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In the Amazon, the birds and the bees are different. Spread throughout the rain forest, there are a handful of tribal groups that have a novel conception of conception, if you will. These people, who have no contact with each other or linguistic similarities suggesting contact in recent centuries, appear to have independently arrived at the conclusion that babies are literally made of accumulated semen.
Any girl or woman who has reached the age of menstruation is considered to be a little pregnant, but it is only when she's accumulated enough semen that a baby takes form and begins to grow inside her. Anthropologists call this belief system partible paternity (If you're interested in deepening your understanding of partible paternity, check out Cultures of Multiple Fathers, edited by Beckerman and Valentine, easily accessible to non-specialists). One consequence of this belief system is that women seek to have sex with different types of men, hoping to capture some measure of each for her child. Thus, she's likely to want to spend some time in the bushes with the best hunters, the best story-tellers, the funniest men, the kindest, the strongest, etc. -- in the hopes that her child will combine the essence of each. Far from being shunned as bastards or sons of whores as they would be in most contemporary cultures, these children of multiple fathers benefit from having several men around looking out for them. Anthropologists have calculated that their chances of surviving to adulthood are better than those with only one recognized father.
At the other extreme, we have children like Barack Obama, who grew up with no father at all. In this respect, he's certainly not an unusual case in our society. Yet even many children who were lucky enough to have a father in the house find that theirs is mostly bad luck: it's not clear that an abusive, emotionally distant father is better than none at all.
As these tribes and others demonstrate, fatherhood can come in many ways. Paternal care can come from a teacher who looks out for the new kid in school, an uncle or neighbor who invites you to join the game, or even from an unmet man who helped clear the path you find yourself on today.
In today's New York Times, there's a beautiful op-ed piece by Robert A. Caro about President Johnson's complicated passion for civil rights. Turns out, LBJ would've turned 100 on Wednesday, and Thursday marked 45 years since MLK's I Have a Dream speech. Caro describes how Martin Luther King broke into tears when he heard this white president from Texas promise black Americans that "We shall overcome" together. At that moment, both men became co-fathers of a gestating hope for racial equality, peace, and respect -- a hope with many mothers as well, of course.
Now, two generations later, we've seen a mixed-race man take the stage in Denver to speak to us as adults, never even mentioning his racial background at all, subtly urging us to join him on the other side of that particularly empty distraction, as well as so many others.
So who are Obama's fathers? Beyond his maternal grandfather, MLK and LBJ certainly. Muhammed Ali, who showed that a black man's genius and wit could inspire admiration from the white community. Nelson Mandela, who, following in his own father's footsteps, emulated Gandhi's ability to dominate without domineering, to overcome without anger or vengance. Jimmy Carter, who grew up among black children until his late teens and tried, albeit with mixed success, to bring moral decency to American political culture -- even grumpy, egotistical Bill Clinton, who clearly felt great pride in being called "America's First Black President."
Fatherhood, as every good father and grateful child knows, is a relationship far more complicated and subtle than biology alone can ever explain.
Update: Mark Kleiman has an excellent post making some of these same points re: Johnson and Obama.
Update #2: It seems we're not the only ones to notice that Obama's got more than one father. Funny video here.
