Father’s Day

I don’t real­ly have a con­cep­tion of what Father’s Day is like for dads in two-par­ent homes. By the time I reached the age where I could effec­tive­ly under­stand what it might mean to my own father, he was no longer a part of my life. My son does­n’t know what it means any more than I did at his age. It takes a long time to grow into empa­thy. I don’t get a lazy day of praise from wife and chil­dren. I don’t sleep in or skip church. I make the boy break­fast, take him to church, help clean up his spills and help him make a store for his cars to shop at. I do all the things a father does every oth­er day of the year. Basi­cal­ly, the day is just like any oth­er Sun­day with my son — for the most part. Maybe it’s like that for all fathers, Odin’t know. (My god, I think that’s the worst pun I’ve ever made.)

What’s dif­fer­ent is that I reflect — and I get a tad defen­sive. Most days of the year I don’t think about what peo­ple think about when they see us out and about, but on Father’s Day I kind of assume that they’re think­ing “Dude has his son for Father’s Day,” which, in my mind, is short for “unmar­ried unin­volved father spend­ing court-man­dat­ed time with his off­spring.”

Look. I know that’s crazythought. But I’ve heard its echoes from folks I know, who see tons of unac­com­pa­nied dads out on Wednes­days (the typ­i­cal week­ly overnight for stan­dard par­ent­ing sched­ule dads), feed­ing their kids at the Hot Dog Din­er or the like. I always feel there’s an impli­ca­tion that these dads are doing the min­i­mum, and that when I’m iden­ti­fied as a sin­gle dad, I’m also assumed to be doing the min­i­mum. If there’s one thing that is cer­tain to get me hack­led, it’s being thought of as some­one who does­n’t take respon­si­bil­i­ty or do his best. There’s cer­tain­ly still a stig­ma to being a sin­gle par­ent, and I’d argue, the stig­ma is worse for sin­gle dads. There are so many sin­gle dads out there who do the min­i­mum or less, and it reflects upon the sin­gle dads who actu­al­ly give a hoot.

It’s also a hefty por­tion of per­son­al inse­cu­ri­ty and a lit­tle resid­ual shame on my part for being taught that there is some­thing shame­ful about being a sin­gle par­ent.

Out of all of that inter­nal­ized roil I sit in a boat above it and reflect. And I think, for me, Father’s Day is becom­ing, and like­ly will con­tin­ue to be, an exam­i­na­tion of con­science on what it means for me to be a father. How I’ve been doing. How I can be bet­ter.

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