A new father reflects on his past and his son's future

Em is kind enough to take down these thoughts for me (Rhett) as I am holding and feeding our son.

For the last several months, I’ve given great thought to what it means to be a man. This began last April when I disclosed to Lisa and Liz at a healing service that PM and I were beginning the process of attempting to conceive a child. My thoughts intensified after we learned that we were pregnant; and I further explored these thoughts through a men’s group with friends from ECOTA in the fall. The question “what does it mean to be a man?” has been a particularly salient one for me because it cuts to the heart of what it now means for me to be a father, and what it means for me to seek to be one of hopefully many positive and healthy role models for our son.

It strikes me that the models of masculinity that our American culture has held up since this country’s founding are no longer working. The John Wayne approach to relationships, the George W. Bush approach to governing, and the all-consuming focus on success that leads many male athletes to use performance enhancing drugs cannot be the only models provided for my son. As a boy growing up in South Carolina, I intuitively knew that the models of masculinity around me did not work for me. I wasn’t a particularly good athlete, though I enjoyed sports; I couldn’t charm and manipulate women; I wasn’t able to use words and even might to engender the “respect” of my male peers. I longed for something more substantive by which to define myself as a man, but I didn’t know where to look for it, how to find it, and especially how to be what it was that I longed to be.

Over the last several days I have reflected on the last ten years of my life – a period in which I’ve done considerable self-reflection and therapy. As I consider certain periods of my life and the ways that I acted during those periods, sometimes I wonder who I was at those times. In particular, I recall the ways in which I acted in my first marriage and realize that I don’t even know that person anymore. My identity back then was confined to the narrow models of masculinity that I received from my father and mother, my grandparents, and from many of the men who mentored me in my early years in South Carolina. The experience of divorce, as painful as it was, was the most transformative experience of my life because it forced me into a time of despair. It was the most healing despair of my life in that I realized that the models I had been given did not work and would not work, and thus, I had to make changes.

I found the tools for internal change through mentors and therapists, through friends (male and female), and most importantly, through Em, my wife. I also found a number of cultural fathers who have modeled for me what I consider to be healthy masculinity.

There are many men in our society who have wed religion in politics in ways that I consider to be unhelpful, but which have engendered the support of Americans given our dominant gender narratives. For instance, for those in this school of thought, personal religious values are imposed upon others through public discourse and public policy. This has been the masculine politics of the last 28 years. I am heartened now that these narratives are changing and that we see models of masculinity emerging from the grassroots that place a high priority on community, compassion for children, respect for diverse family models, and love of neighbor. This way of being a man was embodied for me by an early cultural father, Walter Mondale and a more recent cultural father, Al Gore. These particular men are important models for me because they combine the religious and the political. Walter Mondale was the son of a Methodist pastor, and Al Gore is an ordained minister. Both have dedicated their lives to public service, and both have placed their own family at the pinnacle of their lives as well as the American family at the forefront of their public policy initiatives. These men are important to me because they hold conflicting masculine characteristics in tension. In these men, charm and wit are moderated by sincerity and responsibility; power is tempered with accountability, and a passion for public justice is informed by an awareness of the joys and struggles that Americans face daily.

This is an early reflection by a new father who wants to be a healthy masculine role-model for his son and who hopes his life will contribute to the making of a better society for all children and their families. I hope to be a role model who by example teaches his son a way of having caring friendships with men and women based on mutuality and respect.

After ten years of reflection I have been able to incorporate the many strengths of my father and mother and grandparents into my life and I have gained an appreciation for them and the contributions they made to my life. Among their contributions are an appreciation for family, a strong work ethic, and a commitment to public service. My hope and prayer is that our son will not need ten years of reflection in order to speak those words about his father. I am grateful for the many men presently in my life who have walked with me in preparation for fatherhood. I am grateful for the women who have shared this journey as well; and I look forward to these men and women being a part of the village that will help raise our son into the man that he is best able to be.