For this generation of mid-life men, learning to become genuinely paternal is made more difficult by the fact that they have never been encouraged, or trained, to take fatherhood seriously to begin with. On the contrary, machismo demands as a point of masculine pride that a male be clumsy in the domestic sphere, even emotionally insensitive. This Dagwood Bumstead syndrome, which portrays a man as bumbling and childish, is reflected throughout the media, but nowhere more relentlessly than on TV. Program after program insists on the incompetence of the American male to the point where, as critic John Leonard has observed, Father never knows best.
In accord with the dictates of the masculine mystique, men of this generation have been not only prepared but also indoctrinated to fail their children. Thus it is not surprising that a major trauma is often required to shake a man out of the safely detached paternal perch to which he has retreated. Sometimes this occurs only when the marriage, rather than the child, has gone wrong. Then divorce jolts men into confronting themselves as fathers for the first time.
Divorced after twenty years of marriage, William Fine, the president of Frances Denney Cosmetics, prefaces his own reaction by describing a movie scene that affected him deeply. It shows the end of a big Saturday outing where a father has taken his son hiking, bowling, and picnicking—everything the child has always wanted them to do together. About to be dropped off at home, the boy says, “You know, it’s really much better having you and Mom separated.” When the father asks him why, the boy replies, “Well, you know how you’re always so busy, and worried about work, and making up lists of everything you have to do. And now I finally made your list!”
“It was kind of devastating,” says Fine, admitting that his own experience after leaving his three children was strikingly similar:
I took my kids for granted when I was living with them—and stopped taking them for granted when I moved away. You know, your wife-rudder is gone and all you have, in terms of family, is your children-rudder.
In an almost unnatural way I probably clung to a couple of my children more than I should have.
When kids are born I think a lot of men don’t have anything to do with them as babies. I never liked babies. I couldn’t talk to them. So you wait two or three years until they are talking and they get a little bit interesting. Then you try to play football and they can’t catch—so you ignore them another two years.
Finally at about five they sort of become people. Before that they were sort of things that the mother ought to take care of. Now you start to feel the magic of growth, and you say, “Gee, that’s my kid!”—and you get feelings of pride. Then you kind of lose it for awhile. They go to school and have little problems, and you tell your wife, “You take care of that.” And then at about twelve I think you really begin to get interested in them. But you want the pleasures and not the problems.
In my case divorce made me very proud to have the problems. I was a little jealous of their habit of taking their problems to their mother. Hell, they had had a lifetime of having done that. Now there I was on the outside and they’re the family unit—and I’m wondering why they don’t come after their wise and successful father to ask how to solve some of their problems.
I hadn’t earned any of that. But wanting their love— and all of a sudden feeling a little lonely—I made more of an effort. And now I guess I’ve pretty well succeeded with two of them. One still doesn’t trust my judgment, because our record together is not very good.
Among the younger generation, attitudes are changing. A new concept of fatherhood is gradually emerging, due in part to the breakdown of stereotyped sex roles but also due to an increasing understanding that in an impersonal society men have an emotional need for their family.
“The new father,” says psychologist Edwin Nichols of the National Institute for Mental Health, “no longer considers child care to be strictly women’s work. He is much more aware of his child’s emotional needs and he actively, intimately nurtures them.”
Such sentiments still seem alien to most American men. That the emotional link between father and child is mutual, that a father needs the close, confirming tie as much as the child, is a discovery that this generation of men often make only in their middle years, if at all. Again, divorce is frequently the impetus, awakening in the man who was previously cool and detached a new awareness of his own emotional vulnerability. As the following words illustrate, the need for love is sometimes expressed not only by a rebellious child, but by an anguished father who also screams when he feels lonely:
Leaving the kids really hurt me a lot. I used to have nightmares for months after that. Waking-up-screaming kinds of nightmares. There was a dream that in one form or another kept coming back to me. The children were visiting me in some house I was living in, and I take them down to see the river—and then there is this gigantic flood. Just the tops of telephone poles arc sticking out, houses are floating away, and it’s very frightening.
We just stand there watching this flood, and then this flimsy little boat floats past and one of the boys pulls it ashore, and says, “Can we all go in it?” And I say, “Sure—but be careful.” So they go out in the boat and get caught in a whirlpool, and they’re spinning round and round and screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, save us!” And I’m saying “Let me see. I know there’s a life-preserver here someplace. It’s probably on a tree.” And so I’m wandering around looking at trees . . . and I just wander away.
And I always wake up screaming. Sometimes there are different dangers, but it’s always that kind of dream. Which is partly them drowning and partly me drowning. I don’t think it’s too mysterious what all that means.
More than just a statement of one man’s feelings, this moving testimony underscores the mutual dependency that connects all fathers with their children. Whether they realize it or not, many other men, married as well as divorced, are also drowning at mid-life. Not simply because they are heavily burdened by responsibilities, but also because they have ignored, abandoned, or rejected a child. When these ties are severed it is not just the child who sinks, but the father as well.
The emotional interdependence between the generations is what Erikson meant when he talked about a man’s “need to be needed,” and about generativity. And it is what the Yale group mean when they talk about the new developmental challenge at mid-life for a man to become genuinely paternal and to assume more authority and guidance as a father.
It is important for a man to cultivate this side of himself without waiting for a divorce or other trauma to occur. It is important not simply for the sake of his child, but also for his own enrichment and growth. Forging a deeper, closer connection to the younger generation is a way of validating who he is, what he has learned and experienced. It is a way of retaining his humanity.
When such enrichment fails altogether, when a man fails to develop his capacity for generativity, Erikson warns that there will be a pervading sense of stagnation and personal impoverishment. What is the alternative? In terms of the interlocking crises, Sticrlin and his associates make a strong case for a man’s engaging his adolescent child in a “loving fight,” an action that, they suggest, will strengthen both father and child at this stage of life.
A man’s defining his own values and what his life means is crucial, first, because it is only when a man has a strong sense of his own worth that he can allow his son to differ with him and thus “lose the battle” partially, without feeling threatened. Rather than abdicating the role of a strong father or waging an annihilating fight, he will then be able to oppose his son’s different choices directly and openly—that is, engage him in a “loving fight” about principles and values.
“The father’s willingness to engage the son in man-to-man battle conveys the father’s respect for his son’s emerging manhood, his feeling that his son is a worthy opponent,” says Stierlin. “From his father’s respect the son internalizes his own manhood.”14
Despite disagreement about specific values, this “loving fight” is vital for the son’s self-definition because it enables him to identify with his father’s sense of commitment. But it is equally important for a man’s sense of self. His integrity will be enhanced because although the son will now emerge as a man different from his father, he will also carry on his father’s tradition in many important respects. It is through this “loving fight,” then, that the attachment of child to parent is transformed into respect and love between two adults.
At mid-life a man’s becoming whole, developing the feeling side of his personality, is essential not only for revitalizing his marriage, or sustaining a love relationship, but also for managing the heavy responsibilities that come with being the generation in the middle. It is no longer enough to be the breadwinner. At mid-life a man must provide emotional as well as economic support for both the young and the old. He must assume more authority and guidance, dispense more care and concern.
It is difficult being caught in this double bind. Nonetheless, becoming a father in the fullest sense, learning to be genuinely paternal, can yield enormous dividends. When a man adopts a more loving, nurturing stance toward the younger generation, he also validates himself. Because of his guidance, his generosity, the young will carry on his tradition and thus confirm him in ways he cannot do alone.
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