Fathering
This article first appeared in the Minden Times in May 2024.
Hmm, fathering as a verb is rarely used. More common is ‘fathered’, which usually refers to a singular act tracked by traces of DNA in an offspring. The whole idea of fathering seems to have disappeared into the maw of patriarchy, fatherhood writ big, defined as ‘rule of the father’. Patriarchy is a noun, a thing that is. But also a thing that operates at every level of our society, and of many others – I will say, to the disadvantage of us all.
According to a CNN article by Eliza Anyangwe and Melissa Mahtani, part of a series on gender inequality, the movie Barbie (re?)introduced the concept of patriarchy into American consciousness, when Ken tries to import the ways of the outside world into Barbieland. (If it’s true that patriarchy is an alien construct, it’s a stunning indictment of how we educate children! But better pale and pink than not at all.)
I am not alone in thinking that patriarchy disadvantages men as much, maybe more, certainly differently than it disadvantages women. In her 2004 book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, Black feminist author bell hook wrote ‘The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.’
So fathering, the verb, is best done in relationship, which inevitably involves emotions. That poses a problem. Let’s explore how we can end-run patriarchy. It can be done. In fact, matriarchal or matrilineal societies are thought to have been common, perhaps predominant, in pre-history, and exist at present in 160 known cultures (the CNN article). The difference is not that matriarchy is ‘rule of the mother’, the opposite of patriarchy, but rather is characterized by equal but differentiated areas of dominance. In researching a play, I dipped into a study of relatively modern Mohawk/Iroquois/Haudenosaunee culture, the late 1800s and early 1900s before colonialism brought them to their knees, and learned how they shared authority. Women managed the land, inheritance was matrilineal, and men were warriors.
Matriarchy includes men and boys. There are many oases of matriarchy that exist in the desert of patriarchy. They require, as do oases, tapping into a well-spring of subterranean energy. How do we find that subterranean energy? I don’t think there’s a science to this. Knowledge, yes; the certainty of science, no. Partly because science is the domain of patriarchy. But also because being a woman requires the embracing of uncertainty. Procreation or its prevention involves a lot of uncertainty – when will ovulation occur? When/will conception occur? Who/what is it that is growing within? All that before mothering itself takes over, an uncertainty of another order.
The well-spring of matriarchal knowledge is subterranean also because where patriarchy rules, female knowing is dangerous and will be suppressed or, when it surfaces, punished. Witch-burning is probably the most colorful example, but by no means the only one. Why this negativity? There are many theories.
One is that men resent that women have the power to bring the world to its end by refusing to have children. Or perhaps, more personally, that they bring a man’s lineage to an end by refusing to have his children. (Henry VIII? Incels?) Or that they will cuckold him, allow another man to lay his egg in her nest (as cuckoos do) and trick him into mistaking another man’s child for his own. This anxiety is based on the fact that women, not men, know for sure who the father of their child is (except, of course, for gang rape, which perhaps explains its persevering popularity as a war crime.)
And lest we think this war of the womb is a thing of Shakespearian times, when it was believed that women could constrict their womb to strangle the fetus, let us consider the battlefield that abortion is and has always been. A battle that is reaching a pitch in the USA at the moment as the dominoes that depended on Roe v Wade are falling at a breath-taking pace. A woman’s right to not have a child, largely independent of who planted that child in her body, under what circumstances, is now undermined in much of the country that purports to be the template of democracy.
It seems ‘reasonable’ to me in this patriarchal context that women who do have children are taxed with assuming primary responsibility for them, including for addressing the social conditions far beyond their control that undermine raising healthy and well-balanced children. If having children is a life style choice, then choosers should be payers. Or so the reasoning seems to go.
Parenting seems an alligator-studded morass. Men might be well advised to steer clear. Which is, perhaps, the ultimate price that men pay for patriarchy.
