Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal Life by Samuels

Author:Samuels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karnac Books
Published: 2011-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

PLAYING THE FATHER ROLE

There are two separate questions involved in the psycho-cultural debate over fatherhood. The first has to do with the consequences (or lack of them) of lone parenthood for child development. For convenience, we could call this the lone-mother question. The second has to do with the question of what fathering is these days. We could call this the crisis-in-fatherhood question. It is important to recognize that these two apparently different questions lead us in a surprisingly similar direction. Addressing one question helps us to engage with the other. Both questions stimulate thinking about what fathers do, or can do, that is life-affirming and related to others, beyond being a ‘moral presence’.

We can begin to create and assemble a psychological information pool, or resource, for women bringing up children on their own or women bringing up children together with other women. When the father is revisioned as being ‘unpatriarchal’, such women can also be revisioned, not only as mothers but also as ‘fathers of whatever sex’. Immediately, we undermine everything that our society assigns or wishes to assign to men. Anatomy ceases to determine parental destiny and the lone-mother question is completely re-framed.

The questions we need to ask of women are: can you do the things that male fathers do? Do you want to do them? We invite women to assert their capacities to be fathers of whatever sex, which would often make them good-enough fathers, rather than setting them up to fail as phoney ideal fathers. Men fail to be ideal fathers, too. Women may well choose not to perform every item on any list of fatherly functions, nor will they necessarily perform these functions in precisely the same way that men might. But would that matter? Some might say it would be a pretty good thing. Difference does not always mean deficit. The issue is not that mothering and fathering are identical - though there will be disagreement about the differences - but whether or not a woman can do much of what fathers do (and a man much of what mothers do).

Gathering information about fathering today could enable women to decide how many of its functions they could perform themselves. That is why the usual formulation has been twisted so as to call women who raise children alone good-enough fathers. Many women who raise children alone, or together with other women, are certainly already doing a lot of being a good-enough father of whatever sex without naming it as such. This group of women represents an incalculably valuable resource. What they do as parents could herald a whole new approach to parenting that plugs into the fluidity in gender roles that has evolved since the Second World War which is not going to be wished and/or legislated away by governments.

To those who have a negative reaction to the idea that women can be good-enough fathers and play the father's role, let us say: men, too, only play the father's role. Fathering does not come ‘naturally’

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