Men Talk Articles - June / July 2000

Why Are Fathers So Special?
– © 2000 John H. Driggs

Most of us who’ve had caring fathers ourselves or are being loving dads with our own children would have no trouble appreciating why dads are so special but we may have a hard time putting our experiences in words. How can anyone describe the smell of a father's pipe or fully capture the glow of a smiling child running to meet you? Actually, the best things in life are beyond words. Nonetheless, many of us can recall magical moments with our own dads or defining events as dads ourselves that are forevermore etched in our memories and have essentially altered the courses of our lives. To comprehend the specialness of fathers, one only has to ask men to talk about their dads. The specialness will appear like magic.

On a more concrete level, fatherhood is being studied by psychologists more and more. Some of us have to convince ourselves of what we already know. The results of such studies are staggering! Why are fathers so important? Dads promote independence in children. Research shows dads are more tactile, less verbal, and more physically playful with their kids. Most toddlers choose dads for play partners due to the rigorous and more adventurous play styles. Continuing research shows that kids with emotionally supportive fathers are more emotionally and cognitively intelligent, have increased empathy skills, are less aggressive and more sociable, are more verbal, and have fewer school problems. The most powerful predictor of a moral conscience in adults is paternal child rearing involvement at age five. Girls with involved fathers have later ages of menarche and postpone sexual activity. They tend to be popular with peers and more interpersonally assertive throughout their lives. Other research has found that women who are successful in the workplace almost always had encouraging relationships with their dads. Boys with involved dads excel in all areas. Having a caring dad is the single best predictor of a male’s willingness to be nurturing parent. In addition, active fathering is good for men’s health and correlates highly with marital and career success. Involved fathers are gifts to us all.

On a personal and professional level, I see everyday the profound effects of fathers on our adult identities. No matter how absent dads have been, no matter how much society discounts dads, no matter how little we know about our own dads, the results are in—dads make up at least half of our personalities. Our genetics, learned mannerisms, preferred hobbies, and generational ways of viewing the world all carry the weight of our fathers. The specialness of fatherhood can be hidden but it can never be denied.

John H. Driggs LICSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in St. Paul and co-author of "Intimacy Between Men."

Same Dad, Different Day
-- © 2000 Michael Gardos Reid

Surviving Fatherhood

Another wave of reluctance to father, feeling imposed upon when my son, Reuben, cries, feeling criticized for not keeping this calamity from coming to pass.

Mirrored with compassion by my wife in all my gnarly details, I still cannot cry. I go on into my day, tipping toward sick again even as I go on a warpath, putting the young man down to his naps. My bouncing steps perfectly attuned to his body’s resistance and giving in. Endless bouncing and swinging, walking and waltzing, hung from around my shoulders in his sling. Finally he sleeps.

Then when mom suggests me and the boy might nap more comfortably on the couch together and gets us all set with pillows and wraps, and he lasts only two more minutes in peace and bursts directly into his most emphatic scream, I’m over the edge again, disgusted with him and myself for arriving at this pained intensity all over again.

So I hand him over to his mother, only barely contained in my frustration. It’s boiling over in the quickness of my gestures, my tight-lipped lack of comment, dying to escape, til I do and go pour myself into housework, tho supposedly I really needed a nap and that’s part of what I’m so incensed about. "Couldn’t we just have a sweet sleep together like that other time? No-o-o-o. You’ve got to be hungry now and interrupt what was going so well." This is my resenting inner tirade.

But I do get some housework done with the off-gassing energy of frustration. When I come back to the nursing pair I’ve cooled off enough to apologize to Kate for being such a presence with my frustration. She offers her hand and then I can let a few tears flow. I turn my head as if to go away but I sit down on the couch instead and let a few welcome sobs break through.

Ten more minutes of sobbing would have felt good but they quiet down instead. I say how awful I feel to be in the soup I’m in. Kate says how normal it is for my biggest feelings, positive and negative, to be stirred by this oh-so-big event. She says, "You’re a good man." I say, "He’s making me a better one." She says, "He’s making me a better man too." I say, "You’re already a pretty good one."

