Be the man on Father's Day—and every day - For Brothers Only

Ebony, June, 2003 by Kevin Chappell

WE are often told that fatherhood is the greatest experience of a man's life, full of smiles, laughter and camera-ready moments. We are told that we need only be ourselves and the role of being a father will come naturally.

That is, until we become fathers. Then the game changes, and it seems folks never miss an opportunity to tell us how to be better fathers. This bait-and-switch catches us by surprise, keeping us constantly on our heels, feeling unbalanced by our new title, out of sorts with our purpose in life, forcing us to fumble and bumble our way through fatherhood.

As a result of this feeling of inadequacy, more and more of us have given up on the old-school notion of the traditional father. And perhaps, who can blame us? Often ridiculed and seen as second-class parents, fathers, particularly Black fathers, have always, had to fight to prove their worth to the family unit. In fact, our worth is so questioned that some family psychologists even jokingly refer to fathers as a "biological necessity, but a social accident."

While the fathers of old left us with a legacy of bringing toughness and grit to the family structure, many fathers today have found it easier, and less antagonistic to smooth out their rough edges, soften their hard ways, become what I call "mommy clones." Quick studies, these men take their queues on how to be a good father from their lady. This is especially true with Brothers, who have historically watched Black women play a strong role in raising children, and defining the roles of others within their family.

Without the maternal connection that comes with months of labor, and hours of giving birth, fathers are primed for the makeover. After all, the very things that society has deemed important in parenting are normally vacant in a father. There's not much soft about a father's touch, not much gentle about his caress, not much soothing about his voice.

When all is said and done, what a father has that is uniquely his own is his masculinity. To a child, a father has always been a protector, a supporter. To a child, a father has always been a provider and even a nurturer. To a child, no one is stronger, no one bigger, no one can scare away monsters better than daddy. To a child, a father is the ultimate shielder of evil, guardian of safety, keeper of comfort.

So why not cherish that truly masculine role more deeply?

Fatherhood can only be a "social accident" if we let it. In an effort to invent new models of behavior for us to emulate, society sometimes not only forces us to lose who we are, but causes the child to lose an invaluable part of his or her healthy growth. Male traits, attitudes, and tendencies (even the lying-on-the-couch-watching-football-all-day tendencies that we possess) have their purpose in a family.

Men bring their basic natures to the family, just as women do. Who's to say which is more useful, more important? We as fathers should feel freer to follow our male instincts. Men should become even more aware--not less--of their maleness after becoming a father. Fathers don't have to be "second mothers" to be important in a child's development.

So what if a father changes diapers a little differently than the mother does. So what if he prefers giving knee bounces to singing lullabies. So what if he sees nothing terrible in putting mix-matched booties on the baby or the baby's onesie on backwards. So what if he plays a little rough with the baby, uses incorrect grammar when talking baby talk, forgets to put the bib on at feeding time.

This Father's Day, we should harden our resolve to carve out and define our role as fathers ourselves, to show that our worth as men is important in the raising of healthy children, to put more father in fatherhood. If we just be ourselves, and don't give in to societal pressures to be something we're not, more of us would see fatherhood for what it is--an institution of honor and dignity. And in its rawest form, we would see it as a great complement to motherhood.