Diamond, Michael J. My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives

International Social Science Review, Fall-Winter, 2007 by Janice Kay Purk

Diamond, Michael J. My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 2007. xxi 239 pages. Cloth, $24.95.

In this book, Michael J. Diamond, a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, discusses the relationship of fathers and sons throughout the life span in each other's development. In so doing, he combines research information on this issue which is not often addressed with his practice experience to create an easy-reading yet insightful book.

Diamond investigates the exchange between fathers and sons based on his experiences and on his years in counseling. The vignettes share the multifaceted relations that fathers and sons experience. These stories are filled with emotion. The author's examination of both qualitative and quantitative research supports these stories to increase their value to the reader.

Diamond addresses the commonly held belief that children can be raised as well without fathers as with fathers. In disputing that claim, he sees the interaction of father and child as intertwined and reciprocal and extremely valuable in shaping a child. "Becoming a father, one of life's most important challenges, ... is a complex interaction during which the father influences the way the child develops and, simultaneously, his son affects the way the father handles the parallel transitions" (p. 8).

Diamond examines the roles of fathers in raising both male and female children. He then specifically explores the relationship between father and son, seeing that as significantly different in the attitudes and expectations of both parties. Beginning with his own experiences of being a son and then experiencing the birth of his children, Diamond examines the need to learn to be the father. He argues that men need to cultivate their own emotional lives to be able to engage with their sons and enhance their growth. He then describes the stages of a father's development. Using the standards of psychology, especially Erikson's life span approach, Diamond moves beyond them to assess the changing life relationships and roles. He finds that men face empty nest later than women and characterizes this time as an opportunity for newfound closeness between fathers and sons. He then returns to integrity stage in old age; as fathers face life review, they evaluate their role in their sons' lives and reach for reconciliation when needed.

My Father Before Me is a well-organized book. Diamond presents a portrait of the powerful roles that fathers can play in their sons' lives and provides a blueprint to develop relationships and a guide for how to examine the relationship to improve their current interactions. The author deals with issues of envy, jealousy, and competition between fathers and sons. He often addresses the issues of the father's failures to provide emotional support. He shows examples of fathers who have disengaged from their families to focus on the world of work and those who find it difficult to take on the role of father. The results of a failure to have positive father-son interaction can affect the son's development. "For his part, the father of a young man must face his own failure in attending to his son's development" (p. 154). The information provided throughout this book could help guide men to better understand their own relationships with their father or son and work toward building better interactions with either.

The author, in his review of research, focuses on the contribution of Stanley Greenspan, a clinical professor of psychiatry, developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, and others from the psychological approach. His review fails to address the contribution of sociological influences addressed by Lewis Yablonsky (Fathers and Sons: Life Stages in One of the Most Challenging of All Family Relations, 2000), Michael Kimmel (Men's Lives, 1995, and The Invisible Sex: Masculinity in Contemporary America, 2003), and others.

Overall, this book is a strong statement to men that they need to be actively involved in their sons' lives. It credits fathers as being part of the building blocks that make great sons. It calls for a more flexible and inclusive notion of masculinity, and for the development of early bonds. Diamond calls for a "parental alliance" in which each parent supports the other to create parenting that allows the son to experience what both parents bring to the family. I would recommend this book not as a textbook but as supplemental reading to cover fathering in a sociology family class (a topic often omitted from textbooks on the subject). Even more, I would recommend this book as reading for any parent mother or father to understand the influence that fathers can have in the development of their sons and to understand how the positive relationships that fathers develop can result in a more "realistic, mature and integrated sense of their own manhood" (p. 139).

Janice Kay Purk, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Sociology