Father's Day Musings

DEAR GEORGE, My dad always asked us not to bother with Father’s Day, claiming that holidays and presents were only for children. The four of us bought gifts for him anyway, spending 10 or 15 cents apiece at the Five and Dime. Parental roles and parent-child relations were vastly different back then. When I was a toddler behaviorist John B. Watson wrote in the most popular child-rearing book of the day, “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning…If you expected a dog to grow up and be useful as a watch dog, a bird dog, a fox hound, useful for anything except a lap dog, you wouldn’t dare treat it the way you treat your child.”

Most families we knew in our hometown had 3 or 4 kids, and mothers almost never worked outside the home. Father was the breadwinner, mother the homemaker. We learned from many sources that men were ideally strong, hard-working, and nonemotional, while women were warm, nurturing, and instinctively suited to be mothers. These stereotypes played out in my family. My father, while an exceptional and admirable person in many respects, could be emotionally distant and authoritarian. Having served as an officer in the Navy in World War II, he brought his military experience home with him. Children were of the “lower orders”, and we were instructed to obey orders to the letter and not question parental decisions. My father encouraged achievement in many domains, holding his kids to high standards and demanding perfection, so much so that my younger sister defensively prefaced any performance by saying, “This is not my best.” I should admit, though, that we all turned out well.

By 1969, when Katja and I had a son of our own, (J), it was a new and different era for fathers and mothers. Traditional gender roles were on the way out, it was commonplace for women to work outside the home, and fathers were expected to play an active role in childcare. In addition, there were major differences in our situation simply as a function of family size. In my four-child family of origin daily life was more complex and more chaotic. Parents and children constituted two distinct subgroups. The children spent most of their time playing with one another, often engaging in dysfunctional behavior which called for parental intervention and sometimes a spanking. In J’s case, virtually all of his household transactions were with adults (i.e., Katja and myself), more grown-up, more reasonable, and he became a mature kid as a consequence. With no brothers or sisters in sight, I was J’s primary playmate at home. I found that role completely enjoyable, a chance to live out childhood over again. As J grew older, we went to thrift stores together, visited the art museum and the zoo, took the dog for walks in the forest, played tennis, watched TV, went to the movies, and ate out as a family at Skyline Chili. Instead of a big group with a rigid parent-child hierarchy, we operated pretty much as a close, egalitarian threesome.

We were thrilled last week when J, about to celebrate his 52nd birthday, visited us from New Orleans for a long weekend. J and I went to three thrift shops and found amazing treasures. Despite a relatively high income, J remains a thrift store addict. He reveled in the used 99-cent Sohio T-shirt he found at St. Vincent de Paul and worried that he’d paid too much for his brand-new Calvin Klein pants ($12.79). He and I took the dog for long outings in Burnet Woods and our Clifton neighborhood, and we did an art museum tour. Our best stop was the 21C Museum Hotel on Walnut Street downtown which was displaying wonderful contemporary art. The Contemporary Art Center, on the other hand, was a complete bust. We felt sad for the little children whose parents had to lead them through four floors of dull and meaningless displays (and also for the young couple who appeared to be struggling through a failed first date). Katja joined us for an outing at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and we lingered over a garden lunch at the Museum Cafe. This was French Open week and we were thrilled to watch the semi-final clash between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Then J went out to play tennis with a local nationally ranked junior player. Since we’d been a tennis family throughout J’s teenage years, his mom and I were happy for his renewed interest in the sport. We ate at Skyline Chili twice, had our fanciest meal at the Dusmesh Indian restaurant near Cincinnati State, and indulged ourselves at Dewey’s Pizza. Most of all, we shared lots of laughs and happy memories. Then it was over, and we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect visit. It’s when J comes home that our little family seems whole again. Thinking about our time together, it dawned on me that our family routines have been much the same as they were forty years ago.

What also strikes me is that there are many ways to be a good father. What worked for my parents fit who they were and the world they lived in, as did Katja’s and my parenting approach. Now J and K are parents to two preteens of their own, and their family patterns are once again different. The children are immersed in the digital world, the family is more attentive to social justice issues, and they take full advantage of New Orleans music and culture. In some ways child-rearing nowadays is more challenging than ours was, and J is a terrific father. There’s a lot to be thankful for this Father’s Day. LOVE, DAVE