Sometimes a question comes to focus a whole range of issues that are beginning to surface from different directions. The question 'Do families need fathers?' is taking on a new pertinence within a post-modern world, helping us to identify certain anxieties, and encouraging us to think in quite different ways about changes in the family that we are witnessing. The western nuclear 'family' no longer serves as a model to which people in general feel they have to aspire. But for many it still remains 'normative', and people from diverse class and ethnic backgrounds can still feel bad or ashamed that they did not grow up within a 'normal family'. But in different ways this 'normalisation' of a single family form is weakening as people increasingly recognise that it is not even a majority form within many countries in the west.
| You can no longer take a nuclear family form for granted |
The family gives way to families, and to a language of intimate relations as within a post-modern world there is an increased openness and awareness of diversity and plurality. What is clear is that you can no longer take a nuclear family form for granted. In many schools, teachers have had to learn a sensitivity to the varieties of family form that they meet in the classroom. If they do not want to 'stigmatise' particular forms, they have to learn how to give equal recognition and respect to a diversity of intimate relations. For many it is no longer a matter of 'falling short' from a particular idealised form of two parent families. In some classrooms in North London it is a minority of children who go back to traditional two parent families and there can even be feelings of envy, the sense that they are missing out because they do not have different houses to go back to. We have to recognise that many families seem to get on very well without a father, and that many children grow up within single parent families, or within lesbian families. But there is often a recognition of the importance of men being around, they do not have to be 'fathers' . So there is a sense that a family still needs men around to provide some kind of contact or relationship for children. But if children might need ongoing relationships with men this is very different from the traditional notion of the father as a critical figure within the family. The issue also arises that men might be important in different ways for boys and girls. They might be no less important, but they might be important or significant in quite different ways. For girls, for instance, it might be important to have an ongoing contact or relationship so that men do not become idealised figures. Otherwise it is quite possible for men to assume an undue importance or significance through their 'absence'.
But if there is a developing interest and concern about the place of men in the lives of children these recognitions force us to ask quite different questions and move us on to quite a different ground from that we are familiar with, both from the traditional conception of the nuclear family, but also in interesting ways from the radical family notions of the 1970s. Within the 'traditional' family there was little sense that families needed fathers. Rather, fathers existed on the boundaries or edges of family life and relationships. They existed primarily as figures of authority who could be brought in at particular and crucial moments to define boundaries and to assert a particular form of authority. It was as if 'fathers' had authority within the family, but in some sense were not part of what was going on within the families.
So traditionally at least, families only needed fathers as sources of income. For it was women who were left with the task of bringing up children and looking after the home. So there was often ambivalence in relationship to the father, and the place of the father within the traditional family. Often there was very little that was going on emotionally between the partners in the marriage or relationship, for each had their own sphere of responsibilities and duties.
Interviewing men from diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, one can be struck by how often men talk about their fathers as 'absent'. There can be an unacknowledged hunger for more contact with fathers and it is striking the lengths to which many men can remember having to go in order to establish even the smallest contact with their dads. Men talk about standing for hours holding tools for their dads while they were working on the shed, or standing next to their fathers as they worked in shops helping to stack shelves. But often these efforts on the part of children go unacknowledged and unappreciated. This does not stop strong feelings of respect developing, especially for men who go into the world and 'make something' of their lives. Even if the father is absent' he can still be terribly significant as a 'model' for boys. But often this is abstracted and idealised as Nancy Chodorow talks about it, though this does not make it less psychically 'real' and significant. It is one of the enduring gifts provided by Robert Bly's Iron John that he reminds us of the hunger that many men still feel for greater contact with their fathers. In the 1980s there has been a developing sense that fathers often want to have a different contact and experience with their children than they had endured with their own fathers. There seems to be a widespread sense that goes across class in many ways that men want to create something different, but often they do not know how, or what this might be. In part, it grows out of a changed practice where many more men are present at the birth of their children. This can be a profound and transforming experience, and helps to create a connection which men have learnt to cherish and wish to develop.
| Men are aware of the gaps and silences in their own relationship with their fathers |
Many men are aware of the gaps and silences in their own relationship with their fathers and carry a sense of loss and disappointment for what might have been. There is also a sense of the difficulties of remaking these relationships when we are older, as if men carry a sense of betrayal at the cultural notion which fosters the idea that with effort and will we can take up relationships at any point in our lives. Often we have experienced the falsehood of this as we have learnt how hard it is to undo the silences and renew contact with our own fathers. Wanting to learn from this means creating a much earlier and fuller relationship with our own children if we are to father in different ways.
