- Introduction - Page 14

Despite what anger or sorrow we may have at how we were fathered, we can’t afford to discard the hard-won lessons of our fathers carelessly. We need to take the best of what they gave us as we plot a course toward a new kind of fathering—one built on strong bonds of love, one that is expansive and courageous, and one that will bring us back into the richness of a deep emotional connection with our children.

If we ask people to select words to describe positively what it means to be a mother, invariably they come up with such terms as nurturing, compassionate, caring, and comforting. For fathers, the words are protector, provider, responsible, dependable, hardworking, and problem-solving. Those characteristics fit well with our culturally projected father images, like those portrayed in Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. In these television households, fathers Ward and Tom are portrayed as kind and understanding men who are primarily problem-solvers—that is, men who diffuse and avoid emotional situations by presenting real-world solutions.

If we combine these characteristic mother and father qualities, we end up with an impressive résumé for good parenting. Traditionally, however, these characteristics have been divided up by gender, with women assigned the internal or emotional tasks and men assigned the external tasks of dealing with the outside world. This division has deep roots in our history but, for better and for worse, it is rapidly deteriorating. The radically changing nature of what it means to be a man or a woman is not news, but it is a constant source of challenge and opportunity.