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Fathers and Sons
Exploring This Complex Relationship
By Teri Brown
"As I say in my book, despite the apparent timelessness of the father-son bond – and more generally, the father-child connection – a sense of its power and closeness has waxed and waned over time," Dr. Diamond says. "In agrarian society, for instance, fathers were very involved in their children's lives, acting as teachers, mentors and guides. This involvement began to ebb in the mid-19th century, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. As families moved from the farm to the city, men began working outside of the home and as a consequence, their home-centered influence decreased."
According to Dr. Diamond, effective fathers were not only absent from the popular imagination, but from the professional literature as well. Scholarly papers documenting mothers, motherhood and a mother's impact on her children abounded; social scientists unwittingly devalued the father's role, and research on fathers was scant.
"Even now, when we talk about fatherhood, we tend to focus on its concrete trappings: the diapers men change, the parent-teacher conferences they attend, the soccer games they coach, the custody battles they win," Dr. Diamond says. "Meanwhile, important questions go unanswered: How does becoming a father change a man, and in what ways? What is the impact of becoming a father on a man's partner? How does his becoming a father affect a man's relationship to his own father? How do fathers and sons feel about each other? The emotions that coincide with being a father, emotions such as hope and fear, joy and pain, have until now remained largely unexplored."
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