In the early 1970s the women's movement recognised the family and intimate relationships as a site of power as much as love. They recognised that a rhetoric of respect and equality often served to render invisible the subordination and repression of women. The family was a suspect institution, especially when it served to undermine women's sense of autonomy and self-worth. With feminism, women sought different ways of defining themselves as autonomous individuals who had their own values and goals and so refused to be subsumed or reduced to existing in relation to men and children as wives or mothers. It was as individuals in their own right that they were to rediscover themselves.
But as women withdrew from the 'family', and found ways of valuing their own relationships and lives, so men often withdrew, and sometimes violently, for they had grown up to assume that 'their women' would be there for them. Issues of assault, domestic violence, and wife battering became crucial issues in the 1970s as did questions of sexual harassment at work and sexual abuse in the 1980s. Not only did this show up the family as a potentially dangerous site, but it also encouraged questioning of men and masculinities. In many different ways men were threatened by the growing independence of women, and often reacted violently to sustain their control. As long as masculinity was identified as a relationship of power, it became difficult for men to recognise ways in which they could change. In the early years of feminism there was a stress upon autonomy and equality and the family was to be avoided and distrusted. Heterosexuality itself was deemed to be an institutionalised relationship of power so that relationships between men and women were seen as essentially coercive relationships of power.
Within new patterns of relationships that were developing in the 1980s it became possible to conceive of greater equality as both young men and women had jobs and could contribute more or less equally to the upkeep of a flat. But when children came onto the scene, issues of autonomy and dependence presented themselves in much more complex forms and it was recognised that it was often women who were left with more or less primary responsibility in relationship to young children while men returned to work a week or so after the birth. Men seemed to be able to escape in work while women often felt resentful that they were literally left 'holding the baby'. Young families had little experience of how to cope with the emotional issues which emerged and the depths of feeling that were stimulated with a new baby. Within the context of a 'politics of the family' it had been easy to rethink the family as an 'equal contract' between men and women. With feminism there was a recognition that the family was in no sense a protected space, for the larger structure of gender subordination and oppression inevitably found expression with the personal. But with many young women entering the labour market it seemed possible to sustain a vision of equal relationships, at least, that is, until children were born.
One strategy which emerged in the 1970s was to deny the gender-specific character of 'mothering' and 'fathering' but to think of parenting as a set of gender-neutral tasks that could be more or less equally shared. This went along with the notion of mothering as being 'socially constructed'. There was supposedly nothing intrinsic in the relationship between mother and child. For some it meant ceasing to breast feed for this 'stood in the way' of both parents being able to establish a more equal relationship with the child. But this caused distress for many women, and such practises were reviewed as it was more generally recognised that 'mothers' might well have a specific connection in the early months of a child's life. There might be little that is inherited biologically, but this was learnt through the process of 'bonding'. Fathers could also bond, but it might come into focus in different ways. There seems to be an issue of timing in the relationship so that different parents seem to move 'in and out of focus' for the child at particular times. This goes some way to restoring a sense of 'fathering' and 'mothering' as distinct and possibly gendered activities. Whether we think of the 'father' as sustaining and supporting a 'primary' bond between mother and child, we still need to recognise the autonomy and separateness of the father-specific relationship with the child. Work by Cuttlechuck and others in the early 1970s already showed how the baby registers the specific presence of the father and how this relationship has a form of its own from quite early on.
| It is less an issue of family form than it is of recognising how children need to be valued and respected in their growing individuality |
Within lesbian families this might work out in other ways with two mothers. It might not be a 'biological' issue so much as a matter of the contact that is made between parents and children and how this is sustained. It is not 'given' in the relationship. It has to do with establishing and sustaining contact and love within relationships. It might well be easier if two adults are involved but obviously many children thrive within single parent families: If it is easier with two adults, this might be because there is a separating out of qualities, and it might well be easier for children to risk anger at one of its parents if she or he can feel secure and accepted within the other relationship. But every form of relationship has its own difficulties and promises and we should resist the idea which has recently gained currency in the States that adults should stay together in relationships and marriages that have long died for the sake of the children. There is nothing worse than children growing up in a conflictual relationship where they experience themselves as being torn between their separate parents. Often it is children who carry the unresolved feelings of their parents. It is less an issue of family form than it is of recognising how children need to be valued and respected in their growing individuality.
