just growled at me, "Stop talking to the camera! Let the camera talk to itself!" It was now the end of a 36-hour ordeal of labor, and I knew my aching feet were nothing compared to what Ruth had endured. The miracle of childbirth was now complete, and Ruthie’s exhaustion was exceeded only by her joy as she held our baby boy for the first time. I was overwhelmed. I was now a father, and my life would never be the same again.

Three and a half years later, we repeated a similar scene. Fortunately, labor lasted just five hours this time, although it was still no walk in the park. Our boys, George and John, are now eleven and eight years old, and while our lives have been much more complicated ever since they were born, there is nothing in the world we would trade for having them in our lives. I had heard it said that when you have children, it feels as if your heart were outside of your body, walking and running around. Now I know that feeling. Children can be the source of the greatest joy as well as the greatest pain and heartbreak in our lives. As a father, I have a sense of vulnerability that will probably never go away. Even when my boys are fully grown, I know I will never stop being a parent and never completely stop worrying about them. Even if I were to lose them–the most unbearable thought I can imagine–fatherhood would still be part of my identity for life.

Today is Father’s Day, and I can’t wait to put my arms around George and John, who slept in at home this morning. They’re with a babysitter and three friends who are spending the weekend with us. I thought about bringing them this morning, but then I imagined preaching and managing five boys all morning, and I thought hugs when I get home would be a lot better.

Father’s Day as an American holiday is almost a hundred years old, but in its origins it is a secondary holiday to Mother’s Day. It began after a woman named Sonora Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909 and decided that there ought to be a Father’s Day, too. She wanted a way to honor her own father, who had raised her along with five siblings after her mother died. I’m impressed, since just a weekend with five children is enough for me!

At one level this is a simple holiday, a time to honor the fathers in our lives. But it isn’t always that simple. For some of us, our relationships with our fathers are rocky at best. Some of us have even been hurt, abandoned or abused by our fathers. Some of our fathers are still living, and some are not, including my wife’s father who passed away four years ago. (We talked about him this morning, and we miss him very much.) Some of us may never even have known our fathers. There are divorced fathers, step-fathers, adoptive fathers, birth fathers, gay partner fathers, grandfathers, fathers-in-law, and people who have served as father figures in place of fathers who hurt us, let us down, or simply were not in our lives. We have a wide range of relationships with our fathers, from distant to deeply loving. Among men, some of us are fathers and some are not. For any of us who have lost parents or children, or who wanted children and could not have them, it can be a sad or painful day. Celebrating Father’s Day is easy for some, not so easy for others.

I love my own father, who lives in Iowa where I grew up, but our politics and religion couldn’t be much more different, and the range of topics we can safely discuss is pretty limited. As a Unitarian Universalist I don’t fit his idea of a Bible-based minister. When I was ordained he wasn’t there and he didn’t even send a card or message saying, "Congratulations!" Yet I still know that I wouldn’t be here if not for him, and it isn’t hard to identify ways that he has influenced my life. For good or for ill, there is no getting around the fact that we are products of our families of origin. I still have fond memories such as going with him and my grandfather to Iowa Hawkeye games and Dad trying to clear jellyfish off the beach on a vacation in North Carolina. And even though he left most of the daily tasks of child rearing to my mother, I know that becoming a father changed his life dramatically as well.

Part of the challenge of fatherhood is that our culture’s expectations of being a father have changed over time and are not always consistent. The same could be said for mothers, too, although the changes have been somewhat different, such as simply adding career roles to traditional mothering and household roles and expecting mothers to be superwomen. For fathers, there is a contrast between the image of the dominant, strict and often unemotional provider father, and the more equal and nurturing partner, emotionally connected and more involved with home and children. No one ever fully meets these stereotypes, but my parents assumed a male-dominant model of marriage that I would never want to copy today. I never saw my father help with housework and I never saw my mother challenge my father on any matter of significance. And yet, to a large extent, I think my father was trying to do what he thought he was supposed to do. It has taken years of reflection, therapy, experience and learning to find my own model of fatherhood, but there are still times when I discover habits and assumptions within me that flow from the patterns I saw as a child.