She encourages me to lie down awhile. I say no I’m having fun doing stuff. She says she loves me. I say thanks. I do a few more dribs and drabs, hang up a few more clothes, continue moving bedding upstairs to our new sleeping arrangement. Up until now we’ve been camping out in a room on first floor near the bathroom.

Was it the poem I read upstairs while vacuuming that helped trip the key to my tears?

A Few Minutes in the Morning

Reuben was up with a super soaked poopy diaper. I got him cleaned up, then settled in to a calm time massaging his hand with primrose lotion while he lay on his changing table staring at my knuckles.

Eventually I thought maybe we should do something else. Picking him up in the soft gauze blanket, we walked two or three steps before I noticed his gaze drawn to the window. I paused to let him take it in. "It’s a gray November day." I told him. He took a good long look. What was it that drew him, the gray sky? The dark wooden frame dividing the lower pane of the window into six? He looked and looked.

Finally I wheel him around to see the star-shaped mirror on the bookcase and then into the hallway, into the kitchen. "This is the kitchen, that’s another window." His interest again focused there. "Those are tiny cactuses. That’s light." I named the view in simple detail.

Then, eventually again, we turn and the area of the stove hood caught him. "That’s the stove hood and a salad bowl and a glass cooking dish.’ Up to the refrigerator, what could he be seeing there? "That’s the paper towels. That’s the orange color your mommie chose for the wall. Are there angels up there watching us? What are they saying?" "All is well, all is well, all is well," is my guess and he calms even more as I chant that to him.

Then he turns to look at the decorative plate hung high by the clock. "That’s a plate from Spain, Reuben. Look, it has dragons on it", but what really catches him is the clock. "That’s the clock," I say, "telling us a time of day so we can be here, today. Nine thirty, it’s saying." He looks and looks at it, more than ten minutes. Is this nature to him? The movement of a clock.

Holding him there I rock my steps side to side and sing smoother and smoother little repeated syllables. He closes his eyes, opens, closes. I relax my shoulders many times, drop them down, drop them down, letting go of tension even as I hold him. I follow Reuben’s quieting, breathing deeper and deeper into my own belly. My mind tries to start worrying, some detail of the outside world, but the quiet of us two together there draws me back. He’s pretty thoroughly napping by then and cooperates in letting me put him in his electric rocking swing.

As I sit down to journal I ask myself, "Who was that guy taking care of my son yesterday?"

Michael Gardos Reid is a creative body-based psychotherapist, oriental body worker and the proud papa of Reuben James Gardos Reid, born September 5, 1999.

Taking the Steps To Stop the Abuse
-- © 2000 David J. Decker, LP

One would hope that our homes could be safe havens for women, children, and men. But all too often, they are not. Domestic abuse is an epidemic in this country. It is estimated that 2 to 4 million American women are battered each year by their husbands or intimate partners. And sadly, in the United States, a woman is more likely to be assaulted, injured, raped, or killed by a male partner than by any other type of assailant (Browne & Williams, 1927). We can’t continue to go on this way.

Sometimes male clients have said to me, "WeII, wait a minute, what about all the abuse and violence that my wife does to me?" It certainly is true that women can also be abusive in relationships, saying and doing hurtful, disrespectful, and demeaning things. In fact, two national surveys by Gelles and Straus in 1975 and 1985 found that women used violence as frequently as men.

But, especially when domestic abuse escalates to threats and physical violence, it is my belief that there is a significant difference between men and women. If my partner hauls off and smacks me, I may be angry, annoyed, and irritated. But I will not feel fearful, humiliated, and intimidated. If I make the decision to use physical force with her, she will experience the fear, humiliation, and intimidation.

Because of size, musculature, and socialization, most women in heterosexual relationships cannot compete with their male partners once physical conflict begins. When we as men go to the physical, we are much more likely to be able to control and dominate a relationship through threats and violence than our partners are. In addition, other types of abusive behavior, including sulking, name-calling, put-downs, cussing and swearing, slamming doors, punching walls and the like take on additional impact. Partners and children don’t need to be reminded that those same behaviors preceded physical violence the last time it occurred.

