Vol. 14, No. 2 • May 2010

Real Men Are Real: How to Find Father Figures Outside of Family

Dr. Neil Altman is a therapist and author of the book The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through a Psychoanalytic Lens. In this interview he talks about what good fathers give and how fatherless teenagers can get those things from other people.

What does a good father give boys, and can other people provide it?
If you’re a boy, then a father has a special role in shaping your sense of what it means to be a man. Ideas of manhood are changing, but there are still expectations that boys and men will be less emotional and more tough.

Having an older man you respect in your life, even if he’s not your dad, is important because he brings those expectations of manhood down to human size. This real man shows you that nobody can be perfectly tough or unemotional. You learn from the cracks in his façade. Seeing a father or mentor react to an emotional challenge in a good way just one time can teach a kid something.

Is the ideal of manhood all stereotype or is there something useful there for boys?
The images of men in movies and TV are not real. Real men are real people, more real than the images. Real people let you know that it’s OK to have strengths and weaknesses. Boys get the images of tough and competent, and girls get the TV images of sexy and attractive and thin. Real people are combinations of all kinds of people, of masculine and feminine.

What do fathers give girls in particular and how can fatherless girls get that?
For girls, fathers are particularly important in adolescence. Sometimes a father and daughter who’ve been close when she was younger will retreat from each other when she hits puberty. Girls often feel awkward around all older men as their bodies change.

The culture is so focused on young females as sex objects that it’s just as important for the girl as for the boy to get a positive male role model at that point—one who sees women as people. A girl needs to have a model of males in her life who are interested in her as a thinking and feeling person.

Where can a fatherless kid find role models?
Seek out environments that help you develop yourself, and you’ll find people who can show you the things you need. A church, for example, is both a community center and a bunch of caring people. Go where you can use any special talent you have, like making art or doing sports. Sports can help you grow because you have to cope with losing, which makes it an emotional outlet. Music is another great way of connecting to feelings.

You’ll find mentors and role models in those environments where you can express emotion. And an adult you talk to but don’t live with can provide you with a calmer place, a different point of view, someone to talk to who won’t throw what you told them back in your face 24/7. These are some of the same things a father provides in a traditional household where the mother is with the children a lot more.

How are the effects of an abusive father different from the effects of an absent father?
A kid is much more likely to make an absent father a hero, bigger than life. That can happen with an abusive father, though it’s less likely. With an abusive father, the bad fallout is denial, like “forgetting” the stuff that happened.

In both cases, for your own sake, you may decide to give up your rage without actually forgiving your father. Forgiving means understanding where the behavior came from, so you have to know someone well to forgive him. You may not get a chance to know your absent father that well—or [you may not] want to know your abuser that well.

In terms of finding other men to trust, if you’ve been molested or abandoned, you need to know you’re starting out wary and suspicious and expecting the worst. That makes sense, but it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open for the positive as well as the negative. For kids who’ve been molested by someone in the family, it may be easier to trust someone who’s not related—a coach, a teacher, a church member, a therapist.

How can you prepare for meeting a father who’s been gone a long time?
Read Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama! Notice how Obama pays attention to the conflicting things he feels when he meets his father for the first time, and how he sorts all that out (see pp. 63-70 in the paperback). Understand that your father feels guilty and that you’re going to feel angry and hopeful. There’s going to be love or potential love on both sides. You can’t make the guilt and anger go away.

Your father may want you to understand why he wasn’t there for you. You won’t feel understanding at first—that will have to evolve over time. But don’t tell him everything you need at that first meeting. I think it’s best at an initial meeting to be low-key and just find out how each other is feeling.

Talk to someone else about your feelings at first. Process that first meeting with that trusted person. Your father feels vulnerable and guilty and ashamed and worries he’ll be misunderstood; he’s probably not ready to hear your feelings. (It’s OK if your feelings do slip out.) After two or three meetings, you could maybe bring up some of your own feelings.

But first, you, the son or daughter, have to admit to yourself what you need from him. You’re probably thinking, “I don’t need him,” because that’s how you’ve coped with his absence.

How do you know what you need from him if you’ve never had it?
There are clues to what you need in what you’ve been trying to get. As a boy, have you been drawn to gangs? To older guys who seem confident and tough? As a girl, have you been attracted to older guys of a particular type, maybe who have money? If you’ve been looking for it in positive places—meaning people who care about you and are reliable—that’s great, that means you’re more comfortable with needing it.

If you don’t believe you can ever get that kind of positive attention, then your longing for it gets a little twisted. You could end up denying you need anything while seeking it out at the same time.

What do you need to watch out for if you’ve reunited with your dad?
You need to find out something about your father, and the older you are, the easier this gets. What’s his life like? Why does he want to see you now? Can you figure that out when you talk to him? Does he seem more mature now than he did when you were little? Is he feeling so guilty and defensive that he won’t be able to handle it when you start to tell him you’ve been hurt and angry?

Meanwhile the people who have taken care of you—foster parents, a mother or other relative—have let you down in small ways, restricted your movements, and made you angry. You may be tempted to defy whoever’s been taking care of you and think, “My father’s going to swoop down and take me to a better life.”

People develop fantasies of absent parents. You may be expecting somebody wonderful, but what you’ll get is a complicated human with lots of problems as well as some good qualities.

What if your dad was in jail?
People can grow and change, even in jail. Don’t assume you know what you’re going to find. Some people find themselves in jail; others get more bitter and hard. You have to keep your eyes open. Try to think of your father as a person, notice as much as you can. That’s why I’m telling everyone to read Obama’s book.

Is there anything else you’d say to people who grew up without fathers?
I think kids who are without their biological parents—both mothers and fathers—are prone to thinking that if only they had them they would be OK. And that’s not true. Biological parents come with all kinds of problems, and yes, they help, but it’s not a dealbreaker for your life if you don’t have them.

Reprinted with permission from Represent, Copyright 2009 by Youth Communication/New York Center, Inc. (www.youthcomm.org)