All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye.
I want to congratulate all the men out there who are working diligently to be good fathers whether they are stepfathers, or biological fathers or just spiritual fathers.
It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror ... feeling. Most of us let our fathers off the hook.
The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.
For rarely are sons similar to their fathers: most are worse, and a few are better than their fathers.
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!
No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.
Fathers, like mothers, are not born. Men grow into fathers and fathering is a very important stage in their development.
My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.
Fathers are still considered the most important "doers" in our culture, and in most families they are that. Girls see them as thefamily authorities on careers, and so fathers' encouragement and counsel is important to them. When fathers don't take their daughters' achievements and plans seriously, girls sometimes have trouble taking themselves seriously.
I'd like to form a club just for fathers. Specifically, fathers of daughters. There would be lots of overstuffed leather chairs, wood paneling, dim lights. The works.
When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our “fault.” But it is undeniably our inheritance.
It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on their knees?
I think that my experience as a single mom getting into relationships in an impoverished district with men that don't have options resonates with people. I don't get into the deadbeat dad thing. I don't think men innately decide to be irresponsible fathers. I think there's a backstory. They're given really bad choices. It's less deadbeat dads and more unemployed fathers, and some fathers decide to sedate and give up.
The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Our fathers gave us many laws which they had learned from their
fathers. These laws were good.