In the fifties, the family was raised to such an ideal that it seemed that no one could live up to it. Nowhere is this better found than in the role that fathers had to play. By the end of the seventies, when the divorce rate skyrocketed up, the term "deadbeat dad" came to be. Father had gone from hero to save us all to total loser.
Now, in the twenty-first century, we still have dads, of course, but their role is completely up for grabs, and undefined. This can be a good thing, in that the role of fatherhood isn't set in stone, and can be modified to fit individual needs. The bad thing when a role has been smashed is that any sense of security that goes along with it is gone. You don't have a roadmap of where you are going, so you have no idea if what you are doing is right or wrong.
Added to the mix are those who want to bring back the "traditional" mode of parenting, where Father Knew Best, where the weight of his children and adult wife boiled down to his direction. His career defined the family, and what it did, where it lived, and in a material sense, how it lived. That all works great if you're making eight million dollars a year as a movie star and can show off your wife and kids off as trophies along with your two million dollar house, but works disastrously for most regular folks, especially in a time when most men don't have careers, they have jobs; and many are glad just for that. It's hard for a man to wield financial leverage over his wife when she makes more money than he does.
Many people who want the traditional family back blame the fallout of cohesive male leadership in the family on the feminist movement. Though the Feminine Mystique had something to do with having women recognize their subversive role, the traditional masculine role was destroyed not by S.C.U.M. and other radical feminist movements, but the men themselves. The hippie movement, which held its roots in beatniks such as Allen Ginsburg, started not so much as an antiwar movement, but by men who were sickened by what they saw as the male role. Baby boomer men, just starting college, didn't want to be the corporate stiffs that they saw their fathers as being. They wanted something different for themselves.
Whether or not they have accomplished that is another matter. It is certainly true that the traditional home is not as viable as it was in the fifties. But what is left is a lack of cohesion. The idea of male superiority by those who believe any difference between the sexes is a cause for some undefined hierarchy makes some men question what it means to be a man, especially a father. Is it right to tell his adult wife what to do, to be the ultimate boss of his children? Since some best selling guru said that he was from the planet that represents the god of war, does that mean ruling with an iron fist is a good thing? Some people will say yes: the Bible said that Eve was a ditz and needed a good man to boss her around because she ate an apple. And Paul of Tarsus said that wives are to submit to their husbands. Hey, if they didn't like it, they shouldn't have been born female. Never mind that in the Bible, the full story of creation claims that both Adam and Eve were in the garden until they lied about their part in eating the so-called apple, and the same Paul says that husbands are to love their wives like their own bodies and act the way Jesus did towards the church.
But the idea of superiority, the ideal of male aloofness, works very well in the minds of people. Being a dad means being a leader, being in control. Never mind that not very many people know how you are supposed to execute this kind of control without resorting to abusing their wives and children. Which is what happens to many men who feel they have lost control everywhere else; they think they have some leverage or mandate to wield that control over their family. It isn't really violence, it's getting stuff done. After all, being a man is being in control, right?
The truth is that both men and women have it hard parenting right now. While the expectations for mothers tend to be overloaded and unrealistic, the expectations for fathers are so undefined that it is almost impossible not to fail in some way. You're supposed to be more nurturing because that's in now. But some people insist that mentality is just part of the "new morality" that was designed to destroy the traditional family. They think that if you're too nurturing you're just making your kids dependent, and quite possibly making your sons, if you have any, not strong enough to stand on their own two feet. I've heard a statement that seems somewhat erroneous, that being that kids don't come with instructions. On the contrary, you can find books up the wazoo about parenting. The British writer Sylvia Ann Hewlett has noted in her book, "A Lesser Life", that bookstores in the United States contain loads more books about parenting than any store in that she has been to in Europe. There is so much contradictory information out there, with each person claiming to having the real scoop on things on how to raise great kids, that you can read them and then be more confused than when you started off. Added to the mix is the changing cultural landscape, which seems to alter every other week. In the not too recent past, protecting your kids meant protecting them from bears, hunger, and other outside invaders. Then when those nemeses were conquered, suddenly it was child molesters and kidnappers that you had to worry about. That change was violent and sadistic enough, but at least in the seventies that meant keeping your kid away from real strangers. But now, those same monsters lurk on a virtual network and seem more invisible, though no less dangerous. The danger is more undefined. Ten minutes of "quality time" every day won't make quantifying them any easier.
The role of single parenting doesn't make it any easier. It is estimated that forty percent of the echo boom generation will live in a single parenting situation by the time they are eighteen. Most likely, they will be living with their mothers, leaving dad in a more absentee position. It is easy to believe that he has it easier than mom, taking the kids to Disneyland on the weekends while mom has to do all the dirty work during the week with less money. On the other hand, a person who was socialized to provide materialistically for his children but not emotionally may have no other way to remain connected to his kids other than Disneyland, because his precarious role of weekend father seems to have no other weight to it. It's easy to understand why many men resign to being Santa Claus to their kids. At least they can feel like they are still part of their kids' lives.
Very few people want to return to the days where dad was nothing more than a paycheck and an occasional companion at Little League games, as comforting as it may be to have all your actions prescribed and defined. But the security of fatherhood is no longer a surety for any child growing up today, and men know it. The challenge is to find an authentic way of mentoring and leadership for your child without alienating him or her. In a culture that changes so quickly, it is a daunting challenge for any man. He has to look within himself to find the answers, and that is not always the easiest thing to do.
