Thinking About Fathers

Whilst the new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality require us to accept and think about their difference, the difference a father brings to child development and the difference brought by his masculinity are overlooked because the literature on them is so easily overshadowed.


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Authored on :
18/01/2021by :
Andrew Briggs

Containing Groups

Fathers and fatherhood in the modern age.

Perhaps there has never been a more important time to be thinking about fathers and their mental health. As long overlooked family members they should be better served by psychoanalytic thinking about both masculinity and fatherhood.

Fathers and masculinity in the  psychoanalytic literature exist in near vacuum conditions. In 1979 the American psychoanalyst John Munder Ross wrote that fathers are the overlooked parent. in 2002 Judith Trowell and Alicia Etchegoyen produced their seminal book The Importance of Fathers in which they lamented the lack of development in the literature since Munder Ross contributed to it.

Despite their contribution there has been very little in the near twenty years that has elapsed. Nowadays to begin talking about the role of the father or the nature of masculinity opens one to a very sensitive field in which there are new voices speaking about gender identity and the gender specific parental functions.

These voices bring interesting arguments and observations. There has always been a need to understand gender identity and sexuality in ways that correspond to the actual lived experience of real people. However, from my point of view the growth in literature and understanding about modern gender identity and modern sexuality serves also to throw into focus the problem posed by a lack of a substantial literature on fathers and masculinity. Whilst the new ways of thinking about gender and sexuality require us to accept and think about their difference, the difference a father brings to child development and the difference brought by his masculinity are overlooked because the literature on them is so easily overshadowed. To really help bring fathers into the fold Winnicott's (1956) famous comment needs modifying from 'there is no such thing as a baby but a mother and baby in relationship' to 'there is no such thing as a mother and baby - but a mother, baby and father in a set of relationships' -  that overall make up a family.

I think that to say otherwise is to deny a fundamental fact of life and a primordial inheritance. It is a fact of life that none of us has been born without a father, even if their relationship with our mothers ended at conception. I think that the fact of conception - through actual sexual intercourse or sperm donation - is something that evokes our curiosity and it can lead to the onset of our difficulties if we find ways of denying this fact.

None of us is here without the coming together of a male and female human. This primordial biological triad provides the blueprint for thinking about existence and its possibilities. There is, then, much to be exposed conceptually and clinically about what the father represents to each of us and what thinking about the father in family life might bring to the way we work with clients and client groups. Masculinity ....... I'll leave that for another blog.