The Role of Fathers

Boys search deeply throughout his childhood for a masculine model on which to build his sense of self. The press to identify with father creates the crucial dilemma for boys. Fathers should provide safety, warmth, and affection. Fathers should support the need for autonomy and separation in their sons. Fathers should promote self-esteem and a sense of worth in their sons. Boys have to give up mother, in a sense, for father, but who is father?

Positional Identity: Self-esteem which is tied to achieving and maintaining credentials and signs of status. When these conditions are met one can feel pride: When one fails they feel shame. It is important first to appreciate that men view the social world in terms of relative position. Virtually all of men's relationships, from the most competitive to their most intimate, are colored to some degree by perceptions of differences and differentials. At the bottom line it is power or status for many men that forms the basis for men's self-esteem and their orientation of themselves in relation to others.

Relational Identity: Self-esteem from this identity is considerably less conditional than is Positional identity. It is not dependent on performance, or on maintaining some position of hierarchy. It is based instead on maintaining the relationship itself, in affirming the attachment that bonds two people together.

Absent Fathers: refers to both the psychological and the physical absence of fathers and implies both spiritual and emotional absence. It also suggests the notion of fathers who, although physically present, behave in ways that are unacceptable (i.e., authoritarian, alcoholic, or physically abusive)

Lost Sons: Underscores the lack of emotional connections between fathers and sons. Sometimes sons are lost to their fathers they unconsciously look for. This lack of attention from fathers results in the son's inability to identify with his father as a means of establishing his own masculine identity. A son deprived of the confirmation and security that might have been provided by father's presence is unable to advance to adulthood.

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