Fatherless Children - Articles - Zimbio

Welcome to our wikizine called "Fatherless Children"

Mon, 11 Dec 2007 04:51:58 GMT

posted by Sunstone
Wikizines are interactive magazines that anyone can create or edit - and this one is called "Fatherless Children". Here you can find fresh voices and respond in real time. Some members write articles about recent news and trends related to the wikizine's topic, others recount relevant personal stories or share their favorite pictures and video clips. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this wikizine? Well, then put on your journalist's cap and add your own article!

Paul

Tue, 12 Dec 2007 05:48:21 GMT

posted by Sunstone

In the old days, Brett and Majel would show up at my place wanting to get drunk. Being young, they thought nothing of rousting me even out of bed to accomplish their mission. Doesn’t everyone want to get drunk?

One night, when I lived in Manitou, they woke me from a sound sleep at 3:00 in the morning. “Paul! Paul! Paul!”, they both called through my open window. Then Brett said, “The old moon is looking saucy and wants to get laid. Let’s go fuck the moon, Paul!” And Majel opined, “Every time we don’t life just gets stranger.”

They had a milk jug with them in which they’d mixed Seagram’s Seven whiskey with soda water. This, I suppose, was their equivalent of giving me a surprise present.

I’m a sucker for kids. I really am. I wasn’t much of a sucker until I got to my late 30s and early 40s, but then something changed in me and I discovered to my astonishment that kids could impose on me without my feeling the burden of any imposition. Even woken from a sound sleep at three in the morning I felt much more amused than imposed upon.

So, the three of us — Brett, Majel, and I — decided the best place in Manitou for us that night was the nearby footbridge over Fountain Creek, where we could listen to the water pass beneath and drink to the moon above.

We spent an hour talking and drinking quietly on the bridge before we went back to my place. Neither Brett nor Majel are boisterous drunks. Instead, both tend to get reflective when they drink. Yet, I don’t recall what we talked about that night. It was probably something philosophical or at least drunk-philosophical.

At 22, Majel was that peculiar combination — a physically stunning intellectual. She and I dispute where we first met. I say it was at the coffee shop, just after she got back from London. She says it was at her house, the night Joe brought me there.

The reason I think she doesn’t recall our earlier meeting at the coffee shop is because I didn’t make an impression on her then. We were introduced, said a couple words to each other, and that was it. But she recalls the night Joe brought me to her house because that’s when she discovered I have an intellectual bent. We’re all a bit different in what stands out to us in our memories of people. For Majel, what stands out in her memories of people are their thoughts and ideas.

The night Joe brought me over to her house, Majel was studying for a test in Hinduism. There were seven or eight people in the house that night — her roommates plus Joe and me. She was reading despite the conversation going on around her when at some point she looked up and asked the room if anyone knew a thing about Hinduism.

Joe volunteered I did. Before I could object, she asked me some question, which I found interesting, and which I then tried to answer. The exchange didn’t make that much of an impression on me, but it left Majel with a desire to know more about me. Ideas are what stand out to her, and so I didn’t fully become a person in her memory until I had expressed some ideas to her.

Majel’s father abandoned her and her mother soon after she was born. I think of all the fatherless women I know, Majel feels her father’s abandonment the most keenly. She doesn’t hate him for it, but she’s wounded.

Although I’ve never been so obnoxious as to tell her so, I’ve spent many hours worrying about her. I don’t know whether it comes from her lack of a father or not, but Majel has a slacker side to her. Her apathy is at times so thick you could butter your toast with it. In most things, she is content to do only enough to get by. That’s not so bad as it sounds, perhaps, because she is passionate about learning. But where I object to her apathy is in her choice of boyfriends.

Majel has told me she could never accept a boyfriend she feels genuinely passionate about because she would be terrified he would leave her. So, she’s consistently selected boyfriends she feels apathetic about whether they stay or leave. She might be fond of them, but she doesn’t love them.

She’s had a half dozen boyfriends in the years I’ve known her. Not one of her boyfriends has she passionately loved. To me, that’s something to worry about.

In most ways though, Majel is a strong person. Although she grew up in poverty, she is the first in her family to attend college, the first to graduate from college, and the first to take a post graduate degree. One doesn’t do those things if one lacks inner strength and determination, and I intend in the future to write much more about Majel now that I’ve introduced her to you.

Fatherless Girls

Mon, 11 Dec 2007 05:26:17 GMT

posted by Sunstone
I’ve noticed for sometime now a steady stream of traffic to this blog because of a brief post I made back in May on fatherless girls. So, tonight, I was trying to count all the fatherless girls I’ve known in this town.

I would count a few, think I’d finished, then remembered another one or two. In the end, I simply gave up. It’s overwhelming. Not the numbers, but the faces. Overwhelming.

I wonder if we will ever again be a society in which it is unusual to grow up without a father. My own father died when I was two years old. At the small school I attended, I was the only child in my class of about 100 students without a dad at home. What are the numbers today?

When I came to Colorado at midlife, I landed in a coffee shop that was a hang out for an eclectic crowd that included everyone from the mayor of the city to a group of homeless gentlemen. The coffee shop was also two blocks from the city’s largest high school, and it attracted very many mildly disaffected youth who enjoyed its eclectic atmosphere as much as I did. Most of the first 200 or so people I met in this town were mildly disaffected kids.

Some of those kids attached themselves to me. When I look back it strikes me that the boys who attached themselves to me usually had fathers. But the girls who did were usually fatherless.

I wonder why most of the boys had fathers, while most of the girls didn’t?

Growing up a male myself, I knew the boys at that age are not usually looking for a father figure when they attach themselves to an older man. Instead, they are most likely looking for help in entering the adult world. That is, at that age, they want to work out how to relate to adults who are not their father. I suppose the girls wanted pretty much the same thing.

Yet, I don’t know. I don’t know why most of the boys who wanted to associate with me had fathers while most of the girls who wanted to associate with me didn’t have fathers. Nor do I know whether there was any difference between the boys and the girls in why they wanted to associate with me. Some things seem bound to remain a mystery.

At any rate, my experience of fatherless children — or more precisely, my experience of fatherless girls — has convinced me they are especially vulnerable, they are often overlooked, and that we all could do more by them. So, I’ve decided to make my own small contribution to their cause by blogging from time to time about some of the fatherless girls I’ve known, what kinds of problems they’ve faced, how they met those challenges, and what wonderful people they are. I hope you’ll be interested.

A Note On Fatherless Girls

Mon, 11 Dec 2007 05:29:03 GMT

posted by Sunstone

Some years ago, when I was new in Colorado, I frequented a coffee shop near my apartment that was the hang out of kids from the local high school. Consequently, the first 200 or so people I met here were almost all of them between the ages of 15 and 19.

Several of those kids befriended me, and took to inviting me on road trips, or to parties, sleep-overs, concerts, plays, movies, rock climbing expeditions — just about anything and everything they did together.

I came to know over time perhaps a 100 young men and a 100 young women, some of them quite well. And it seems to me that I noticed a difference between many of the young women who had fathers and many of the young women who didn’t.

In general, the difference was this: The fatherless women were less self-confident around men than the women with fathers.

For instance: The fatherless women were less likely to assert themselves. They were less likely to let men know what their boundaries were. They were less likely to be strong individuals around men.

On the other hand, the fatherless women were more likely to be relatively obsessed with their boyfriends. They were more likely to be emotionally dependent on them. And they were more likely to cling to relationships in which they were being abused.

It seemed to me that one thing fathers tend to do for their daughters is help them be self-confident when dealing with men. Does that make any sense?