What My Father Taught Me About Masculinity

Among my favorite photographs from my family albums is one taken on Halloween sometime in the late 80s. In it, my father holds me, his firstborn son in a clown costume, then just a toddler; in front of us, also in full Trick-or-Treat gear, are my older half-brother and two of my cousins, half-brothers to each other. The significance of the children that surrounded him that Halloween evening never occurred to me until recently:

my older half-brother's father had been divorced from our mother, and died soon after; one cousin's father spent most of his sons' lives in prison; and the other cousin never knew who his father was until he'd reached his late teens. 

These three children were essentially fatherless. 

There's a slew of other photographs in the family album that show my father, again, engaged in various activities with my cousins as well as his own two sons and stepson, pictures that remind me how often they joined us for outings like fishing and water balloon fights. He always took the time to include them, as often as he could. When he died in 1996, my cousins seemed more devastated than I was; a sense of shock never really left me, while my vivid memories of his loss are those of my distraught, tearful cousins. 

It was as though they'd lost a father themselves, or at least someone they saw as a strong father figure. The importance of my father's role in their young lives had certainly occurred to them far earlier than it had to me. My father died before we reached a lot of "milestones" many fathers reach with their children, particularly their sons. We didn't reach those father-son "heart to hearts," and never reached the point where the son challenges the father when the son feels he's finally "become a man" (whatever an individual renders that to mean) - the young lion challenging the old one. So, many of the things I learned from him only clicked in my brain years later, or had already been taught, unbeknownst to me, by his subtle example.

My mother often worked weekends, while my father usually had weekends off. It wasn't at all unusual for him to cook dinner - especially desserts - and do the household cleaning (while making us do the same). Whether he meant to teach us anything by this or not, it still destroyed a "traditional" notion of the husband-wife roles. It taught me a man is not above what many see as "women's work." It taught me it's a man's job as much as anyone else's to take up an egg beater and a can of Pine Sol (though hopefully not for the same task).

My father was not a scholar or an intellectual, and I'm glad of it. I'm grateful that his example of domestic life came from modest example rather than long, woke discourses.

The heart of the matter is that my father showed me that caring for children is important. As stunningly obvious a statement as that is, there are countless men who've never let the idea cross their minds. By using his thick, calloused, coarse hands to take up what is depicted as work for the weak, my father showed me a sign of strength. If manliness and masculinity are abstract and intangible concepts, subjective to say the least if we're being honest, I feel no audacity in asserting that one of the essential attributes of being "a real man" is a sincere feeling of duty to care for children; not just by household necessity, but in the way my father cared for the fatherless, for those who feel adrift and lost seeing other children with their own fathers, while theirs are nowhere to be found. 

My father taught me that a key role in masculinity is to make children feel seen, heard, included. To let them know they're important. Particularly to those without fathers or father figures: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." (James 1:27)

Worldly masculinity - or, "toxic" masculinity if you like - is the kind of masculinity defined by feats of physical strength; towing diesel trucks with a rope clenched between your teeth; initiation by violence, copious intake of alcohol; the flaunting of domination over women; a certain quota of one night stands. These things are all meaningless. If a man seeks to teach children noble values and to be an example they won't regret following, he mustn't only be a father to his own children, but a positive presence for those who feel abandoned, be they sons or daughters. 

If men, be they dads or not, seek to shape a better generation of men and women to succeed them, they must take up God's definition of chivalry - not fist fights and drunken carousing, but in this simple, almost childlike mission: help those in need: "Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow." (Isaiah 1:17)