We have to be suspicious about the reassertion of traditional family values, especially when it is used as a part of a sustained attack on single parents. Communitarion ideas as they are being developed in the US by Etsioni and others have served to sustain quite traditional notions of the family as a critical institution within society. These ideas are gaining credence within the Labour party and might well have encouraged Tony Blair to make his unfortunate attack on single parent families. It might be right that fathers have to take greater responsibility for their children, but up until now the Child Support Agency in England has conceived of responsibility in financial terms alone. It has served to re-enforce quite traditional conceptions of the father as figure of authority and as a source of income, and has not made it any easier to rethink notions of fathering and reworking conceptions of parental responsibility so that men can be more involved in an every day way with their children. But this involves rethinking patterns of work so that there is much more job sharing and so a redistribution of time within the family and between family and work. It might turn out that the dynamics in lesbian and gay relationships when it comes to children have more in common with heterosexual relationships than we often think. For instance, if a mother feels unsupported in the early years of having a child then resentments might grow whatever form the relationship takes. This might prove explosive in the second year of a child's life when there is sometimes more space emotionally to register what has been going on. It is also a time when relationships, and not only heterosexual relationships, often go into crisis.
The sparse evidence seems to show that children equally thrive within the context of lesbian families, and that what matters is the love, recognition and contact which children have. A sense of adults being there for them emotionally to support them through their growing years. There is no guarantee that this will be offered to children within traditional families: rather there is a lot of evidence that children feel taken for granted and can experience themselves as almost invisible within the context of the family. Others often feel that they are taken for granted and feel devalued and unrecognised themselves within the context of traditional relationships. This is why single parents need more support, not less and need to be appreciated and valued for the important work they do in raising children. In countries like Denmark this is done and there is a sense of disbelief at the punitive nature of recent discussions in England.
It is important not to generalise from particular relationships or to assume that things are more or less alike across class, 'race' and ethnicities. But there might be issues about how the division of physical and emotional labour is negotiated within particular relationships and how different parties feel valued or appreciated and get what they need for themselves from ongoing relationships. Within the post-modern world we need to appreciate the diversity of family forms and intimate relations. Rather than looking back at a romanticised vision of the traditional family that never was, we need ways of acknowledging and respecting new family forms. Feminism was very helpful in pointing out the isolation, loneliness and devaluation that many women experience as mothers in traditional families, but it took time for feminism to reinstate and revalue the activity of mothering and child care. It is quite misleading to present feminism as 'anti-family', rather, it is more helpful to validate its insights into the ways that women were made to feel within the family. As men have taken on roles of child care they have also experienced the difficulties, frustrations and boredom that can go along with all the pleasures and excitement of looking after small children. Often it is only when men experience these difficulties that they become identified and valued. I think we need an open mind about how gender enters into these differences, and whether there are specific qualities that fathers can offer to their children.
In some relationships it might be that men feel comfortable in taking on a 'mothering' role and a woman might feel jealous of the relationship that gets established between father and son. It helps if she can talk about it, and if she can express her frustration in feeling forced into setting boundaries and assuming an authority position within the family that was traditionally associated with men. In 'new families' different kinds of arrangements might be made, say, in heterosexual relationships where women find themselves working away from home so that it makes more sense for men to be involved in the everyday care of children. Again there seem to be no models which can be universally imposed, but within post-modern families it is a matter of organising intimate relations in ways which suit the needs of both adults and children. But where there are no models that we can fall back on, we often find ourselves repeating behaviours which we know internally from our own experience with our own fathers, say, as men. Unless we recognise that this is new ground and that we need to learn both from our own experience, and also from the experience of other men who are endeavouring to be more involved with their children, we will find ourselves unwittingly reproducing quite traditional patterns of relationship, especially in periods of anxiety and crisis. Often these are not issues which can be resolved within the personal sphere alone, but demand different forms of social relationships, different ways of thinking the relationship between work and intimate life.
Since men have traditionally occupied a space within the family as figures of authority it can be difficult to negotiate a different way of relating as men within families. Sometimes when men are reacting against their fathers who operated as strong authority figures it can be difficult to distinguish between setting boundaries as a way of maintaining authority and forms of authoritarian behaviour. If men feel threatened they can slip back into throwing their weight about and assuming a right to control others within the family. But at other times they might feel more comfortable with taking on an adaptive role which can make it hard for men to define themselves without thinking they are asserting their power. These are difficult waters and with few models to follow it becomes crucial for men to be able to learn from their experience. This is not a matter of men learning how to 'mother', but rather learning what it means to be responsible both as a partner and as a father within relationships. There might well be something 'particular' in the relationships between fathers and sons, especially when it comes to supporting a son in his masculinity. In general terms this might have to do with helping a transition from boyhood into manhood and helping boys feel good about being a man, showing the different ways in which it might be possible to be a man, rather than falling back into traditional modes of being.
