They call attention to their pain, getting into trouble, getting hurt, doing things that are bad for them, as if they are calling for a father to come take them in hand and straighten them out or at least tell them how a grown man would handle the pain.
They competer with other boys who don't get close enough to let them see their shame over not feeling like men, over not having been anointed, and so they don't know that the other boys feel the same way.
In a scant 200 years--in some families in a scant two generations--we've gone from a toxic overdose of fathering to a fatal deficiency. It's not that we have too much mother but too little father.
THE MYTHS OF MASCULINITY
Our modern mythmakers are busy tackling the relationships between fathers and sons to find connections between pre-patriarchal and post-patriarchal consciousness, between the old fear of the too-powerful father and the new longing for a father to love and teach and anoint us.
The pain and grief and shame from the failed father-son relationship seem universal, as evidenced in the popular movies of the past few decades which had father-and-son themes that overshadowed anything going on between men and women.
Father-son myths attracted huge audiences in the 1970s and '80s. Men feared being like their fathers, but they wanted desperately to bond with them even if they could never really please them enough to feel anointed.
In 1989, the film that set the tone for the Men's Movement was Field of Dreams. Baseball, with its clear and polite rules and all its statistics and players who are normal men and boys rather than oversize freaks, is a man's metaphor for life.
In this magical fantasy, Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) tells us his life story: how his mother died when he was two so his father gave up his efforts to play pro baseball in order to raise his son.
Costner hears a voice from his cornfield telling him "If you build it, he will come." He understands the message to mean that if he mows his cornfield and builds a baseball diamond, his father's hero, Joe Jackson, will appear. He does. Then Costner's dad appears in his baseball uniform, and father and son solemnly play a belated game of catch. Father and son don't talk much, they just play catch with total solemnity. And it is quite enough.
What goes on between the father and son-and what does not go on between them--is surely the most important determinant of whether the boy will become a man capable of giving life to others or whether he will go through life ashamed and pulling back from exposure to intimacy with men, women, and children.
A NEW GENERATION OF NURTURERS
It takes the fulfillment of all these relationships for a boy to become a man who is able to live in peace and cooperation with his community and to give something back to his family. Fathering makes a man--whatever his standing in the eyes of the world-feel strong and good and important, just as he makes his child feel loved and valued.
Mercifully, parenting is not an efficient process--the old concept of "quality time" is a cruel cop-out. A father who gets to hang out with his children is reliving the joys of his own childhood. The play is the thing.
Becoming Father the Nurturer rather than just Father the Provider enables a man to fully feet and express his humanity and masculinity. Fathering is the most masculine thing a man can do.
Will this new generation discover the healing power of fatherhood? As I look at the young men coming into manhood now, I see many who are willing to risk being hands-on fathers in a way that was rare in my generation. My son and son-in-law and nephews, for instance, are yearning for children, not just children to have but children to raise.
They are not alone. I feel optimistic about the sort of fathering these guys will do. The trend is dear: the boys who got fathered want to be fathers, and the boys who didn't fear it.
PHOTOS (3): Atlanta attorney Frank Morro and son Thomas: "Sharing the responsibilities of parenthood can add a new level of enjoyment and intimacy."
PHOTOS (2): Connecticut father and son Bill and Billy Bergner.
PHOTO: L.A. Law(yer) Ed Casey with twin sons Michael and James.
PHOTOS (3): Financial Officer Vincent McCann and his son Gerald: "Fatherhood lends purpose to your life; you provide and protect for a reason."
Excerpted from Man Enough: Fathers, Sons, and the Search for Masculinity (Putnam) by Frank Pittman, M.D. Copyright@ 1993 by Frank Pittman.
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