MARK M. OP-ED: Fathers And Sons - It's Complicated

The liberal Booker Rising reader and donor emailed this op-ed:

I’ve written before about my experiences with my eleven year-old daughter and how those fatherly moments have made me smile but also pierced my insecurities. There is nothing quite as revealing and unsettling as parenting. You are constantly balancing not transferring your own inadequacies upon your child but imparting the wisdom you’ve gained from living a longer life. That wisdom knows that good people can make decisions that haunt them for life. From the bright high school friend who tried drugs and never stopped to the brilliant girl I knew since childhood who never reached her potential because she had low self-esteem, the minefield of life terrifies many parents.

In many ways, my relationship with my daughter is far easier than my relationship with my nine year-old son. My daughter has been an open book thus far. She opens up to me and tells me about her hopes and fears. In some ways we have a more honest relationship because I think I’m a little tougher on her. Maybe it’s because she’s not as emotional as my son. Maybe it’s because she’s our first born. But maybe it’s because I see the vagaries and twists of life ever clearer in my son as I see myself in him.

My son and I have a good relationship. I help coach his soccer team. We play catch, watch cartoons and horseplay all the time. I never miss an event and I provide him with ample positive reinforcement. He’s a very strong student and a decent athlete but I always ask him to critique his own performance, which he does a pretty well. To me, that exercise promotes self-awareness and humility. We spend time most nights just talking right before bed.

My father and I had and still have a pretty good relationship. To me, he showed strength and optimism by example. He worked very hard, provided for his family and encouraged us to advance. He took us hunting and fishing and took us on vacations. But there was a distance. I never felt really comfortable talking to my father until I became a man. Maybe it was me, but he wasn’t approachable in that way. He didn’t have “talks” with me nor did he sit me down and talk to me about life. In many ways, I was on my own. That was the way he was raised – a distant provider.

But you know what I’ve learned? Raising a boy, my son, scares the daylights out of me at times. I don’t know what he’s thinking most of the time. He has a great social maturity for his age and he is a studious and well thought of boy, but I don’t exactly know what makes him tick. Maybe it’s me. Maybe those schoolyard battles, those not so nice encounters with teachers and those feelings of awkwardness are what scare me about my son. I got through that maze called life due to some stroke of luck. How will my son get through it?