There might also be 'issues' in the relationship which need to be worked out, for example when a father is failing to provide clear boundaries, possibly because he is over-identified with his son. A father might feel easier leaving the authority to the woman who might well be working away from home. This pattern needs to be questioned for it can leave a women feeling as if she is dealing with two children rather than being able to work things out equally with her partner. Too often difficulties are created because both partners become focused on the welfare and well-being of children, sometimes as a way of escaping having to deal with issues between themselves. It becomes difficult to open up direct open and honest communication between the adults so that issues can be resolved. This can be an acute difficulty where both parents are engaged in full time work in which there is little emotional time and space left for nourishing their relationship as partners. It is the relationship between the adults which becomes thin and attenuated.
We project difficulties onto children because we are unable or unwilling to face issues that are emerging in our relationships as adults. It is in this context that it is important to take more responsibility for our emotional lives so that we can share in more open and more honest ways with our partners. In coming to terms with our own childhood experiences as men and working through them for ourselves, rather than discounting them as immature or childish, we can more easily share our experience with our children so that they can learn from them. In this context men might have a particular relationship to their boy children for they can share some of the difficulties they went through in their own transitions through childhood.
As men we are unused to sharing our experience, let alone sharing it with our children. Traditionally fathers felt that in becoming emotionally close to their children they were thereby compromising their positions of authority. In redefining relationships of authority men are having to find new ways of relating to both their girl and boy children. This summer I took pleasure in teaching my daughter Lilly how to jive. She really wanted to learn and it felt that there was important learning going on between us which was part of her learning how to relate to boys, and also how to accept her own sexuality. As other women were looking on they seemed to share a sense of disappointment that they had not, as girls, been able to have similar experiences with their own fathers who were much more removed and distant. Often men have withdrawn, especially from the girls in their growing sexuality, being unable to handle the feelings coming up for themselves.
| Young boys have been brutalised through being made to feel that it is wrong to need the love and support of others |
As fathers we might well have a particular responsibility in a relationship with boys who can so easily be made to feel ashamed of their vulnerable feelings, thinking that they compromise their male identities. If as men we are ready to share how we ourselves learnt to deal with our own fears and anxieties this can help boys validate different aspects of their experience which are so often negated and concealed within macho conceptions of masculinity. It is so easy for boys to feel that they 'should not feel this way' and if they do it only proves that there is something 'wrong' with them. It goes to show that they are not 'man enough'. This can encourage all kinds of acting out, all kinds of proving behaviours through forms of hyper-masculinity. This is very clear in a twelve year old boy who needs to say 'fuck' and 'shit' and so break conventions as a way of proving his manhood supposedly. If we can recognise these behaviours as part of a transition that we can remember from our own boyhood then we do not have to be so restrictive and moralistic about it. Rather we can accept it for what it is.
As we recognise and accept our own histories so we gain more contact with our own 'inner child'. This allows us to be more flexible in our responses both with our partners and our children. We can recognise processes of experimentation both in girls and in boys if we can connect back to our own histories. This can be hard for men to do because we have learnt to 'leave the past behind' as it becomes devalued as childish. In some way being with children at different ages is a gift which allows us to work through some of the unresolved feelings from our own childhood experience. As we learn to work on ourselves so we are less likely to be trapped at particular stages in our own development. We are more likely to be accepting of what our children are going through having learnt and accepted what we went through ourselves as children. It can be frustrating, especially learning to attune to the experience of very young babies and children who have quite a different sense of timing from what we are used to as adults. It can also be liberating in that it connects us to our own childhood. And it can be painful if we touch the hurts we have hidden and repressed for so long.
Relating to children can help us as men connect to our inner childhood and so to heal some of these hurts through contact with our own unresolved histories. This is not an easy path and we might not be prepared for what emotions come forward but it is yet another sense in which fathers need intimate relationships, need families as part of recovering and redefining clearer and more contactful masculinities. Men need contact with others in close and intimate relationships if we are to grow and develop in our individualities. As men we have learnt to be independent and self sufficient, to feel that we can survive without others and to treat our own emotional needs as signs of weakness. We learnt when we were very young boys to discount our own needs and emotions so that it can become difficult to respond openly and lovingly when we see these needs expressed by our children. But in relating to small children we have opportunities for change which are precious if we can only accept them.
Many families seem to get on well without fathers and many men are left feeling dispensable, as if their partners can do very well without them. But it is not so clear that men can do without intimate relations and without the love and connection that intimate relations can bring. This is still a lesson that we have yet to learn since for so long young boys have been brutalised through being made to feel that it is wrong to need the love and support of others. This is still a lesson that we offer young children so that it can be hardly surprising when they act so brutally and violently against others who might otherwise offer them love. We need to learn how to respect the sufferance and humiliations that so many boys have lived through rather than assume that because men collectively maintain power in the larger society they have no right to voice their particular injuries and hurts. But unless we have learnt to listen to ourselves it can be difficult to hear what other men have to say.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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