To start this whole deal off, I struggled with several approaches, several topics I'd like to address. I suspect I will address them all, over time. Recent events have made me think about what this generation of fathers might look like, if they step up and give it their all. And also, the type of people conscientiously fathered children might grow to become.
As Americans, we have benefited a great deal from what those who have come before us have provided. We still, though the fumes are now burning out fast, are beneficiaries of the fact that during WW I and WW II, that paragon of civilization we call Europe blew itself nearly back to the Stone Age fighting for...whatever... and America emerged victorious, left to rebuild the world and reap the economic benefits of doing so, and the fact that there was no one credible left to compete with us. Well, the Cold War and its aftermath has flattened the playing field. Asia is rising. Russia is, to some extent, enjoying the benefits of not being communist, though authoritarianism still reigns, to a degree. In the past few years it seems that the economy and all of our traditional values have gone to hell in a handbasket. But still, debt-ridden as we are, rudderless as we may seem, we have more resources to put to the work of raising decent and self-reliant children than we ever have before, so long as we muster the will and energy to do so. It is worth noting that the more important of these resources have little to do with money and lots to do with will and creativity.
One of the things I had to learn about in my years of studying philosophy and political theory, and teaching American literature has been our national tendency toward realism. When balanced with our equal tendency toward idealism, it serves us well; look at our traditions of crime fiction (which I will write more about in the future) and journalism...they teach us valuable lessons, to dream, but also to temper our vision of the way things ought to be with the way they actually are and the limits of what can be, and that has pushed us forward. The most honest amongst us knows to embrace one without the other (in the guises of passive fatalism and wishful thinking) is delusional and pathological--a faux and brittle muscularity or a paralyzing timidness.
The cultural inheritance of the post-war and "Babyboomer" generations have been mixed. The boon of winning WWII made us materially prosperous to an extent previously unheard of. Amongst such boom times the whole of our society rightfully wanted their piece of the American dream they sweated and bled to create, so we had the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and feminism. Some of the more opportunistic have exploited the resentment toward the basic fact that the world is no longer the oyster of the white Anglo-Saxon male, but I'll stand alone if need be to assert that a balancing was certainly in order, and that ultimately we should be proud, grateful, and not bitter that such corrections took place during our era. That more opportunity exists for all is a cause for celebration. We make ourselves ugly and decrepit when we grasp that which is not ours. To paraphrase the first scene of "The Wire", Season One, "this is America; everybody gets a shot."
One of the more dynamic developments of the post-war generation was to begin to see the value of cultures we formerly dismissed as inferior. A favorite movement of mine, especially in my youth, was the Beat Generation, as demonstrated in the works of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Could there be some value in the ways Brown America lived, and might there be something to emulate there? In this, there was a challenging of middle class values, and a fairly straight line can be drawn from this countercultural movement to hippies to punks to the mainstream youth culture of Generation X, its embracing of hiphop and mashups of pop culture genres and artifacts. The hedonism, I've grown to have less and less respect for as I age, but even the most staunchly conservative aspects of my psyche have to concede that there's value in knowing that a suburban house with a white picket fence and a Cadillac are not the "end all/be all" things to aspire to. There's more to life, and even if I like these things (which, hey, if I am being real, I have to admit that I do!), it matters how I go about getting them. Just as important, it matters to me and should matter to you also how I treat people who are not like me, and as the motto of my home state of North Carolina instructs, I should pay greater attention to how I am moreso than how I seem.
The hippie counterculture of the sixties, as ridiculous as it seems to me on its face, offers some lessons. Yes, it is easy for a teenager to criticize things they take for granted and don't know the cost of. It is also self-indulgent to "drop out" of society and earn some mythologically-inflated sense of self-awareness and leave others holding the bag. But to consider the proper value of material things and social customs is still worth doing. If a way of life leaves you empty and spent, might there be some other way to go about things? I must say, I really have come to appreciate the eastern texts that the Beats and the hippies brought to our attention...not as a means to ditch my own heritage, but as a lens through which to view and evaluate contemporary life.