Volatile anger and abusive behavior are always destructive in an intimate relationship and always lead to a loss of trust, respect, and intimacy. Although abuse may work short term to get what you want and control a person or situation, in the end it is never helpful in arriving at constructive problem-solving and conflict resolution that leaves both parties feeling okay about what has transpired. Because of our ability as men to control through the use of threats and violence, it is up to us, from my perspective, to take the initiative to make sure that violence and abuse are not a part of the relationships with our partners and children.

The following steps from my book, Stopping The Violence, are critical in the process of change if you make the decision to do ‘something about anger, abuse and control in your own life.

  1. 1) Acknowledge to yourself and others that you have a problem with anger, abuse, and control. Any meaningful change is impossible without this admission. Then go out and get some help to specifically confront these issues.
  2. 2) Address mental health and chemical use issues when they are present in your life. If you are depressed or drinking too much, get some help. If issues like these are left untreated, they will interfere with treatment focused on abusive and controlling behavior. They will also interfere in how you get along in your day-to-day life.
  3. 3) Come to know that, when you are abusive to others, you are always feeling inadequate, powerless, and unlovable. People who overall, feel okay about themselves do not need to try to assume power and control over other human beings.
  4. 4) Realize that controlling and abusive behavior hurts you and those you love. When you are abusive, you erode the self-esteem and self-respect of those round you and you teach, your children to be bullies or "doormats." You also create emotional, physical, and, potentially, legal consequences for yourself when you engage in these sorts of behaviors.
  5. 5) Understand that anger is different from abuse and control. Anger is a normal natural human emotion. It is what you do with this emotion that determines whether it is helpful or becomes toxic and destructive.
  6. 6) Recognize that becoming abusive is always a choice. You are continually making decisions even when you feel rageful and out-of-control.
  7. 7) Take responsibility for what you feel, how you think, and how you act instead at blaming others. People can certainly trigger your emotional reactions, but no one has the power to cause you to think or behave in an abusive way.
  8. 8) Accept that you cannot control or change other people. The paradox about being controlling is that the more you try to control people and situations around you, the more frustrated and out-of-control you will end up feeling.
  9. 9) Remember that you can always take a time-out in a potentially explosive situation. Time-outs are a good strategy for children. They are also a good strategy for us as adults. Take break and get away before you say or do something that you will end up regretting later.
  10. 10) Think about the potential consequences before you become controlling and abusive. Domestic assault is illegal. You can end up in jail. But even more important, you can lose your relationships with your partner and children for the rest of your life.
  11. 11) Identify clearly what triggers your anger and your controlling and abusive behavior. Start to get to know yourself. Tune into how you are reacting internally (e.g. your thoughts; feelings, and physical sensations) and what you are reacting to that is going on around you (e.g. situations, people, places, times).
  12. 12) Slowdown enough to notice what you’re thinking. Your thoughts are powerful. They can dramatically increase the intensity of your anger and the likelihood that you will become abusive. Or they can work to help you calm down in potentially volatile situations.
  13. 13) Become aware of all your feelings; not just your anger, and learn to respectfully communicate them to others. Anger is always a "cover-up" to hide the feelings that make you more vulnerable, like hurt, sadness, and fear. But these hidden feelings are, in fact, the ones that can bring you closest to those you love.
  14. 14) Turn conflicts into positive problem-solving opportunities. Conflict is normal and to be expected in intimate human relationships. Don’t turn your partner into the enemy. Work together to figure out how to deal with issues that arise in your relationship and in your individual lives.
  15. 15) Think about the messages you received from your family and from society about what it is to be a man. Control, abuse, and violence are learned. Begin to understand where and how you learned to be controlling and abusive.
  16. 16) Redefine manhood as non-violent and non-abusive. Jettison the macho and destructive messages and scripts that contribute to your controlling and abusive thoughts and behaviors.
  17. 17) Take the risk to count on other men for emotional support. Develop friends and confidants and share your joys and sorrows with them in an ongoing way.
  18. 18) Learn to experience a genuine sense of pride in who you are by taking control at how you view and how you act around the important people in your life. Assume personal power In your life rather than trying the exert power and control over others.
  19. 19) Start to believe in your "heart of hearts" that you can truly change the controlling and abusive parts of who you have been. Begin to visualize a new and different "you" and behave toward others with that vision in mind.