The image of fatherhood is often tainted by the pervasiveness of patriarchy in our society, both historically and still present today. When my wife Ruth engaged in a study of the history of Mississippi, where we used to live, she concluded that the most consistent and pervasive influence on the culture and history of Mississippi, maybe even more powerful than racism or fundamentalism, was patriarchy. Patriarchy still thrives in much of American culture and religion, where women still cannot count on equal rights and where God is still overwhelmingly thought of as male–a truly bizarre idea if you think about it for long. This patriarchy is not without a cost. Families that follow a traditional male-dominated model of marriage have triple the rate of spousal abuse compared to more egalitarian marriages, for example. Patriarchy also helps feed our nation’s obsession with violence and even a willingness to torture, though in reality it is only the weak and insecure who attempt to prove their masculinity by violence.

I have sometimes wondered why conservative men are often so threatened by the idea of gay marriage, and I have concluded that part of the threat they feel may not be a threat to marriage per se, but a challenge to the assumptions of patriarchal marriage. If a same-sex model of marriage can work in which the partners are fundamentally equal, without pre-defined gender roles, then it suggests that egalitarian heterosexual marriages might work also, undermining the dominant-submissive model of patriarchal marriage.

I do believe that essentially egalitarian marriage can work and that it is inherently a better model, but it is not simple or easy. Men in this culture receive many mixed messages about what it means to be a man, a husband or a father. No one gives us a map for how to navigate these ambiguities, so we often have to figure it all out as we go along. I don’t want to be rigid, harsh or punitive to my children, but I still want to give them firm enough boundaries, keep them as safe as I can and nurture their character. I certainly don’t want to be domineering, but I still want to be strong. (What helps is to realize there are other sources of strength that don’t depend on force and domination.) I don’t want to follow stereotypical male roles, but some division of duties makes sense, and at home I’m still more inclined to work on the bills and finances than on the dishes. I’m no sports fanatic, but it’s one of the few things I can talk about with my father, and I am still more likely to watch a football game while Ruth would prefer the home and garden channel.

Even becoming a minister is in some ways following a male stereotype, although my wife is also ordained in the Episcopal Church. I am pleased that within Unitarian Universalism, there are now more women than men in ministry, despite the fact that at the moment the full-time ministers here at JUC are all male. That’s by accident, not design, and I’m sure it will change some day, but I did joke when I was hired that perhaps I should apologize for not considering gender reassignment! I am glad for gender balance in our tradition, although I did notice that while there are hymns in our hymnal referring only to mothers, there are no hymns referring only to fathers. It is important to remember that we need positive images of fatherhood in our tradition and in the world.

I reject, of course, any notion of inherent male superiority, or female superiority, for that matter, although we might have a more peaceful world if women had more power. I also can’t deny that there are some differences between women and men that seem rather pervasive, even if they are not universal or absolute. There seem to be differences in how we approach sexuality, as well as in how we approach ethics, relationships, and often conflict. It’s hard to tell how much may be built in to our genes and how much is just cultural exposure replicating itself, but parents who try to avoid gender stereotypes for their children are often shocked by how much their children seem to gravitate to some of the same stereotypes on their own. Of course, parents who try to enforce gender stereotypes on their children often fail as well. It still all goes back to the inherent worth and dignity of each individual and compassionately accepting ourselves and one another for who we are.

There is no roadmap for being a father, and it can be confusing, exhausting and exasperating at times. But at the core, what matters most is love. Not just love as a feeling, although the emotional bond between father and child can be powerful indeed, so powerful that it aches inside. Beyond that is also love as a form of commitment, for the good of our children and for the good of the world they will grow up in. That means doing the work of knowing ourselves, understanding our children as unique individuals, and responding to what we learn. It means modeling as best we can the principles we hope our children will follow, knowing that we will never do so perfectly, and that there will undoubtedly be things our children will need to forgive us for some day. (With two clergy for parents my own kids will probably need a lot of therapy some day!) Good parenting means putting a priority on relationship and being there for our children when they need us to be, even sometimes when it’s inconvenient or we don’t feel like it. And then, it means being ready and willing to let go when the time comes to do so.

