In 1995 I became a "weekend dad." I was on recruiting duty for the Marine Corps, on an unforgiving assignment that required working fourteen hour days, six days a week. Sundays I'd make the trek from Olympia, WA up to Everett where my soon-to-be-ex-wife had moved. I'd strap my two-year-old daughter into the car seat and we'd set out on our weekend routine: to the park, if it was sunny and warm; to the playland at McDonald's, if it was rainy and cold. (Everett is always rainy and always cold.)
I was returning home one Sunday evening when I stopped off at a bookstore in Seattle. I stumbled upon David Blankenhorn's new book Fatherless America and started reading the chapter on "The Visiting Father." After a few pages I put the book down and left the store before anyone saw a Marine start to cry.
Over a decade later, I've once again stumbled upon Blankenhorn's book and found the passage that pierced my heart:
The evidence shows that the great majority of visiting fathers are not--indeed, cannot be--good-enough fathers to their children. The deck is stacked against them. Too much has changed, too fast; too much will continue to change. In theory, it may be possible to restructure everything else about a family while maintain fatherhood as a constant. In practice, it is hardly ever possible. Visiting fathers have lost the bases of fatherhood. As Bronislaw Malinowski put it in his classic cross-cultural analysis of parenthood, "the child is linked to both its parents by the unity of the household and by the intimacy of daily contacts." But for the Visiting Father, both aspects of this linkage are irrevocably shattered.
Tonight Mr. Blankenhorn will be in D.C. and I have the pleasure of joining him for dinner. I want to tell him how much I appreciate his book, and how he is absolutely wrong. I want to tell him that the base isn't always lost and that the linkage is not always shattered. I want to tell him that it is possible to be a "good-enough father" because I am one, I am good-enough.
But it isn't true. As much as I would like to believe otherwise, his book was devastatingly prescient about my own experience as a "visiting father." Over the past twelve years I've learned being a part-time dad is not enough. Our children always need more.
That is why I want to address a specific, narrow audience with the rest of this post. I want to address those fathers who are on the verge of leaving their families.
I want to start with a basic premise: When your first child is born, your life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. If you disagree, then you can stop reading now. The rest of what I say will only make sense to those who understand that this is the foundation of fatherhood.
The problem, of course, is not with your kids but with your wife. You may be having a tough time in your marriage. You may be thinking that you no longer love or can live with your wife. You may believe that divorce is the only remaining option. I don’t know your situation. I won't pretend to be able to understand what you are going through. I only know this: you're children need you at home. Your sons and your daughters need your presence. Real fathers don’t leave their children
I'm fully aware of how unpopular such a claim will be. Our society tells us that you shouldn't "stay together just for the kids." Our culture tells us that progress has made fatherhood a vestigial artifact. Our hearts tell us that we deserve to pursue our own bliss.
Such an unpopular sentiment bears repeating: When your first child is born, you're life stops being about what you want and starts being about what they need. They need you at home. If you're a man and aspire to being a dad, that is all you need to know.
If your wife is physically abusive to you and the children then you need to get out -- and take them with you. Otherwise you stick it out. If you have to stay in your marriage for one year or for eighteen, you stick it out.
What do you do if you're wife wants a divorce? You beg her to stay. You change what you have to change. You use guilt if necessary to get her to "think about what is best for the kids." If nothing else works, then you ask her to commit to six months of marital counseling before she files for divorce. If at the end of the six months she's still resolved to end the marriage you ask for another six months. You keep asking for as long as it takes. You may lose the fight eventually but if you're a man you will not give up on your family until you are bloodied and broken.
Don't kid yourself that your divorce will be different because you have a good relationship with your children's mother. My ex-wife has become a dear friend and a superb partner in parenting. Despite the peculiar circumstance which ended our marriage, I couldn't ask for a more thoughtful, accommodating woman to be my former spouse. But as hard as we work to make it easier on our daughter, everything we can do is not enough. At the end of the day, my child lives in a house where one of her parents is missing. Divorce doesn't just end a marriage, it ends a family.
By now I've lost almost everyone who has followed me this far. Most people will roll their eyes at my naiveté or skulk off to write about my idiocy. So be it. My hope is that there is at least one father left--just one--who will seriously consider what I'm saying. I hope that he will go into his child's room tonight and watch them while they sleep. I hope that he will think about what it means to his babies that he is there for them when they go to bed and that he is there for them when they wake up. Finally, I hope he'll realize he has the power to retain a precious gift that we visiting fathers have lost and that we can never get back. He still has the the opportunity to be a good father.
No comments:
Post a Comment