Writing about my childhood will necessarily include examining my relationships with my parents. With that in mind, I’ve been researching how to write about fathers. Here’s my summary.
Nina B. Lichtenstein wrote:
Some of us grow up close with our fathers, some of us not. Others become estranged as adults or find a way back to closeness as the years go by. There can be love, play, alliances, respect, and deep connection in father-child relationships, but there can also be defiance, struggle, abandonment, secrets, and abuse. And then there’s regret. How do we write through and with and about regret?
Think about how this often-complex relationship can bolster or belittle us, challenge and reward us.
The Meaning of Fatherhood
We need to work out what fatherhood means to us, what values and qualities we associate with the role. It could be about providing guidance, support and unconditional love. It could be about being a source of strength.
The Three Ps
Provider, Protector and Permanence
Or: Protect, Provide and Preside
These are the three roles typically associated with fathers. Did your father fulfill these roles? Did you expect him to do so?
Four Types of Fathers
- Those who play an active part in caring for and raising their children from day one.
- Those who are bystanders, who leave parenting to women.
- Those who would rather wait until their children are older and relatively independent before they begin to play a role.
- Those who are unavoidably absent or excluded from caring for their children.
Which sort was yours?
Lessons Learned From Your Father
List the traits, beliefs and peculiarities that you have acquired from him. These might be positive or negative. Also, what negative patterns have you tried to reverse?
Duties
According to Oilgrow, these are the ten duties of a father within a family:
- Provider
- Protector
- Disciplinarian
- Emotional support
- Role model
- Mentorship
- Quality time
- Breadwinner
- Teacher
- Companion – love, companionship, and support
Do you agree? How did your father perform the duties?
Characters (not only fathers) in a Memoir
Steven B. Killion says:
You are not the most important character in your life story—it is the other people in your life who give it meaning and who make it interesting.
I don’t agree. Yes, the other people are important, but you are the most important character in your story. After all, you are the only one who appears in every single scene written from your memory rather than from hearsay.
Readers, please comment. Do you agree with the points above? Do you have anything to add?
To end this post, I looked for a photo of my father and me. I found only one and well…
Miriam Drori, Author 
4 replies on “Writing About Fathers”
When I was a child, I adored my father. Yes, he was a provider, protector, and there for me. He was also my playmate. I have happy memories of us playing lots of games together. He did take an active part in caring for and raising me. We were very close. Unfortunately, as I grew older, I became more aware of what I might call his ‘faults’ for want of a better word, and I learnt about his disturbing secrets. I felt a need to distance myself from him for various reasons.
I don’t agree with Killian that we are not the most important character in our life story. Yes, others are important, but my memoir was about me and my life. I had to include my father in it, but deciding what to tell or not tell about him was difficult. My relationship with him had become complicated. Writing about him could make me feel guilty and disloyal, but I couldn’t leave him of my memoir completely. Our father inevitably has a tremendous effect on us for better and/or for worse. The ‘for worse’ is hurtful but I also try to keep remembering the ‘for better’.
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Thank you, Jean, for your very helpful comment. Our parents, like everyone else, had positive and negative characteristics formed by their experiences before we were born. Deciding how much to include in a memoir is challenging.
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This is a rather benign, naive view.
Have you considered that many fathers do not contribute positively to the lives of their sons and daughters? I once was a psychologist to a woman who had been sexually abused, at gun point, by her father. She went to his funeral during which others spoke of how wonderful a man he was (of course, people are not to speak ill of the dead, right?). It re-traumatized her. I have counseled many men who are trying to move past brutal physical abuse (misnamed as “discipline”). While most refused to physically punish their children because of the damage their fathers did to them, they remain prone to anger dysregulation and verbal abuse, belittling, and gaslighting. Fathers can represent a toxic form of masculinity degrading the emotional life of their children.
As you work on this project, you might give voice to readers on both sides of this emotionally charged issue. If you do not, you risk perpetrating the enforced silencing of those who have been harmed by fathers who have not taken responsibility for how their actions have left emotional scars.
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I understand what you say and agree. I undertook some light research on writing about fathers and posted what I found. My project is not to write about fathers in general but to write about my father as part of my memoir. My father was not abusive, and so he fits the post. Thank you for your heartfelt comment.
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