Fatherhood is a part of man's life still little explored, by man himself.
Fatherhood is a part of a man's life that is much fantasized about by women.
Fatherhood is a part of a man's life that is greatly desired by children.
Fatherhood could solve or alleviate many of society's most pressing problems today.
More than ever, a father is needed who knows he is a father and acts as a father.
You don't have to be a super dad, like in the media, who appear fit, happy, successful and self-assured, strong and sensitive. It just needs to be real, nothing more.
In psychology, one learns that the paternal role can be exercised by anyone, of any sex, gender or degree of kinship, which in popular terms is said: “Father is the one who creates.” Although these two ideas, one scientific and the other, common sense, converge and come very handy in a sexist and precarious society like ours (thus greatly increases the chance of people having a father), the question remains: why is it so difficult for a man today to be a father?
Of course, this question is disturbing and, by itself, generates others. Was being a parent ever easy? Even if you want men to take your father's place, is there room for that? Is it so beautiful and desirable, as they say, to see and have a man at home as a father? And why so much astonishment and fanfare when a man decides, or tries, to take his place as a father, dedicating himself more to his children at the expense of a higher income or even a career? Why does a father who assumes his responsibilities with his children, making nothing more than part of it, generate news?
We could continue with the questions, but the difficulty may be in the answers we will find, if for a minute we manage to overcome the barrier of appearances and access a little more than what is really thought and expected of life after the advent of pregnancy.
When a baby is born, a mother is not born, nor a father. Both are in situations that need to understand, and know how to deal with things that demand a lot of energy and maturity, but with the same disposition and the same maturity they had before.
Having a child doesn't mature anyone, but the process of raising and educating him does. Being a parent is a choice, like any other in life.
Being a father has to do with sex, with pregnancy and with a delicate notion of what it is like to be present, since after conception, the father's role in pregnancy is, to say the least, confusing (especially for him).
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A man who believes he is only a father after childbirth has already lost a lot of his son's story, but it's easy to imagine that being available and next to a woman while she takes care of everything inside her, can be confused with being subservient and give in to frills and excesses, which are best translated in our culture (and not just in men's minds) by female whims. This uncomfortable thought might well apply to all other circumstances in family life.
Is this distancing in “who does what” during pregnancy, which is perpetuated in the life of man? We certainly have a question there, but there's a lot more where that one came from.
Interestingly, being a father calls a man to break with machismo and assert himself as a man for himself. It can be assumed how complicated this is, since we were all, or are being, raised and educated in the midst of the forced predominance of the masculine over the feminine.
The father is the no. The father is the limit. The father is the one who lets himself be held by will, since, by nature, he is always the third party in the relationship. The father is the provider, and it has very little to do with money. Hard to understand? Much more difficult to undertake!
The epoch in which we live, very well defined by Bauman, is liquid. The father's function, very well thought out by Freud and company, is to give shape, contour, continence to the content that runs the risk of leaking, getting lost.
