Men's Issues Articles

 

What Sons Need From Their Dads
By Neil Chethik

What does a son need from his dad?

I recently finished writing a book called FatherLoss, for
which I had the opportunity to interview 70 men about how
they dealt with the deaths of their fathers. In the course
of those interviews, I also had the chance to ask about the
fathers' lives. Specifically, as the father of a 7-year-old
son myself, I wanted to know: What makes a good dad? How
does a father's role change through the life-span? And
what, if anything, can a father do to help prepare his son
for the father's death?

Here's what I learned:

In childhood, boys need from their fathers something that
can broadly be called "affection."

The men I interviewed didn't always use that term.
Affection has the connotation of holding, cuddling,
hugging, kissing, and other forms of physical contact. And
indeed, when that occurred between a father and son, it
seemed to have an unusually positive effect on the child.

For many of the sons I spoke with, their fondest memories
of childhood were wrestling with their dads, being tossed
into the air or carried piggy-back, or some other form of
direct physical play.

One son told me: "On Saturday mornings, when my dad had
been gone all week, I'd climb into my parents' bed. He had
horrible breath in the morning. We played a game where he
tried to breathe on me, and I hid." This son actually
remembered this game with fondness! It's an indication of
how much sons want to be close to their dads.

I wondered why wrestling, bad-breath games and other
physical affection so warmly remembered by sons. I
eventually came to see it this way: Physical contact
between a father and son gives the son a close-up view of
the beast he will one day become: a man. The boy
experiences, in his body and bones, how a man moves, feels,
smells. Just as importantly, when the father's touch is
playful and loving, the son learns that men are strong, but
that strength can be harnessed, restrained, and used in a
safe way.

Of course, some fathers do not easily go to physical
affection. Perhaps they were raised without such contact
with their own fathers, and find it alien, even unmanly.
Fortunately, I discovered in my conversations with sons
that affection could be administered in a variety of ways.
Ultimately, affection was less about physicality than about
loving attention by a father toward his son.

Some fathers show affection by simply talking with, and
listening to, their sons. Others showed it by playing
chess, checkers, and other games with their sons. Still
others played catch, coached little league teams, helped
with confirmation or Bar Mitzvah preparations, took their
sons to concerts, ball games and the like. The key was to
focus attention, especially on activities that the son
initiates.

When a son doesn't get affection, in any form, from his
father, the resulting wound can be deep and lasting. Second
only to the abuser in generating resentment among the sons
I interviewed was the faraway father, the distant dad, the
patriarch who was unavailable or uninvolved. Whether the
father meant it or not, the message to the son was clear:
You don't matter.

One man's comment struck me a little close to home because
I love to read. A man I spoke with told me this: "One of
the memories I carry from childhood is Dad's bookshelf. My
dad read a lot. He would come home from work, sit in his
chair, and read for most of the evening. Maybe it was his
escape.... Sometimes, I'd go to that wall of books, and try
to figure out what was there that was more fascinating than
me."

Now, I'm realistic. I don't expect myself, or any other
parent, to always be attentive to our children. It's not
possible, or even healthy. But it has been good for me to
pay attention to how much I pay attention to my son, and to
remember how good for him it is to have my active presence
in his life.

If "affection" was the key word that arose when sons
described what they needed in childhood, another single
word captures the essence of what adolescent and young
adult sons need from their dads: Blessing.

One man I interviewed, a business executive, said he
received a traditional Mexican blessing - a bendicion -
from his father when the son left Texas at age nineteen to
look for work in California. The blessing, which his father
gave to him in Spanish, affirmed that the son was ready for
the journey ahead, and called upon God and humankind to
look after him. It also softened the son's feelings toward
a father who had often been harsh and uncompromising.

In the introduction to my book, FatherLoss, I speak of a
blessing I received from my father when I was 27. I was
living at the time in Miami, near my grandfather, my
father's father. My grandfather died suddenly, and I spent
a day going through my grandfather's apartment alongside my
father. In the course of the day, my father recognized that
he never heard his father express pride in him -- and with
the death, never would. So my father offered me a blessing:
He told me how proud he was of the life I was creating, the
choices I was making.

My father's blessing was especially important to me
because I was concerned that I'd disappointed him. He'd put
me through college, and then, five years into my career,
I'd quit a good job with no plan for what I'd do next. When
my father told me he was proud of the choices I'd made, I
took it to mean that he supported me in my decision to stop
and re-evaluate my career direction. I felt the pressure
lift, and began to trust myself to make the right next
steps.

