{"id":18868,"date":"2024-09-24T10:38:02","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T14:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/?p=18868"},"modified":"2024-09-24T13:16:01","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:16:01","slug":"creating-a-patchwork-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.equimundo.org\/fr\/creating-a-patchwork-dad\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a Patchwork Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally distributed by the New York Times\/Hearst News Service, May 2006
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWill you PLEEEEEASE be my Daddy?\u201d asked 10-year-old Rodney, tugging on my shirtsleeve and looking up at me with imploring eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

I met Rodney only 45 minutes earlier during a small focus group I conducted in his school. The focus group was part of my research for a book I am writing on <\/span>daddying<\/span><\/i>. I coined the term daddying to differentiate the one-time biological <\/span>act<\/span><\/i> of fathering, requiring no more commitment than some DNA, from the lifelong <\/span>process<\/span><\/i> of daddying, requiring a lifelong commitment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

The melancholy, unfocused look in Rodney\u2019s eyes brought something important into focus for me. I had seen this look of yearning before, and it always yanked at my heart. I had seen it in the eyes of other kids I had spoken with, as well as in the eyes of fathers and grandfathers I interviewed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Suddenly I recalled seeing that combination of yearning and resignation somewhere else. I had seen it staring back at me in a mirror long ago, reflecting my thoughts of what might have been if circumstances had been different \u2013 if, for instance, my dad had been more present when I was growing up. Although I knew he would be there in a pinch, I needed more than a pinch of his attention.<\/span><\/p>\n

As often happens when we do not get what we need at home, I looked elsewhere. I began to create the \u201cideal dad\u201d in my mind\u2019s eye, gathering paternal qualities I admired from other men: a stranger, who winked at me across the aisle on a city bus; the Good Humor man, who allowed me to be his \u201cassistant\u201d as he sold ice cream outside my elementary school; my fifth grade teacher, who was the kindest man I ever met; my grandfather, who was sensitive as he occasionally helped me with some of my high school homework; a local college baseball player, who invited me to be the team bat boy; a friend\u2019s dad, who had a playful sense of humor; an uncle, who once came to watch me play in a high school soccer game; and the director of a camp for children with emotional disorders, who was a supportive mentor during the three summers I served as a counselor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I even gathered qualities from bits and pieces of characters I read about in books or saw in movies or on television. Without a conscious awareness, I was creating a patchwork dad to provide the warmth I needed and to mend the emotional holes created by a largely absent father.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I scavenged daddy morsels wherever I could find them to satisfy my hunger for paternal attention. My daddy-deprivation also caused me to look within, to daydream about ways I would be a different kind of father. I made a youthful commitment to be exuberantly involved in the lives of the children I planned to have some day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 60 years of my life when my father was still alive, I had rationalized that he was as good a dad as he knew how to be; that he never learned how to be a more present dad because his father was absent most of <\/span>son<\/span><\/i> life. I rationalized that expectations for men in the 1940s and \u201950s were different from today: fathers then were not expected to be much more than breadwinners and disciplinarians. Nurturing was considered a mother\u2019s job, not something you expected of dads. But all my rationalizing did little to lessen the sadness I felt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, when one of my four-year-old students told me that he saw my role as school principal as being \u201cthe daddy of the school,\u201d I realized that one of the reasons I had chosen a career that involved daily contact with kids was to do what I could to minimize the hurt that many children feel as a result of an adult male attention deficit \u2013 the deficit of attention that too many kids receive from their fathers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although there are things we do not know about good daddying, a lot can be learned by simply asking kids, fathers, and grandfathers themselves \u2013 that is what I did during thousands of interview hours in 17 cities in three countries. I also learned that daddy-yearning cuts across generations, has a cumulative corrosive impact that stunts our fullest development, and that it can be minimized \u2013 if not prevented \u2013 with modest effort. I learned that the qualities kids said they want in a dad match the parental qualities dads said <\/span>they<\/span><\/i> most want to cultivate, and that those qualities are also the ones that child development professionals identify as important to enable children to thrive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Above all, kids want their fathers to:<\/span><\/p>\n