Given the marginalization of fatherhood and the confusion about the role of fathers, Father’s Day becomes more and more awkward. Nevertheless it still comes on the calendar and journalists, intellectuals, and cultural observers feel the need to say something about fatherhood in June.
W. Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, warns that much of what is said about fatherhood in connection with Father’s Day is nothing less than mythological — and many of these myths are downright dangerous.
Writing in National Review magazine, Wilcox identifies five myths about fatherhood that are likely to rear their heads in connection with Father’s Day. Anticipating a flow of news reports around Father’s Day, Wilcox warns: “Some will do a good job of capturing the changes and continuities associated with fatherhood in contemporary America. But other reporters and writers will generalize from their own unrepresentative networks of friends and family members, try to baptize the latest family trend, or assume that our society is heading ceaselessly in a progressive direction.” In other words, “Be on the lookout.”
Of course, we also have the “Madison Avenue” myths shown on tv all day that men are totally nincompoops and incompetents who would not survive one day without their wives around! So many commercials to criticize, so little time!
I was at a conference more than 10 years ago. One of the lectures was by a two professors from a well-known university in Pennsylvania. They were a husband and wife team and their area of research was parenting. They were very cautious in how they delivered the conclusions of their decades of research, but the bottom line was that the parenting style of men and women is very different, it is complimentary and children need both. Their conclusions were not surprising but the fact that they were allowed to remain as professors in a modern American university was. I asked how they did it, and they told me, “Carefully, very carefully.”
One important truth about the rearing of boys to men in single parent ( female ) households is this: boys’ views of their dads is through the eyes of their mothers. If the single mom disparages the father in any way, the boy becomes emotionally alienated – and many single mothers are good at this. Girls are different.