You don’t have to go far to meet a young man who has grown up in the absence of his father.
It is still a fact that eighty percent of single parents are women.
Where do these guys go? Where do they disappear to? Who gets them?
War
Jail
Work
Another woman
Another man
Other families
Death
The lawn mower, behind a newspaper, the golf course, T.V., a bar.
And why do they go?
A man once told me that he liked the look of a family, just not the responsibility of one.
Yes, kids in general are scary, never ending work and oh my God expensive.
But every boy still wants a dad even if he’s scared.
Fatherless boys that I have met tend to be angry. I call it “The Angry Young Man Syndrome.” They’re angry because someone who should have been there, wasn’t. Someone to teach them how to stand to pee, throw a ball, ride a bike, take them fishing, then there’s sex, how to drive, how to drink, how not to drink. The person who should have been there to introduce them into manhood, wasn’t. What they end up knowing, feeling – is that they are alone.
Not really alone – they have their moms and maybe they are good moms, but the short of it is; they are women and a young man, just wants another man to show him around.
They fear they’ll end up just like him. They fear that there may be nothing they can do to stop it from happening.
They get angry and they go looking.
My son, Cody found the father he was looking for in his friends – a group of young men who would watch out for each other. Some had Dad’s, most did not. They had standards – you didn’t ditz the mom, you didn’t talk about each others intelligence or lack thereof. There were more rules I’m sure – I really never got the password or secret handshake – I was the mom.
They made mistakes – they went through some pretty horrific experiences. But at my son’s wedding they were there. One played guitar and took care of the music. A group cooked, another group stood up for him. Some of them had dads – most did not.
It takes time for young men who have been left, abandoned and rejected to find a sense of peace. The chip on their shoulders carries a lifetime of hurt, questions, anger, spite. It houses their fear.
One father whose sons felt he had let them down gave his young men this counsel; “My dad wasn’t great – he criticized me brutally and was for the most part, absent, even though he came home from work each night. I chose to avoid him and hang out at my friends’. I told my sons, I’m better than him – now you go and be better than me.”
Perhaps, all of these dads have disappeared so things could change. So the next generation knows they just have to do it better. So they’ll remember what it felt like to be without the one person who was supposed to be there.
They’ll stop being angry over it.
They’ll stop fearing they’ll be them and leave too.
They’ll stick around and be better.
Better with their heart.
And then their sons will be better than them.
And this will make it better,
And with that I say, “Angry young man syndrome; be gone.”
Photo by: Sharon Cooke, A Father & Son