6/19/17
Conveniently, it’s time to explore the institution of fatherhood.
Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines father as;
1: a man who has begotten a child (not related to gotten, like, “I gotten real drunk last night.”)
2: the founder of something, like America
3a : one acting to another in a way suggesting that of father to child
3b : an old man —used as a respectful form of address
4: a prototype, like the father of all hangovers (more often the mother of…)
5: a priest of the regular clergy
6: one of the leading men (as of a city)
And, of course, father can be a noun, a verb or adjective (paternal, maternal).
A father can be adoptive, biological or associative (stepfather).
The origin is Middle English fader, from Old English fæder; akin to Old High German fater, Latin pater and Greek patēr.
Synonyms (also used as terms of endearment) are dad, daddy, old man, pa, papa (also poppa), pater [chiefly British], pop and sire.
The first known use of father was in the 15th century (I think as a verb, not a noun.)
A biological father determines the sex of a child by donating either an X or Y sex chromosome. Mothers can’t donate Y chromosomes because they don’t have any, for all practical purposes.
The paternity rights of a father with regard to his children differ widely from country to country (read culture to culture, state to state, city to city, family to family, father to father) often reflecting the level of involvement and roles expected by that country.
The beginning of recognition that the act of sex and the role of a male in procreation occurred somewhere between 10,200 BC and 2000 BC when humans began to develop agriculture and animal husbandry. For centuries, the act of sex was a satisfaction of pleasure and not linked to procreation, cognitively. This concept took a long time to develop under often extreme pressures of primitive rituals, religion, politics, economy and society.
If one were to look at the Wikipedia post for “Father”, they would find the cumulative effect of liberal, new age wimp-hood. As in wimp the social slur, not WIMP the nuclear physicist’s definition of Weakly Interactive Massive Particles. But I digress too early. Allow me to continue in a more orderly fashion.
In more primitive days and sometimes more modern days, a woman may have sexual contact with more than one man during the time in which she is capable of conception. This made/makes the determination of paternity difficult. Today, paternity can sometimes be determined with a reasonable degree of certainty with very expensive genetic analysis as well as cheaper, less accurate over-the-counter testing available at your local pharmacy or mail-in-sample services like “23andMe”. Otherwise, the “father” of a child is determined by guess and by golly.
In fact, the common designation of father as the sire of a child is probably more likely wrong than right in terms of the history of the world.
I haven’t even come close to discussing the whole picture. Consider the concepts of mix-ups at birth, stolen children, adoptive fathers, men who raise children of other men, women who intentionally deceive true paternity, human trafficking, war babies, royalty babies, babies conceived from rape and on and on.
Closer to the interests of our group here, the American concept of fathers has/is changed(ing) even as I write.
At various times:
A father was a man that found a fertile woman to bear as many male children as possible. When she faltered or died, he would replace her with a younger/more fertile replacement. The children were to stock the family labor pool and enlarge the family holdings and standing in the community.
A father was the head of the household, the wage earner, the provider, the leader of family values and the outwardly-seen decision maker for the clan.
A father was the sperm donor for the woman to provide children for social, economic, religious and self-aggrandizement of the mother. In some cultures, the children were little more than fodder to increase political strength for the mother.
A father was a wallet, a paycheck, financial support for the family.
A father was a representative in the community providing respect, power and status to the family.
A father was a caretaker of the children, the house and an errand boy for the wage-earner mother.
A father was a source for vehicles of terrorist bombs.
Wikipedia opens their discussion of fathers with this statement, “In almost all cultures fathers are regarded as secondary caregivers [implying as the daily hands-on nurturer]. This perception is slowly changing with more and more fathers becoming primary caregivers, while mothers go to work or in single parenting situations, male same-sex parenting couples.”
The concept of a father as the natural loving, nurturing parent is ludicrous. I’m not saying that fathers can’t be, but that they aren’t predisposed to be. Father’s have abused their children in innumerable ways. They have sold their children into slavery, bartered them for economic or political power, given them to causes such as being raised in a pedophile community to be used as whores for the tribal males until adulthood. They have been abandoned to destitute mothers, to the streets and to society to survive or not. They have been killed to lessen the burden of survival on the family, to lessen the tax burden and to otherwise sculpt the gender makeup of the brood.
Fathers of the 1950s America were idolized. American TV had Father Knows Best, My 3 Sons and Make Room for Daddy as examples of the father’s role in the family. In the 60s and 70s, not only did fatherhood take a nose dive in status but the whole concept of family started to fall apart. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (a single adult woman without child, husband or family) and All in the Family introduced concepts that were new or spoofs on American culture. By the 1980s, the concept of fatherhood was blatantly confrontational. Divorce began to soar and the presumption was that the man was at fault. Public billboards by the United Way featured fathers as the devil, with horns and all. In the 1990s, fathers became more useful as whipping posts or dunces that were useful only to watch the kids while Mom worked or hung out with friends. Now, fathers are continuing to be portrayed as incompetent dunces but with a more effeminate persona.
Now, I really only have two questions.
Are you a father and are you the father? Just asking.
From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.
Weary