I have The Lion King soundtrack on my iPod, and I know more about good witches and bad witches than anyone at Cornell. Although it’s tempting to say that’s just how I roll, where the witches and Simba are concerned, I have to give credit to my son Luke. He’s three-and-a-half, and also knows more about good witches and bad witches than anyone at Cornell. And after those three-and-a-half years, subtle manifestations of my identity as a father point to the conclusion that I’m becoming increasingly dad-like. They’re not just things I’ve picked up from Luke either. Sometimes I play classical music at high volume when my housemates are out of the apartment. And I’ve developed this weird affinity for sweaters without hoods … like ones that should have paint on them. I even bought a pair of offensive blue plaid house slippers. Despite the torrent of verbal abuse from my housemates, I wear them nearly all the time — although never in conjunction with the classical music, which is still illegally downloaded.
Yet none of these details tells much about what fatherhood means — if there is any coherent link from one dad to the next, and why it’s important — if it is important.
My identity as a dad — visible through the above piecemeal set of symbols and repertoires — is a homegrown construct. I feel like I am reinventing whatever model exists. I’m sure that’s probably true for all dads — and their kids. Yet an understanding of fatherhood as something different for all dads further entangles the notion that it’s important in and of itself.
If America holds any clear ideals of fatherhood, they’re difficult to identify. We’re just as wary of the overbearing relationship between JFK and Joseph Kennedy as we are of the laissez-faire one between Liv and Steven Tyler. Although we don’t like to demonize bad fathers as much as bad mothers, there’s a clear stigma to being a poor “father figure.” If there’s any American ideal of fatherhood then, it exists in the “father-as-role-model” view. Even this implies a fathering role that is only passive and visual, not involved and thoughtful.
One could easily argue that America’s ideals of gender are often mutually exclusive with good parenting. The range of issues this raises constantly vexes me. While Luke is so young, I don’t feel like the kinds of parenting his mom and I provide him are very sex-variant at all. I did feel like my knowledge of guy stuff was able to inform a conversation that he and I had about the rules of when it is and isn’t OK to pee outside (the conversation was preemptive, not like the one between Adam Sandler and Frankenstein). But that’s about it. So for dads like me who aren’t sold on gender dichotomies, fatherhood seems even more abstract — hardly differentiable from parenthood.
To find evidence that fatherhood is important though, one need only look at what happens when dads aren’t around. The 30 percent of American kids who grow up without fathers provide 71 percent of all high school dropouts and 90 percent of runaway children. The economic instability of fatherlessness is palpable, with kids without dads 10 times as likely to experience extreme poverty. Of course, discussion of America’s crisis of fatherhood is racially coded. While 29 percent of white Americans born in 2000 had unmarried parents, 69 percent of their black peers did. Explanations for why black dads are so likely to be M.I.A. are copious, though typically variations on the “black culture” argument.
Here’s what I think, but feel free to disagree. Fatherhood isn’t important because it’s gendered or because it approximates some universal model. Maybe it isn’t even intrinsically valuable in a way that sets it apart from parenthood. A kid with a dad and a mom benefits not from some essentialist, biological equilibrium, but simply from having two parents who worry about whether they’re messing up in some way or another. We don’t need to squelch gender as a mode of communication between parents and kids, but my guess is that you’re seriously undervaluing your dad if you think the only thing he did for you was to provide an example of a classy guy. And although marriage is often helpful on the financial front, research shows that 40 percent of divorces leave kids in more stable situations than before — despite financial fragmentation.
Most underexamined here are the conditions that make it more difficult for some dads than others to latch onto fatherhood as an identity. Although prison is obviously one of these conditions, it affects fatherhood in some less than obvious ways. First, as prison is considered voluntary unemployment in many states, fathers in prison (25 percent of inmates) are accountable for a minimum level of child support that exceeds the income they can accrue in prison. Although their children absolutely deserve this support, the net effect is negative, as fathers emerge from prison unrealistically indebted and with strong disincentive to becoming enthusiastic dads. Incarceration also acts on fatherhood through marriage behavior. As the number of young, available black men decreases in any region (most states incarcerate over 10 percent of this demographic), black men not in prison — cognizant of their extremely favorable dating odds — have less incentive to marry. The causality is profound: a 10 percent increase in black incarceration translates into a 30 percent decrease in black marriage rates. This is a gripping example of the steady dynamism between norms and institutions, neither of which explain the entire issue, and both of which pose challenges to quality fatherhood in America.
We’re delusional if we think that every dad has the same shot at being a good dad. As far as the witches, house slippers, Tchaikovsky thing goes, I’ve probably had a structural advantage from the start. Unlike a lot of fathers, I’ve been lucky enough to have a great dad from whom I can take cues when I want, and undergrad poverty is usually a step up from destitute poverty. The crisis of American fatherhood is daunting in complexity. It’s easy to try and reduce it to a few social factors and bound it within the black community, while in reality it’s visible among Americans of all races. Family values are toted as a panacea, but only scratch the surface of relevance. If I can conclude anything from my own experience, it’s that reviving fatherhood will be about putting dads in positions that enable them to find meaning in their role. I think this is really important.
Tim Krueger is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tkrueger@cornellsun.com. Educating Your Guesses appears alternate Thursdays.