Overcoming abusive and controlling attitudes and behaviors is a lifelong process that involves self-awareness, finding effective ways to deal with life stress and frustration and seeing and making better choices when anger and desire to control do arise. Contrary to what some people believe, abusive men can change, not just in stopping the violence but also in intervening in emotional and verbal abuse and the controlling attitudes that fuel domestic abuse. Continuing to be abusive will lead, quite simply, to feeling miserable, alienated, and alone.

The alternative to this depressing life script is different and better: working actively toward loving and nurturing connections with others and yourself. Make a commitment to yourself and those you care about that you will become one of those men who chooses to become non-violent and non-abusive. It can happen.

Dave Decker is a psychologist in private practice at Birchwood Centers in Eden Praire, MN who has 15 years experience working with the issue of domestic abuse. His book, Stopping the Violence: A Group Model to Change Men’s Abusive Attitudes and Behaviors, was published in 1999 by Haworth Press.

Six Quarters for a Life
- © 2000 Richard A. Smetana

So I am to return to the scene of my first death. Write out what I saw, felt, did, and do it as a eight year old. How vivid the mind can remember. It really wasn’t that long ago time-wise. Jesus was born 2000 years ago and we still celebrate his birth. My death was 32 years ago and it feels like yesterday.

Much has changed in the old neighborhood were I grew up. Across the way, sugarbeet fields are now filled with houses. When the old fields were barren in winter, dad took a old car hood and hooked it up to a snowmobile and gave us rides over the frozen dirt bumps. We rode until we were battered and worn out. But we had fun. We would go back inside the house to warm up and laugh who fell out of the hood. There is still a gash in my forehead when I hit it on the cold metal. Even the empty lot next to us now has a house on it. The trees it used to hold were the bases for our kickball games. I remember dad being mad because he did not have the $3000 he could have bought the land for. When the house went up on it we lost not only our kickball field but the view of the high school football games at night. We could sit on the back step and watch for free. The next morning, Mooch and I would go search for lost money under the bleachers. I once found a twenty dollar bill there. Wow, I was the rich kid for the day. I had to spend it on school clothes at the Grand Forks K-mart. Clothes were cheaper there.

New people have moved into the trailer house that sat empty for awhile behind the alley. There is a big fat wiener dog with them. They call him Angel. There are two big boys there too. One is called Stan and the other is Randy. I think my sister has a crush on Stan. Randy has no mends because he moved here from somewhere else. I could go over there. Mom said it was OK because they come over to our house when it storms. They have no basement to run to for protection. And look at all the toys they have. A go-cart and a dart board in the big white shed. I would go play darts with them. I have to be careful with the darts though because Stanley struck Randy in the arm with one. And gosh, Randy has a lot of money all the time. I had a red vinyl wallet Grandpa Karl gave me. But it had no money in it. It just holds the library card from school.

Randy asked me to come over to play in the shed. The big white shed. Are we to play darts? Or are we to play another game? I went to play with Randy this day as he offered me some money. It is the money I never want to see again.

the white shed. i went over the large step. had to step up to get over it. he told me to take my pants down. he was doing something to himself, hands in the private area. i bent over, face down. face in the cushion. ouch. stop that. smelly dark cushion. NO. mom where are you? face moving in the cushion. i smell auto gas in it. i cant move my head. it is so dark. STOP. ouch it hurts. i cant move, locked in hell. he has a big one. locked down. face in the dark. smelly. MOM! DAD! deep inside. i feel warm blood? done now. here are 6 quarters. never say anything. i know you. never say anything. mom? never say anything. dad? never. i see myself now with different clothes on. i see the big peter in my mouth. i am in a corner of the big white shed. put it in all the way in my mouth. mom. dad. say nothing. never, did i get paid? never say anything. the people in the trailer moved away. angel went away. toys went away. never say anything.

I am an adult now. A grown man of 40 yrs old. He can never do this to me again. Raped and died at eight. Paid for silence with six quarters. How I hate this man. I was fucked for a dollar and a half. A whore down on his luck wouldn’t get fucked like that for $1.50. But I did. Done to me like the dogs mating. How brutal can God make man?

