Fathers

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Share on Facebook (opens new window) Share on LinkedIn (opens new window) Link Save Save to myFT Ludovic Hunter-Tilney JUNE 15, 2018 Print this page10 Of all the gift-giving anniversaries, Father’s day is surely the closest to a straight-up marketing scam. Witness the figure of probity who signed it into US law as a national holiday in 1972. “To have a father — to be a father — is to come very near the heart of life itself,” Richard Nixon proclaimed. A month later the Watergate break-in took place. Sunday’s tribute to the “elemental magic and joy” of fatherhood (Nixon again) is principally a boon to makers of pointless gadgets. Solar robots, snack launchers for pets, an app-operated mug that keeps hot drinks at a set temperature — all touted as ideal Father’s day gifts. To the sensitive modern dad, acutely aware that society insists on viewing him as the secondary caregiver despite all his efforts to the contrary, the redundant tat provokes an unpleasant thought. What are we for? Michael Chabon circles around that question in Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, a collection of autobiographical essays previously published in various magazines. Short enough to read over a couple of Father’s day pints, the book is pricey. But its quality is impressive. © Kristen Schmid Chabon’s previous work includes the novels Wonder Boys and the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Masculinity is a recurrent theme, as with his 2009 memoir about his life as a son, husband and father, Manhood for Amateurs. A father figure turns up in Pops’ first essay, a comical account of an encounter with an unnamed older novelist at a party when Chabon was about to publish his first novel. “I’m going to give you some advice,” the literary grandee tells his young admirer Chabon. “Don’t have children.” Informed that you “lose a book for every child”, Chabon anxiously calculates the size of the family he can risk having. Two children seem tolerable. “But what if, after the first two, there was an ‘accident,’ too much wine in the afternoon, a failure of birth control; and what if, God forbid, that third pregnancy turned out to be twins?” © Kristen Schmid The other essays dismantle the grandee’s pram-in-the-hallway chauvinism. They find Chabon at a later stage of life, middle-aged and in his second marriage, with four children. “Little Man” is about a trip to Paris Fashion Week with his clothes-besotted youngest son, whose enthusiasm mystifies Chabon. “Against Dickitude” is about teaching teenage boys to behave well to girls, which forces Chabon to confront his own spotty history in that respect. Like the best American humorists, the tone is at once ironic and warm, folksy but with an edge. Self-deprecation is balanced by an observant intelligence, alert to the workings of ego (he enjoys it when his children prove him wrong, “ though not quite as much, perhaps, as I enjoy being right”). He watches his children emerge into their own characters, authors of themselves. Yet by writing about them he also turns them into his characters. There is a flavoursome streak of rivalry in his genial version of paternity. © Kristen Schmid Anna Machin’s The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father gives scientific answers to the question of what fathers are for. An evolutionary anthropologist, Machin aims to upturn “the enduring stereotype of the inept dad” by showing that “fathering is innate, not learnt”, a “truly biological business on a par with motherhood”. Research is deployed to show that men, like women, experience physiological and hormonal changes when they become parents. Testosterone levels go down, discouraging us from going on mad rutting sprees. Oxytocin levels go up, disinhibiting our emotions: that helps us bond with our partners and offspring. Their biochemistry is linked to our own, a process known as “bio-behavioural synchrony”. It also applies to dads without genetic link to their kids. © Kristen Schmid The tone is upbeat as though addressing an apprehensive new or prospective dad. The “hands-on” father — unlike his hands-free equivalent, or the one with wandering hands who quits the family nest — will be grateful for Machin’s advocacy. But there are problems. A good portion of the research surveyed seems dedicated to proving the obvious (“if you want your child to achieve all they can at school, you need to try to ensure your relationship with them is the warmest and most supportive it can be”). The book also overcooks its evolutionary message. “Ultimately, all fathers are concerned with the survival and future success of their offspring,” she states. Clearly that is not true of all fathers. The rivalries between parent and child that Chabon fondly writes about can take on malign and even murderous forms. Being a parent involves all sorts of ambivalent feelings. In 2005 Chabon’s wife, the writer Ayelet Waldman, created a stir with a memoir, Modern Love, in which she made the arresting claim that “I love my husband more than I love my children”. © Kristen Schmid Fatherhood in western societies is undergoing a tumultuous period of change. As Machin notes, in the 1970 US census, two years before Nixon signed Father’s day into law, just six men defined themselves as stay-at-home fathers. In 2014 the figure was 2m. Set against that is the almost 25 per cent of children in the US who are being raised in a fatherless household. If men are biologically hard-wired not only to reproduce but also to want to raise and support their children then the emotional circuitry has not until recently proved tremendously powerful. Machin herself dates “the rise of the idea of the involved father” to the 1980s. Perhaps she is right that fatherhood does not have to be learnt. But it does require men to unlearn many of the assumptions and ambitions that several millennia of dominance have inculcated. No gadget can help with that liberating but demanding task. Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, by Michael Chabon, Harper, RRP$19.99/Fourth Estate, RRP£10, 144 pages The Life of Dad: The Making of the Modern Father, by Anna Machin, Simon & Schuster, RRP£12.99, 294 pages