We err just as much as "the squares" if we uncritically abandon the values our families bestowed on us in favor of some newish and shiny exotic way to be. But for me, I have always struggled for that middle ground--appreciating tradition while also keeping my ears open for something new...my powers of reason are my guide, and if I can't trust them, really, I can't trust anything anyhow.
So here we are. Who doesn't have economic woes of some sort, due to our urge toward consumerism, but yet we are bogus to pretend we don't like the material comforts our modern age has to offer. I really dig that my wife is beautiful, educated, capable, and completely my equal, and I can't say it diminishes me one bit. I embrace Shakespeare, Rod Serling, Duke Ellington, Morrissey, Superman, Captain America, the Daodejing, Mark Twain, and The Federalist Papers equally, b/c they all make up who I am and "How It Is." They all point to what has been and what I want to be.
As much as we bitch, we really do live in the best of times. Pounded as we are day by day about how we as a nation are declining, the one thing I can tell you with certainty is that never have we as men had so many resources with which to produce great children.
One reason that our mother and fathers' generation may have experienced a substantially higher rate of divorce is the move toward independence and autonomy of women in their day, and the perception of such as a downgrading in the status of all things male. We know now this was a confused and fearful overreaction to the unknown. Imagine how men were over the ages stifled in their own way within the narrow confines of traditional masculinity. Not able to cry or be playful. Not able to share his innermost self with his loved ones for fear of being found lacking in some way. Only with deep shame being able to defer to his wife something she may be better at doing, or letting her bring home the proverbial bacon.Having to spend an inordinate amount of time competing with other males for status and position, for things you couldn't care less about and to the detriment of priorities that reflect who you really are and what you really love. True, these all pale in comparison with how women have suffered, but if we are honest the practice of patriarchy and traditional "maleness" have cost us, and dearly.
But because of what has happened in America these past hundred years or so, we get to say about the sort of men we want to be, and this is a great thing. We can stick to the old script if that's what we want, but it's a choice now. We might want to tear up the script and do something else, and we can do that, too. Consider that even taking the time to think thoughts such as these would have been considered unmanly in the recent past, though now I am reveling in them and the people most dear in my life are benefiting from them.
These days, as fathers, we can be in several parts traditional alpha male, nurturer, coach, friend, protector, and provider, whatever our role calls for, to an extent we have never experienced. Unless you have very rigid ideas as to what a father should be, this is a golden age in which to be one. And sure, we're no longer in an age where a white male gets handed an extravagant job just for having done some time in college. Now we have to compete, and that will make us raise our own game, so it's all for the good. Even at a time when the economic pie seems smaller and more sliced up than ever, it's really just an opportunity, not a crisis, to get our priorities in check. (It's all relative--heck, many in much less prosperous parts of the world would crack ten men over the skull with a rock and swim through a pool of razorblades just to have the opportunities we take for granted on a daily basis.) We still have enough resources, if channeled to the right places, to raise the next "Greatest Generation".
And it seems I've painted myself into a corner, eh? Just getting to the heart of my topic with no space to develop it? But in thinking so, you would be WRONG. You see, along with the typical music/comic/movie/politics/philosophy blog that this has been in the past, a theme that I'll also be writing on and to is this: how can we as men take the limited resources left to us and raise strong, resilient, thoughtful, compassionate children? I can't say I know exactly, b/c I'm just now joining this club, so it will be a bit of an improvisation (but hey, don't all exciting stories get carried by the improvisational actions of the characters featured in them?). I will say this: I'm ready to do it, and it will get done.
Rightfully so, this is my greatest context on everything now; the things that were once rather abstract are reframed through the lens of a papa, so it just makes sense that this sort of subject matter will get thrown in with the stuff I've previously dealt with. I get that this topic, if handled poorly, can be lame and preachy, but it's an important one. I'll do my best to steer clear of that and give you some truth and some insight worth reading and not make this such a "me me me" show.
I welcome and appreciate your comments and thoughts about these matters and any others; unless addressed specifically, I'll let you have your say. The blog itself is likely enough "say" for me.
From here on out: weekly, on Sunday evenings.
Thanks for your patience and your indulgence.
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