Culture . 05/21/2008 12:31 AM . Aaron Olmstead

Twice a year, I experience the same tremor of righteous indignation.

Seriously, why is it that on every Mother’s day, all moms get praised, while on Father’s Day, all dads are told to step up to the plate? From what I’ve seen, it’s pretty comprehensive discrimination of blatant proportions:

On the second Sunday of May each year, Mother’s Day, most church services share the same general gist. Mothers, are told that they’re wonder women—shining examples of kindness, gentleness and devotion. We’re told to be grateful for their sacrifices, and be caretakers of their value. According to Hallmark, 96% of us give our mothers gifts, making Mothers Day the second highest gift-giving holiday, right behind Christmas, and, oh, yes, the Mother’s Day industry makes around $14 billion on our bountiful appreciation.

Conversely, on the third Sunday of every June, Father’s Day, the service is inversed. Fathers are told that they’ve fallen short of the mark—sadly lacking in patience, consideration and involvement. They’re told to shape up, to repent, and to stop missing the mark so badly. We might give them a tie, if they’re lucky, and the Father’s Day retail industry rakes in around $8 billion, just over half of what they make the month before.

Seem a little off balance?

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that mothers don’t deserve to be thanked and commended. Heavens, no. I can’t even imagine the patience, pain and potency that it takes to go through pregnancy, birth, terrible twos and teenagers. Nothing deserves more appreciation than a mother’s loving care. I understand, and I couldn’t agree more.

My point is that our fathers—the ones continually touted as the key to repairing American family—have gotten the shaft. They only have one holiday a year and it’s been repurposed as a complaint session. What’s worst than getting harped on during your one-and-only special day? Last time I checked, Father’s Day was supposed to be about “honoring” and “commemorating” dads, not issuing orders and recognizing failures.

Yes, as we all know, the current state of fatherhood in the States is far from ideal. With the approximately 50% of marriages currently ending in divorce, there are far too many fatherless homes. Statistics indicate that children coming from such homes are 9 times more likely to drop out of school, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more likely to end up in prison and 5 times more likely to commit suicide.

Nevertheless, there are many great fathers deserving of praise. You would think that a pat on the back, at the very least, would be appropriate every 365 days or so. So why doesn’t it happen? Why do women get all the encouragement and appreciation, while guys get the instruction and censure?

Over the last few years, I’ve asked these questions to numerous people. I’ve never gotten a satisfactory explanation. In fact, I don’t ever remember getting any real explanation at all. But a few weeks ago I finally got an answer, and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

I was sitting around talking with a number of friends of various ages and familial circumstances, and since Mothers’ Day was just around the corner, I proffered up my typical inquiry. For once, I finally got an insightful response:

I was told that a mother exists in continual doubt of her efforts. Even if she is the most excellent of moms, laboring day in and day out to be the best mother that she can be, she is always second-guessing her life’s work. The characteristic mindset for a woman is to wonder if she is doing enough, whether she should be doing more, or whether she should be doing something different. She needs—and deserves—encouragement and affirmation more than anything else.

The father, on the other hand, has an entirely different mentality. Most men are pretty darn secure, and are thus fairly oblivious to what anybody else may think of them. If the man is a poor or mediocre father, he probably doesn’t know it and certainly doesn’t act like it. Men seem to come standard with an ingrained, self-affirming mechanism. It could be obvious to the whole world that a certain guy is stupid, inconsiderate and obnoxious, but he himself will probably still be pretty confident of his status as a model human.

This explanation made a lot of sense to me, especially when I remembered a recent scene I’d witnessed between a father and son. The 12-year-old son had just come in from hanging with his friends, and the rather bombastic father immediately tried to connect with him by making a stupid joke and enthusiastically slapping him on the back. The son’s resulting response was an immediate display of painfully obvious annoyance and disrespect towards his father. I felt like I’d been sucker punched just watching. It was awful. But what I found even more awful was that the dad didn’t even notice. He was too busy fulfilling his fatherly role to notice how unappreciated it was.

A few minutes later I commented on how the family’s chocolate Labrador followed the dad everywhere he went. The man proudly explained that it had always been that way and that the dog had been drawn to him as the alpha-male in the house. His confidence and self-satisfaction as a man’s man had made him oblivious to the failed connection with his son.

My observation attested to the fact that this guy wasn’t insecure, but he sure should have been. The posture of unyielding confidence is something he shares in common with much of his gender. The problem is that this disposition just doesn’t promote the kind of extensive self-examination required in effective parenting. To be truly effective, a parent should never consider himself to be the best, but instead continually endeavor to become the best—to endlessly realize how he or she has failed and to tirelessly work at providing healthy leadership, discipline and care.

So, I guess that to some extent, I just joined the societal trend I found so disconcerting in the first place. Maybe things aren’t quite as out of place as it seemed.

It’s not that moms have succeeded while dads have failed, but that a parental role is no place for an ego. Thus, women naturally seem to succeed in banishing it from their parenting, and indeed often go too far in destroying their egos. They need affirmation, while their counterpart may often need to be taken down a notch or two. Yes, I still think that there should be a little more celebrating of fathers on Father’s Day. But raising the next generation is a huge responsibility of vital importance, one that requires less self-esteem and more self-examination.

Aaron Olmstead is the founder and publisher of Kritik.


<