I can look at any neighborhood and see nothing changed. Newspapers report all the time of rapes of children. A small child who thought even a few quarters is a lot. What became of the red wallet from Grandpa Karl? It had contrasting stitching around it. I wish to know if the library card is there. I can run to the book place and read.

How can I write into words of a man on the race of his life?
- © 2000 Richard A. Smetana

How can I write into words of a man on the race of his life? To distinguish the difference of reality and a dreamworld? To awaken with the fact I was being chased by a pony-tailed beast? The true honor of running so the beast will not catch me? Of heart pounding, heavy breathing, sweating brow of a real man in the marathon? The panic and anxiety of true life or did the beast come back to get me? The fear of losing control with only your shaken self alone? Being unable to stop one’s thoughts drifting to find the paper and ink to write the final words to the family of your death? I can only describe in the words welcome to little boy lost.

The beast told the boy never to speak a word of this to anyone. Not even speak it to himself or allow the inner mind to talk. Paid to shut the event out. The rape never happened. Beast verses boy. Six quarters for silence. Accept the money into a red vinyl wallet to swallow the horror deep. Walk through life with a dead child clinging to your soul. Avoid all contact with any event that would return the beast to the mind to seek revenge. Must never talk. Must never. Quiet till the child could not hold on any more falling to the ground crying for his mother. Weeping for life. Screaming of the pain and shame the child endured suffered at the bands of the beast in a big white shed. The loss of trust in anyone who came close to the child in love. The little boy lost must never tell anyone. Must not. Could not break the vow of silence. A man crying to a mother who did speak. The man broke the seal of honor not the child. The man of Richie spoke for the dead boy rickie. It was the grown man of Richie running from the beast in the dream. Richie is the one who opened the box. Richie spilled the words of the rape for the silent voiceless youth with no vocal cords. Richie is one who had the strength and power to yell of no more. To speak of death of a boy years ago. Now Richie is to pay the beast. To suffer the broken vow with nightmares running for escape. A man in a boy’s body flying to stay ahead of the beast who wants him. To awaken from sleep with the fear of loss of reality. To be able to relive it at any time the eyes close. To stand with weak legs and exhaustion from a sweat-stained bed. To look for help and to find nothing. To stare out the kitchen window with dizziness and fear of what is real and what is the mind in a tailspin. The disbelief of how horror can return for speaking too much. Richie did speak too much. Spoke to people who are there to help the boy heal and the man to live. It was the Richie who the beast wants. A faceless beast laughing as the man runs though buildings in a green T-shirt only arms distance from protruding claws. The beast’s strength is more than the man can fight off so he runs. Richie can not hold his ground to defend himself. He panics for help from being alone. His breath quickening in pace for air. His fingers tingling from lack of oxygen. He calls for help and only hears back his chest rising heartbeats. Write the note of death and run to heaven. The beast can’t go to happy places. I can walk in heaven. I don’t need to run there. A voice of death repeats to be quiet. Must never speak again. Must never speak again. Richie, you said too much. You said too much. He calls back to stop the voice. Stop the voice. The beast is not real. Not real. Help me anyone. A man alone with a banner on his chest for the beast to see and kill. Can’t fight, can’t run. Calls for help going unanswered. What to do, what to do. Must find the medicine. The pills hidden for the man to take when the beast catches him. The hidden death pills. Take them, take them. How many to swallow, swallow? Get out of the house. Need air to breathe. Get to a safe place. Get out, get out. Can't catch you outside with others to see. Go now! Go now! Weakened legs walking. It wasn’t real. Say it again, it was not real. He did miss me. The little boy got saved by the man with more power to fight the death beast. The man outran him. Saved this time. This time.

Does one always live in fear to talk of the terror of the little boy lost? No. I must continue to speak out against the hell suffered at the hands of the neighbor who raped me at eight years old. I must find the inner strength to live in the current world and not lose myself to insanity. What happened is something that I cannot change. The little boy lost dead by the weakness of other. The man Richie must fight the beast of yesteryear every day. Even if I must do it alone. I have to stay on this land to scream never to touch a child. Only then can I turn my head and stare in to the eyes of the beast of my dreams. The beast must never tell me to remain silent again. I will not remain silent. Every time the beast returns to get me, the louder I will speak.

Richard A. Smetana is a Men's Center member.