Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

an Father’s Day?</h1>Perhaps, just like we don’t have a Men’s Day or White History Month, we shouldn’t have a dad’s day either. The difference is, I don’t want those days either, but I’ll rather miss Dad’s Day.Fine. Just as long as you don’t tell my kids. I figure they’re better off honouring and loving their father and — oh my god, cleaning their rooms of their own accord — given the grim alternative.Call it a rite of passage, nothing to do with me, and everybody wins. Happy? Well, probably not.<h1 id="63b7">I really do see your point</h1>As I keep saying, I can see where all this is coming from.A Medium writer describes his unrelenting nightmares, at 55, about the beatings his father had given him as a boy. Word for word, his experiences match my own. The incensed (and in my case, drunken) face, the bellowing voice, the paw yanking the ‘slithering and snapping’ leather belt from around his waist. I understand, and I feel his pain.But whereas he describes his father, long since dead, as a monster, I cannot do the same. I am 10 years older now than my father ever was, and I realised long ago that I can understand his and just about anyone’s problem or point. Call it the obscenity of understanding, if you must. I think not understanding is obscene.My only regret is that I never got to tell him. My dad was born with low levels of empathy and self-control, high levels of paternal violence, a near lawless upbringing, and an unquenchable sorrow that not alcohol or violence or anything could fix. He did things to us, but I know he couldn’t help it, and he loved us. I love him with a love no-one can explain or deny, and if I had a chance to meet him now, I would hug him and tell him it’s not his fault.I grew up shell-shocked and abandoned in a way I do not wish upon anyone, and yet it is a common occurrence in the societies that our fathers sowed their mayhem in across cultures. But I never called my father a monster or posted his picture to shame him even in death. And yet I can see the author’s point. I truly can.And he’s far from alone in questioning, denigrating or wishing Father’s Day away as a result of personal misery. But let me tell you another story.My response to my upbringing has been to never let my kids feel the abandonment and bottomless desire for paternal affirmation that I never had, though I’m not entirely sure I agree with all of my own choices.I made sure, for one, to get shared custody when the marriage inevitably failed. Perhaps I should have spared them the withering touch of my own heartbreak, but either way, not unlike every other parent in history, I w

Options

ould have hurt them in a million unavoidable ways, whatever I did. And as it turned out, I had no choice. I became their single parent when their mom moved on and gifted her new husband a set of brand-new twins.And crikey, did I do my very best, and still fall down on the job. Regimenting their schooling. Smothering them with love that bordered on co-dependence. Saying no and barking far too often before I realised the shameful error of treating them like little adults with reason and impulse control — mostly due to the vagaries of single-income time and opportunity starvation.Don’t feel you need to praise or exonerate or pity me. This, I know only too well, has been the lot of single women forever and a day. I weep with gratitude at the opportunity I had, and with sorrow at the feeling of failure that every serious parent understands so well. I could have worked harder and tried harder and got help, except not really. I did what I could, and it wasn’t enough and it wasn’t my fault. All of this is true.<h1 id="a8b9">But I beg to differ.</h1>But here’s my point: I never used my choice to be a parent as leverage to deny their mom her day with them, or to deny them the love and influence of their mom.My ex-wife, a far better friend than spouse (and every bit my equal in that regard), remained in their lives for as much as she could manage / handle. So she didn’t have time or money to help out or participate much — so what? This privileged white male has a good job and sees no reason after 15 years of solo parenting to think himself above a bit of hard work. No better than any mom ever. But you know what I am mildly pleased with myself for?I never congratulate my own ignorant ass on Mothers Day, as if I can somehow replace her, of all the egotistical ideas in the world. Who knows what motivates exes to hop from relationship to relationship? Probably daddy issues. Who am I to call their historical / biological parenthood and affection into question? What favour am I doing my kids by denying them an actual mother? No: she gets to celebrate Mothers Day, to cry and to phone when she misses them, and even to be the nice parent when Daddy’s being a little bitch about the state of the bathrooms again.We all survived. I didn’t make either of my parents’ mistakes — not my father’s in abusing his kids, nor my mother’s in claiming sole parenthood and virtual sainthood in our eye. Sure, I made interesting and damning new ones, but we all survived and tell each other sorry and I love you.So happy bloody Father’s Day to me and every other dad. Sit your ass down, be waited on or remembered by someone, and do what you have to, to do better.</article></body>

A happy bloody Father’s Day to me*

* A repost from June 2022

Well, Father’s Day has suddenly become a bit shit in recent years, hasn’t it?

Can’t say that I’ve seen a single positive post about it.

Lots of moms wishing themselves a happy Fathers Day. Fair enough.

Opinionistas aplenty berating dead-beat dads. Can’t fault that either.

Survivors of childhood trauma voicing the true unspoken question haunting the zeitgeist: why do we even still have a day for fathers?

Thanks, Internet. It was only a matter of time.

Well, my kids got me something nice and cleaned the kitchen, top to bottom, so that is really all the affirmation I need. That, and it’s nice when even friends remember.

Does rather take the shine off a cherished institution though.

Light bulb moment

I have a made-on-Medium friend who does celebrate the day, and she surprised and delighted me when she took the time to pop me an email wishing me a happy Fathers Day.

