Father wounds are often overlooked and, in my experience, rarely spoken of. Maybe because many of us are taught to either forget about our fathers or to sympathize with their pain.
It’s easy to talk about the fathers who abandoned their children, but can we shine a light on the ones who are present and not present all at the same time?
Many of us grow up in toxic, male-centered families. Even when fathers are wrong, no accountability is ever applied, not even lovingly. If it is ever attempted, it’s usually from a place of resentment and frustration, which means the delivery is already off. It’s rooted in anger, and what man do you know that listens to an angry delivery?
Yet, it takes many of us a lifetime to understand that, especially when we are raised by a bitter mother. Sympathy for our fathers then stems from how much we dislike our mothers. Even when he lacks, since he rarely rocks the boat, we tend to make excuses for how he showed up.
Very few of us are taught how to hold empathy over sympathy and to honor ourselves by still being able to hold our fathers accountable for their lack of growth without turning them into demons.
If you had a difficult relationship with your mother, really seeing your father for who he is may leave you at odds with him too, because why didn’t he see that you needed saving?
Not all mothers are made equal. Some women don’t have a maternal bone in their body, so when a man makes a child with a woman like this and lets her do all the raising, what happens to the child?
Can we look past social norms for a minute?
What does that say about a father who ignores, or finds out too late, that the woman he created life with turns out to be a neglectful mother, no matter what he does, but lets the child or children grow up under her ruling anyway?
When we see how our mothers treat our fathers and other people, we tend to hyper-focus on that and completely overlook that our father’s fear of doing it alone outweighed our immediate safety and had a massive impact on our lives.
His inability to act was just as harmful, even if he wasn’t the one dishing out the abuse.
Not acting is a form of enablement.
One has to wonder what had to happen to that man for him to lose his natural instinct to protect. Who didn’t protect him? What kind of pain does he live with?
Men’s mental health is seriously neglected, especially because they have the ability to show up and show up well, even when living on autopilot.
No one realizes he is here but not present. Mentally, he’s in a different place. The only clue we often have that something is off is the way he does or doesn’t participate in the raising of his children. The only people who seem to care about the quality of his performance are the women and children who are directly affected by his lack.
Add in a few selfish baby mommas who only care about their seed, and we really start to witness a spiral that reminds us that we have lost our way as humans.
The quality of life for all children matters.
I have witnessed so many children, myself included, swallow the need for time and presence because their father is hardworking. Because he checks in from time to time. Because at least he shows up at all, when we all know so many children who don’t even see their fathers.
Men often get a pass for bare-minimum parenting because society has yet to revise its ideals on a father’s role in the home, especially in minority communities.
Men are rarely confronted or held accountable for the failures or struggles of their children, even when they knew the mother wasn’t top-shelf quality.
I find it frustrating, the depths of excuses that can be curated to excuse a father for passive parenting. My mind still can’t fathom that societally, we are still very much okay with men creating homes and families that they merely provide for and exist in, but take up very little room and participate very little in.
A father’s love and wisdom are as vital to a child as a mother’s nurture. Children need their presence to have a clearer picture of life, good and bad.
Erasing fathers or passive parenting leaves its own mark, so it’s hard for me to process when a father will erase himself without being forced out, or even when he is forced out.
Why aren’t more men fighting for their children?
Why are they showing up defeated before being defeated for real?
Where is their community to push them and support them to do right?
Is this the message that most men are getting from their own fathers, uncles, cousins, and brothers?
What happened to the community leaders and mentors who cared for real and not for the paycheck?
Why are men backing down and just letting women run wild with their children?
It grieves my soul to read the stories of children who lost their lives in situations where men knew the mothers of their children weren’t up to par but didn’t do anything, or started making moves too late.
I could have been one of those children.
Reflecting on my life and how many things occurred in our house that my father wasn’t aware of simply because he didn’t inquire and my mother wouldn’t say makes my gut drop in an unreal way.
My mother wasn’t the worst of them, but my father not being an active part of my life and just letting her have her way has left me with wounds that are hard to unpack.
He was my healthiest parent.
The best parts of me—the love for words and writing, the depth of my mind, my resilience and drive—they all came from him.
Yet my need for safety, stability, and real guidance were severely neglected.
I have a hard time confronting my father about the ways he let me down, simply because they don’t seem like the deepest wounds. Yet the older I get, the more I examine the trajectory of my relationships, the more I realize his passiveness left a much deeper imprint than I originally thought.
As a healing mother, I have had to take accountability for the fact that I didn’t have children with the healthiest men. I wasn’t healthy when I made my choices, but I grew in a way neither one of them were ever forced to have to do.
The gap between how I parent and how they do leaves me fearful of the kinds of wounds my children will have to unpack. It’s not that they are bad fathers, but it’s evident that their own father wounds have held them back in ways society has yet to make room to discuss.
Here, for me, the cycle seems to continue.
And it is a deep place of sorrow for me as I navigate my own father wounds and try to help my children navigate theirs too.
Children aren’t an option.
And I hate that even though millions of children are suffering, men still don’t have to be accountable for their choice to make children but not fully show up in their lives.
How does the father get all the praise for children who manage to thrive, but none of the blame when the child isn’t thriving at all?
How is he not also negligent when he knows the condition of the mother but chooses the route that’s easier for him?
How can a father not be attuned to his child’s daily life but still hold no blame when the child navigates the world the wrong way?
Why do we still live in a world where being a father is a birthright, legacy is a birthright, but pulling your weight isn’t?