There is also no roadmap for having a father, but that path also requires love, commitment and honesty. This means seeing ourselves and our parents as honestly as we can, neither idolizing or demonizing them, and neither blaming them for our own faults nor blaming ourselves for their faults. It means nurturing authentic relationships, in which we stay connected as much as possible while maintaining our own boundaries, safety and integrity. For those of us who have lost our fathers, even if they can’t change now, we can still change and grow in how we incorporate into our lives what we remember and learned from them. A path of love means reflecting on what our parents have taught us, honoring and remembering them, struggling with the questions of self-protection and forgiveness if they have been hurtful to us, and appreciating the time and love and guidance and sweet memories they have given us. In many cases, we then have to face whatever our responsibilities may be when the tables turn and, as often happens, it is the children who end up caring for their parents. Every situation is unique, and you need to be true to the realities of your own life and family relationships. But love and honesty are always good guides.

It seems like yesterday that I stood in that hospital room, watching the birth of my child, but the years are flying by quickly. Last year, George started calling me "Dad" instead of "Daddy." He’ll be 12 this summer, and the characteristics of a pre-teen are starting to emerge. John still calls me Daddy, but he is developing his identity and asserting his personhood in many ways, from declaring himself a vegetarian and sticking to it for three years now, to learning to manage his own bank account.

I have to admit, I didn’t really know what I was getting into when I became a father, or what all the consequences would be. As it turned out, it is partly because of being a father that I am here in Colorado. It started five years ago with the dawning realization that the culture in Mississippi, especially for boys, and especially in the schools there, was not a good fit for our older son. He was telling us so, if we were willing to listen. "This is fit," he said one day, meshing his fingers. "This is not fit," he went on, jamming his fingers like this. "That’s me. I don’t belong here." We were lucky that he expressed himself so clearly, and even more lucky that we had the resources and opportunity to be able to respond. We were growing ready in any case for a change in our careers, and when a school was suggested to us in Denver that proved to be just the right fit for our situation, we took the risk, quit both our jobs, and made the move, leaving family and good friends in Jackson, knowing hardly a soul in Denver. In the end, my son really gave me a gift, because without that move, I probably wouldn’t be an ordained minister today.

I don’t know what the rest of the journey of fatherhood will be like for me, but if it is anywhere near as fulfilling as the path so far, it will be well worth it. I know how vulnerable being a father makes me, and I ache for the fathers and mothers whose children are off at war, or who have endured the tragedy of losing a child. Being a father does give me a greater appreciation for my own father as well, even if there is more distance between us and our understandings of the world than I would wish.

I love being a father, but I also don’t think having children is a necessity for a good life--it doesn’t fit for everyone, and it is helpful that not everyone has the commitments and vulnerabilities that come with having children. In an overpopulated world I especially don’t understand the idea that any of us has an obligation to have children. Since I am a father, I have to remind myself that even though I have a special responsibility to my own children, I also have a responsibility to all the other people and children of the world, many of whom have not had the options I have had. I am a big believer in public education, for example, and I would never have thought that I would put a child in a private school of any sort, much less move to another city to do it. I figure it just gives me a greater responsibility to support public education in other ways. I should add that the experience has also taught me not to judge the choices of others too quickly. We never know the whole story.

Fatherhood is neither a necessity nor a piece of cake, but given the choice, I have no doubt that I would do it all over again. The hugs and kisses of our children are truly sweeter than wine, and watching them grow up is a never-ending education in life itself. It is a source of awe and wonder to be a part of the chain of life stretching back for billions of years, and to carry it on one more step, regardless of where it goes from here. I find the idea mind-boggling that I had anything to do with bringing two new beings into the world, complete with their own identities, their own capacity to love, and their own potential, perhaps, to be fathers themselves some day. Of course, especially on the day they were born, as well as in the years since, I give the credit that is due to their mother. But today is Father’s Day, and I give thanks for the opportunity to be a father. All of us have fathers or father figures of some kind in our lives, without whom we would not be who we are. Love offers us a path of joy in celebrating the best of fatherhood, and of healing when that is what we need.

And so, today, we remember and honor all our fathers:

The fathers we love so dearly,
The fathers we have lost,
The fathers we admire,
The fathers we struggle to forgive,
The fathers who stepped in when our own fathers failed us,
The fathers who have guided our lives,
The fathers we never knew,
The fathers who are today,
And the fathers who are yet to be.

May it be so.