The myth of the tyrannical dad

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2010-06-18 22:50

Article here. Excerpt:

'Every night when 98-year-old Lily Barron goes to bed, she looks at the large framed photographs that line her bedroom wall and says a prayer for her father, "the most important man in my life. I loved every inch of him."

Lily's dad was a miner who lived with his wife and four young children in the town of Blackwood in south Wales. In his attitudes to his children, he was in some ways surprisingly modern. He never smacked them, he read bedtime stories, and he cuddled and kissed them every day. Twice-married Lily remembers him as "the loveliest and gentlest man I ever knew".

This image of the gentle and loving Edwardian working class father is at odds with our general perception of fathers in the past. We tend to picture them as tyrannical patriarchs whose children were seen and not heard and lived in fear of father's punishments. It is only in recent decades - or so we imagine - that dads have become approachable, caring and committed to the wellbeing of their children. Nothing could be further from the truth.'

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Comments

Some people lived with tyrannical dads-- just as some have lived with tyrannical mothers. Any parent of either sex can be tyrannical. It's just for some reason, humans seem much more quick to paint dad as tyrannical than mom when dad says to do this or that. Think of it: when you were told to clean up your room or do this or not do that from your mom, mostly even you considered it a typical experience of life, something to put up with, maybe get away with not obeying, maybe not. But whenever dad told you to do this or that, did you not bristle at it? I happen to think that there is something in the human psyche that fundamentally fears the anger of dad and so resents it whenever he does what any decent parent needs to do, which is tell their kids how to behave (given that we are not born knowing the basics of human interactions, etc.). When mom does it, not such a big deal. When dad does it, well, he is just being a monster.

But as I said, any parent can be abusive, rageful, tyrannical. Abusive parenting is an equal-opportunity employer.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2010-06-18 23:12