Two stories today about fatherhood and family. The first is the Sunday Modern Love column in the NYT, by Victoria Loustalot, in which she reflects upon her gay father, who left the family and then died when she was young. The second is the big front-pager of the NYT Magazine, Gay Donor or Gay Dad, by John Bowe, that explores the alternative family arrangements, some quite complicated, that evolve when gay women couples chose gay men, either singly or couples as well, to be sperm donors and "fathers" or a sort. There are several issues here and I don't know if I will touch on them all tonight but, here goes...
To begin, I was immediately reminded, when reading the magazine piece, about my own short article on sperm donors. I was a bit unhappy with how I had ended that piece. I argued that "providing a sperm does not make a father." I should have said something like, "in and of itself." I did not mean to imply that sperm donors could never be fathers. Rather, sperm donation by itself is not a conferral of fatherhood. The very last sentence of that piece sums up my position: "Parental rights and responsibilities are personally and socially performed, they are not biologically determined."
And that is what the two pieces in today's Times are all about: socially performing parental roles. In the case of the gay sperm donors/fathers it is evident that the men and women in the magazine article are thinking seriously about their duties. The men provide sperm (sometimes in the most traditional of ways!) but, then, stay in the lives of the children they conceive. There are clearly difficulties in working out specific relationships but, I think, with enough good will, good parenting is possible. The big question is: how much time and commitment is enough to fulfill something like a fatherly role?
In one case a sperm donor describes himself as: “more than an uncle and less than a father.” Which is fine. But, in this case, if he understands his role as "less than a father," he should not be referred to as a "father." "Uncle" strikes me as the better title. And this matters, I think, because a father's role should be meaningful.
The particular meaning and depth of a father's
role emerges slowly and organically over time. Time is the key. One
must be present in a child's life, there not just for "quality time"
but for mundane time as well, to experience close at hand the daily
development of a son or a daughter. Work life may take many men away
from their children for significant parts of each day, or even for days
at a time. But if a father, any father, gay or straight or whatever,
is to fulfill his family obligation, he must make himself present, as
much as is possible, in the daily lives of his children.
Loustalot's father seems to have fallen short of his fatherly role when he moved out of the house when she was 10 to live with his gay lover:
But after his confession, he moved away permanently and into a condo in Santa Cruz with his partner, Steve. Suddenly I was the one commuting, visiting my father every other weekend.
"Every other weekend" is insufficient. What does that mean? Twelve days out of every fourteen the father is absent for her life? That strikes me as too little and too remote. This is a common problem in American society, with divorces forcing all sorts of less-that-good visitation situations. It is not an easy problem to fix: keeping abusive, bad marriages together might be worse, in some cases, than splitting spouses apart. But we must recognize how such circumstances can undermine fathers and mothers in fulfilling their parental obligations.
There is no simple answer to the question, how much time and attention is enough to satisfy parental duties to children?. Again, if the time is badly spent, then less might be better. But, in general, daily commitments, not weekly or monthly, should be the starting point.
There is also in involuntary aspect of parenthood. A father cannot simply opt out of tough situations. You can't chose whether your father role is activated or not. In the magazine article it turns out that one of the children has cancer. It is a major health crisis; at one point the child is given only a 30 percent chance of survival. And this tested the father's commitment:
When the crisis first hit, everyone came together and dealt with it as a team. Vicki quit her job to be the full-time caretaker, and as David told me, any notion of part-time fathering went out the window. All hands were called on deck, and everyone responded in kind. After the initial trauma, however, when the emergency decisions and arrangements had been made and treatment was under way, David wanted to return to his part-time role. As he admitted later, this caused “some resentment.” The mothers, or at least Vicki, expected that David would continue to be more involved.
“It was tough, because I was under the impression we were all going to stand together,” Vicki told me later. “As time went on, it was: ‘Well, I’m going to work. I’m going to a play. I have this; I have that.’ And so the bulk of everything sort of fell on my shoulders.”...
......
David, as he explained it to me, saw things a little differently: “I’m like, Well, at the beginning, I was needed in that role. Now that things are together and moving, I’m pulling myself back, because I’m not — I didn’t sign on for —.” He stalled. He still had his bills to pay, his house to pay off and all his other affairs. Most significant, he said, “this wasn’t a responsibility that I necessarily took on. You know? This was where the untraditional part of the family arrangement came into question or got defined or whatever. Because that’s not what my role is here.” It was, he said, at times, “a difficult wire to walk.”
I disagree with this sentiment. Once you "sign on" to be a father, you have to fulfill the role, regardless of what it might imply for your ideal life. You don't just "sign on" for the good times, and sign off for the bad times. Yes, he had to have to balance the various elements of family life, but caring for his son absolutely was a responsibility that he took on. If you are part time, you are not a father.
Fathers must consider themselves "full time" because children see their fathers as full time. Loustalot certainly did when she was young. After her father had died she still looked for him:
Sometimes, in the months after my father’s cremation, I would visit him in the closet. His box was always unmoved, and although it comforted me to see that cardboard box and say to myself, “There. He’s there,”
This was after he had left the house and she saw him only every other weekend. This was after the sad separation of death. However difficult it was, she still went to him, she still sought and found his presence. That is how children relate to fathers; and fathers must reciprocate that unconditional love with their time and attention.
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