My father's expression of pride was straight-forward, but
blessings can be subtle too, delivered, like affection, in
ways unique to the father and son involved.

One son told me he felt blessed when he was asked for
business advice by his father. Another appreciated it when
his father showed pride in the son's selection of a wife,
when the father enjoyed playing with the son's children.
Sons often felt blessed when the father asked for help from
the son when he's sick or having a problem of some kind.

One man I interviewed, who'd been beaten by his doctor-
father in childhood for failing in school, steered clear of
his dad for nearly twenty years after leaving home. Then,
when the son was in his late thirties, he invited his
father to visit him at the son's home 2,000 miles away. The
younger man had become a carpenter, and during his father's
visit, led his dad on a tour of one of the million-dollar
homes for which he had crafted oak staircases and cabinets.

The son recalled the awestruck look on his father's face,
and a blunt apology from his dad: "I've underestimated
you." In the years following, the son accepted from his
father fine tools as gifts, and offered the older man
advice on how to build things out of wood.

And that was enough for the son. It seems, in fact, that
most sons will forgive almost anything if they can hear -
in whatever way, and at whatever age - the genuine
affirmation of their fathers.

In the course of my many interviews, there was one more
thing that sons said they needed from their dads: a proper
farewell. This need is illustrated by the story of a man
named Clyde.

Clyde was 34 years old when his father informed him just
before dinner together one night that he was dying of
cancer. The news "knocked me back like a boxer," Clyde
recalled. It had been just five years since the two men had
begun a reconciliation following a long period of anger and
estrangement. In the weeks after his father's diagnosis,
Clyde visited the older man regularly, first at his
father's home, later in the hospital. And then the father,
a physician, took a sharp turn for the worse.

In the father's hospital room one evening, a memorable
incident occurred. Clyde told me that retelling it was
"like walking on sacred ground."

In the hospital room, Clyde had been sitting on a couch a
few feet from the side of his father's bed. Clyde had been
there for most of an hour, as his father alternated between
turbulent coughing fits and labored breathing. The older
man still maintained his barrel chest, and full gray-black
beard. The skin on his face, however, as Clyde could see
from the couch, had become pasty and drawn.

During a break from his coughing, the father reached out a
hand toward Clyde. Clyde rose from the couch and clasped
the hand. He stood beside the bed. For a long moment, the
father gazed at his son's face. Clyde noticed that father's
eyes, normally brown, had gone gray.

Then, in a gravelly voice, the father forced from his
ravaged throat the few words he felt he had to say. Clyde
recalled that they went like this: "You've got a beautiful
wife, and a gorgeous child. You've got a good life. You're
going to be fine." The father then beheld his son's face
again, brought it to his own, and pressed his lips against
Clyde's cheek. Then he said: "Good-bye. Now get out of
here! Go, go, go!" He then released his son toward the door.

Clyde left the room without looking back. He wept as he
drove home. Several hours later, his step-mother called.
Clyde's father was dead.

In retrospect, Clyde marveled at "how much selfless effort
it must have taken" for his dad, "being pulled in the other
direction," to offer such a good-bye. Had the encounter not
occurred, Clyde told me, he would "probably have doubted a
lot of things. I would have wondered if he was still angry.
But I never worried about it.... (The good-bye) reduced my
mourning to the sadness of losing him."

Indeed, we may think that it's hardest to lose family
members we are close to. But my research indicated that the
sons who struggled the most with the loss of a father, and
for the longest time, were those who were at odds with, or
estranged from, their dads. Instead of dealing with their
sadness after the loss, these sons were weighted down by
regrets, resentments, and guilt.

Which is why it matters that we fathers, if we have a
chance, offer this last gift to our children - the gift of
closure, completion, forgiveness, good-bye.

Indeed, if we are able to be affectionate with our young
sons in whatever way is most comfortable to us; if we can
bless our children as they grow into adulthood; and if we
can say good-bye when the time comes, we will, in my mind,
have been the best fathers we can possibly be.
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Neil Chethik is an author, speaker and expert specializing in men's lives and family issues. He is the author of two acclaimed books: VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment (Simon & Schuster 2006), and FatherLoss: How Sons of All Ages Come To Terms With the Deaths of Their Dads (Hyperion 2001). Visit his website at www.NeilChethik.com, or e-mail him at Neil@NeilChethik.com

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