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Fatherless Kids Know: Kids Need Dads
This came across my Twitter feed today, and it brought me back twenty-five years watching it, feeling exactly what Will did during this scene:
25 years ago today, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air aired the saddest scene ever.
I'm not crying, you're crying. pic.twitter.com/pZdV9oVOnJ
— Complex (@Complex) May 9, 2019
I remember this feeling of rejection and anger. And now, as a mother, I feel a different kind of anger and sorrow, because twenty-five years on, there’s a lot more kids like me and Will out there; the numbers of kids growing up in single-family households has skyrocketed and continues to climb.
What I loved about this scene, then and now, was how Will decided to exact his revenge on his absent father: By being a better father than his ever was. I grew up determined to break the cycle as well, wanting my kids to have a father like I never had.
This scene reminded me of Michael Brendan Dougherty’s new book “My Father Left Me Ireland” (which I reviewed here), and like us, Michael made good on his childhood promise to himself to have his kids grow up with a dad as well. Seeing how many kids are growing up in the same situation makes me hope that they will come out of their childhoods with the determination to give their kids better. As much as we try to pretend that kids are just fine with just mothers, kids know better. Will knew better, and every kid watching this scene knew better too. Here’s hoping the cycle will be broken with coming generations.
Published in General
That’s a devastatingly good scene. And an equally powerful lesson.
Every time post-modern US gets close to accepting this point, the Social Engineers try to rope us back, lately by saying, “Anybody can be a dad! Doesn’t matter what gender you identify as!”
If the message of that scene (never seen it before, nor watched a minute of the program) is that, in the midst of inexplicable hurt one can own the “I’m not like that, I can do better than that, and I will do better than that,” narrative then I am all for it.
Sadly, the “I’ll show you” narrative these days seems to focus on the “you messed me up, so I’ll mess others up even more, just to prove I can” narrative.
That can’t be right. Or so I think.
I said the same thing to my parents when they tried to tell me how to care for my children. There isn’t a damn thing they could teach me, especially after dumping me in an orphanage at age 7. I was the best mother any child ever had, catered to them in every way, except both grew up to be self centered people.
I had a very similar scene just this morning with a girl who explained to me that she’s had 15 birthdays without a home, she can’t wait for the next three so she can be free and stop getting put into strange places by CPS.
I’m all in favor of single-family households. It’s single-parent households that we should worry about.
You need to go back more than 25 years. Go back 37 years to 1992. Dan Quayle was ripped apart by the left, and the media, for criticizing the show Murphy Brown for glamorizing single motherhood. The data since then has proven Dan Quayle to be correct, but we all learned from his example not to speak up about it.
@bethanymandel, I saw your lovely post right after seeing this news item: “‘Lonely’ boy, six, calls 911 asking for a friend and is thrilled when kind Florida cop shows up on his doorstep”– and my heart just ached at the thought of that little boy, who appears to be about the age of my wonderful nephew, being so lonely that he called 911 just to have someone to talk with. Here’s the link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7010343/Lonely-boy-six-calls-911-asking-friend-thrilled-Florida-cop-shows-home.html
From a quick scan of the article, it does not appear that is a father anywhere around.
I just cannot express in words how heart-breaking it was to read about that lonely, sad little boy, but how incredibly proud it made me to read about Officer White of the Tallahassee Police Department.
If I am ever in Tallahassee — it’s east of us a couple of hours on I-10 –I will go straight to the Police Department and shake his hand and then try to go see this little boy and shake his little hand, as well.
Sincerely, Jim
Amen to that. But part of the reason that it is a “cycle” is that it is hard for a boy to understand what it means to be a strong father and man without ever having any good examples in their life. Hopefully other men (uncles, grandfathers, friends) can step up and help the fatherless kids out there.
Bethany,
My father had a phrase that he would use from time to time. I can’t repeat it exactly because it would break CoC. The best I can give you is “[expletive] healing”. What he meant by this was that someone was assuming that by telling a lie to smooth over a problem this would solve the problem. It wasn’t that it would be better to have it thrown in your face but without facing the truth nothing was going to improve. Thus he referred to this as “[expletive} healing”. My father is gone almost 30 years. In one regard this is good as he hasn’t had to listen to all the “[expletive] healing” that has gone on.
Children need both their parents. They needed them 30 years ago, they need them now, and they will need them 30 years from now. As with so many other things, those that didn’t have know exactly the pain caused. Those that have can afford to imagine it didn’t matter that much.
Regards,
Jim
It used to be that people got married and you had two families looking out for each other. If a dad stepped out, you still had uncles and grandpas that felt responsible for the progeny. Now you have single moms of single moms living very lonely and alienated lives. It’s harder to recover from that.
How much of this is society’s fault? Did we create a culture that accepted this as normal?
I’m no Guardian editorialist. When someone goes on a knife spree and kills three people, the Guardian writes about how ‘society’ did this when really it was the action of an individual.
But I feel that we don’t talk about how terrible it is to grow up without a father when we all know better. It seems like we let guys like Will’s father off the hook.
The Fresh Prince had Uncle Phil to set a good example for him.
Plus he had TWO Aunt Vivians to keep him in line…
This is a huge issue for me.
Kids, particularly young boys, who are raised without a father, are much more likely to have severe emotional distress that stays with them over their entire lives and yes, much more mental illness than those who are raised with a loving Mother and Father. Our welfare system and our divorce court system, because they have encouraged unwed motherhood and are encouraging the break up of many intact families as a consequence are the source of much mental illness in America. To make matters even worse, by the latest census records, over 40% of fathers in divorce court proceedings are denied child visitation.
All these consequences are a result of the Progressive viewpoint dominating our government bureaucracies and courts. In short, these monstrous, sicko Progressives are responsible for an enormous amount of pain and mental illness in our society. These Progressives are patently and irredeemably evil, I don’t care how often they tell us their intent was compassionate and well meaning.
You said a mouthfull.
We all bear some blame, but at the same time even though a person may have been dealt a bad hand in life, how he plays it is his own responsibility.
We all need to publicly proclaim the formula for success: learn a valuable skill, marry a life-mate, then have babies. We should say it every day like we used to say “Just say no.” Successful people should preach what they practice.
I wouldn’t say we created a culture that accepted this as normal. I would say we failed to protect a necessary structural piece of our society, the two parent family. We let the value of the family be eroded away. Dan Quayle tried to get us to stand up and stop the erosion and we laughed at him. We told him we didn’t need that piece of the foundation. Now that part of the foundation has crumbled. Its going to be hard to fix.
I’ve been married for more than 30 years, but I have sympathy for young men who are reticent to get married. In the old days a father had respect as the paterfamilias and his wife couldn’t just up and leave one day with the kids. Or, more likely, kick him out of the house, and go to court to enforce child support payments with limited access to his children. This happened to my next door neighbor, who looks like a beaten dog when he is occasionally allowed to visit his kids. I know plenty of other men in similar situations. In the old days the marriage contract came with both duties and rewards for men: The duty to provide for your family, protect them, and raise the children as a good father. The reward was the security knowing that the marriage and family were permanent and his self-sacrifice for it was for something lasting. In the new version of marriage, a man has no security in his family since it could be blown up at any moment, leaving him as a lonely serf to a family unit from which he is largely excluded. David Blankenhorn’s “Fatherless America” from the ’90s is still a devastating account of this situation. I really can’t blame men for avoiding marriage in the current climate.
Progressives do this. Most conservatives don’t.
But I don’t think we are loud enough in our factual and compassionate opposition.