To be perfectly honest, I was more surprised at feeling quite so touched. But I knew why. While everybody got the memo about Mother’s Day, singing the praises of the unsung heroes even on other heroes’ day, Father’s Day is increasingly a grim, muted, resentful affair.

Over the years, many a Medium piece has had a go at ’splaining why we can’t have a Men’s Day. Perhaps it detracts from the point of a Women’s Day. Which, so the story goes, is that every day has been Men’s Day since forever. OK. I get that. I do. Fuck Men’s Day then.

Perhaps it’s the same point people make when they say only white folks can be racist. Basically, you (i.e., anyone who isn’t a white man) could treat white men like shit for as long as humanity has existed (not that you have been, of course; it’s just equality), plus one day, just to be sure, and he’ll only have suffered as much as everyone else already has. I get that too. I really do. Have at it, I guess. (And no White Men’s Day for damn sure.)

These are interesting arguments that, through their sheer intransigence, manage to bring to bear the entire weight of all history, injustice and futility on anyone who would think to bring about positive change with reasoned argument.

So should we can Father’s Day?

Perhaps, just like we don’t have a Men’s Day or White History Month, we shouldn’t have a dad’s day either. The difference is, I don’t want those days either, but I’ll rather miss Dad’s Day.

Fine. Just as long as you don’t tell my kids. I figure they’re better off honouring and loving their father and — oh my god, cleaning their rooms of their own accord — given the grim alternative.

Call it a rite of passage, nothing to do with me, and everybody wins. Happy? Well, probably not.

I really do see your point

As I keep saying, I can see where all this is coming from.

A Medium writer describes his unrelenting nightmares, at 55, about the beatings his father had given him as a boy. Word for word, his experiences match my own. The incensed (and in my case, drunken) face, the bellowing voice, the paw yanking the ‘slithering and snapping’ leather belt from around his waist. I understand, and I feel his pain.

But whereas he describes his father, long since dead, as a monster, I cannot do the same. I am 10 years older now than my father ever was, and I realised long ago that I can understand his and just about anyone’s problem or point. Call it the obscenity of understanding, if you must. I think not understanding is obscene.

My only regret is that I never got to tell him. My dad was born with low levels of empathy and self-control, high levels of paternal violence, a near lawless upbringing, and an unquenchable sorrow that not alcohol or violence or anything could fix. He did things to us, but I know he couldn’t help it, and he loved us. I love him with a love no-one can explain or deny, and if I had a chance to meet him now, I would hug him and tell him it’s not his fault.

I grew up shell-shocked and abandoned in a way I do not wish upon anyone, and yet it is a common occurrence in the societies that our fathers sowed their mayhem in across cultures. But I never called my father a monster or posted his picture to shame him even in death. And yet I can see the author’s point. I truly can.

And he’s far from alone in questioning, denigrating or wishing Father’s Day away as a result of personal misery. But let me tell you another story.

My response to my upbringing has been to never let my kids feel the abandonment and bottomless desire for paternal affirmation that I never had, though I’m not entirely sure I agree with all of my own choices.

I made sure, for one, to get shared custody when the marriage inevitably failed. Perhaps I should have spared them the withering touch of my own heartbreak, but either way, not unlike every other parent in history, I would have hurt them in a million unavoidable ways, whatever I did. And as it turned out, I had no choice. I became their single parent when their mom moved on and gifted her new husband a set of brand-new twins.

And crikey, did I do my very best, and still fall down on the job. Regimenting their schooling. Smothering them with love that bordered on co-dependence. Saying no and barking far too often before I realised the shameful error of treating them like little adults with reason and impulse control — mostly due to the vagaries of single-income time and opportunity starvation.

Don’t feel you need to praise or exonerate or pity me. This, I know only too well, has been the lot of single women forever and a day. I weep with gratitude at the opportunity I had, and with sorrow at the feeling of failure that every serious parent understands so well. I could have worked harder and tried harder and got help, except not really. I did what I could, and it wasn’t enough and it wasn’t my fault. All of this is true.

But I beg to differ.

But here’s my point: I never used my choice to be a parent as leverage to deny their mom her day with them, or to deny them the love and influence of their mom.

My ex-wife, a far better friend than spouse (and every bit my equal in that regard), remained in their lives for as much as she could manage / handle. So she didn’t have time or money to help out or participate much — so what? This privileged white male has a good job and sees no reason after 15 years of solo parenting to think himself above a bit of hard work. No better than any mom ever. But you know what I am mildly pleased with myself for?

I never congratulate my own ignorant ass on Mothers Day, as if I can somehow replace her, of all the egotistical ideas in the world. Who knows what motivates exes to hop from relationship to relationship? Probably daddy issues. Who am I to call their historical / biological parenthood and affection into question? What favour am I doing my kids by denying them an actual mother? No: she gets to celebrate Mothers Day, to cry and to phone when she misses them, and even to be the nice parent when Daddy’s being a little bitch about the state of the bathrooms again.

We all survived. I didn’t make either of my parents’ mistakes — not my father’s in abusing his kids, nor my mother’s in claiming sole parenthood and virtual sainthood in our eye. Sure, I made interesting and damning new ones, but we all survived and tell each other sorry and I love you.

So happy bloody Father’s Day to me and every other dad. Sit your ass down, be waited on or remembered by someone, and do what you have to, to do better.