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Fatherless Children
Sunday Supplement script
Radio New Zealand
27 August 2000
Fatherless children. The familiar phrase jumped up at me out of yet another article on the terrible consequences of neglecting and abusing children. In a literal sense, there's no such thing as a fatherless child (though scientists are working on it). But fathering in anything more than the biological sense is hard to pin down.
In the 1950s and '60s we thought we had it all sorted out. Back then, fatherless children meant children born to unmarried mothers. There was an apparently simple, tidy solution - adoption by respectable married couples. The original missing fathers were not expected to enter the picture at all.
Whenever delinquency and teenage pregnancy made headlines, fathers were never to blame. The fault lay with greedy, neglectful working mothers. Again, the remedy seemed so simple: married women should stay at home, and leave earning to men.
Thousands of mothers broke the rules, and just as well - our schools and hospitals would have collapsed without them. Research has since shown that paid work for women does not automatically lead to bad mothering.
As for fathers, they were expected to get and keep a job. Full male employment made that reasonably simple. Apart from a bit of firm discipline from time to time, looking after children was women's business.
Fortunately for society, thousands of men and women have seen parenting in much broader terms. But it's getting harder and harder to be "good enough" parents. The standards of success have risen dramatically, and so have the costs.
At one end of the scale growing numbers of unemployed or semi-employed fathers have plenty of time, but almost nothing else they require to help take good care of their children. They're branded as failures. At the other are the workaholics who can give their kids everything except time. But they're lauded as heroes.
Daniel Petre was one of them for years. Now he's making headlines for doing what millions of mothers do without fuss every day: cutting back his work hours to make more time for his family. Of course it's great that he's doing this, when lots of equally well-off men wouldn't dream of it. But his advice for other fathers speaks volumes about just how little fatherhood means compared with business. To "keep family in focus", he urges men to spend one morning a term at their child's school, not work weekends, and get home for dinner two or three times a week.
Well, I suppose that would be a good start. But judging by the corporate reaction, even these extremely modest goals spell revolution. Petre is being strongly attacked and ridiculed for not pulling his weight and generally letting down the side.
What's the message here? Being a father is fine, as long as it doesn't interfere with the real business of men's lives: paid work. If fathers can't meet this essential requirement, no matter how many hours it takes, then we tell them they're not making the grade and they may as well not exist. They certainly can't expect any social support or help to father better.
It's clear that there are simply not going to be enough jobs for all fathers, all of the time. Should society simply go on leaving them to cope, then tut-tut when they disappear or take out their anger on women and children? Maybe we should just officially grade young men like cattle at puberty, sterilise the ones least likely to succeed as earners, and make the rest work 80 hours a week.
It's high time we sorted out our muddled thinking on what good fathering really means. We should not be too surprised if it means much the same as good mothering.
As for women, paid work is rapidly becoming the central business of their lives too. If they want children, they still have to do two jobs - or pay another woman to take over. But that's their problem.
Anne Else
Honorary Research Associate in Women's Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
email [email protected]