Present Fathers, Fatherless Children

Shared activity is not the same as closeness. This is true for friendships and it’s also true for parenting. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions I encounter in discussions about fatherhood. I’m not sure why parents assume that simply spending time together in shared activities automatically translates into closeness.

Just because a father attends all of his son’s sporting events does not mean they have a deep connection as father and son. A son whose father attends all of his soccer, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, football, and basketball games, as well as every other sporting event, can still be father-deprived and emotionally fatherless.

Psychoanalyst Susan Schwartz devotes an entire chapter to this subject in her most recent book fathers and sons. To illustrate the point, she tells the story of a man she calls “Bernard.” Bernard’s father showed up for sports, but affection and personal conversation were almost nonexistent. As an adult, Bernard sought through prostitutes the affection and connection he had not received from his father.

The case raises a difficult question: How many fathers confuse shared activities with actual closeness and connection? In Bernard’s case, Schwartz argues that his later pursuit of prostitutes was connected to a lifelong hunger for touch and affirmation.

This obviously very hard to hear and I was particularly curious as to why this story receive little to know engagement on X when I posted it.

Then it made me wonder, “Am I wasting my time presenting all of this psychoanalytic research on fathers and their children?” I have worked in a variety of formal ministry and educational settings across the country and across multiple denominations, and it is almost impossible to find anyone making these connections. That troubles me because the research is so helpful, wise, insightful, and immensely practical.

Do church leaders not believe the research? Are parents unconvinced that it applies to them? Do churches believe they are already addressing these issues successfully? And so on.

For the next several weeks, I’m going to publish a series of reflections on Susan Schwartz’s work on how fathers relate to their sons and daughters, drawing on insights from psychoanalysis and social science research. Why? Because almost no one in the church world seems to be making these connections. Consider this a “hold my beer” moment.

Here is one major misconception: fatherlessness exists only when the father is absent from the home. That is simply wrong. Fatherlessness and father deprivation can occur even when a father lives in the home and regularly participates in activities with his children.

What matters is whether or not there is secure attachment.

As explained in Britannica, “attachment theory, in developmental psychology, the theory that humans are born with a need to form a close emotional bond with a caregiver.” It describes a child’s innate drive to remain close to a protective caregiver, especially under conditions of threat. When children are securely attached, they feel safe and secure with their parents.

For fathers, attachment is cultivated over time. When children are securely attached to their fathers, they look to them for safety, comfort, protection, and emotional regulation.

This is why I’m doing this series. Many of the downstream problems that churches and nonprofits address could be substantially reduced if more children were securely attached to their fathers.

For boys, a lack of secure attachment to their fathers can contribute to anxiety, addiction, low energy, low self-esteem, perfectionism, withdrawal, shame, poor academic performance, and unemployment. For girls, the list is similar and additionally includes a persistent longing for paternal recognition, feelings of abandonment and emotional invisibility, difficulty trusting themselves and others, vulnerability in intimate relationships, a tendency to seek externally the validation, attention, or affirmation they did not receive from their fathers, and difficulty developing an authentic, independent identity.

Based on what I’ve read in Christian parenting books and what churches are doing in children’s and youth ministry, I’m fairly certain that most people aren’t going to read this anywhere else. With an evidence-based approach, it seems that we need to rethink everything about how we’re raising kids in the 21st-century at home, school, and church.

Stay tuned. . .

If this matters, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with a man or leader who needs to read it. Subscribe for more writing on fatherhood. Also, if you want to go deeper on what dad-deprived culture is doing to the formation of children, my new book The Fatherhood Effect ($15.99) makes the case in full. The book is $20.99 on Amazon.