Tyrone vowed to end the bickering with his ex-girlfriend. No more personal attacks, no more monthlong beefs, no more slammed-down phones. “Now I make my decisions based on logic, not emotions,” he told me. “I don’t want my kid to think that being volatile and crazy is the way to solve problems. I want her to learn good habits from me. Everything you do affects the child. It took a long time for me to figure that out.”
It’s inspiring to see my friend today. Tyrone is spending more time with Angel and has become much more patient with her. Not only has he become a better father, he is sharing with friends his awakening to the importance of committed fathering. At this point, that’s what it’s going to take to fix this problem because it’s become so ingrained. Just glance at the cultural images our kids worship. Soft-porn videos and pimp glorification are big reasons we see reckless sexual behavior among young people without concern for the child they may be creating. If we face facts, we need to realize that it’s asking a lot of urban fathers to stand up and resist an avalanche of negative influences, from the brainwashing encoded in their popular music to a family heritage that more than likely reflects generations of absentee fathers.
In his chapters, George discusses the many drawbacks of growing up fatherless. As for me, I’m fascinated by the effects of what’s been termed “fatherfullness” by psychologists. Although today’s fathers have allowed themselves to think that they’re not important in a child’s life, studies show that dads do matter:
Father-child interaction has been shown to promote a child’s well-being and ability to relate to others.
Fathers who spend time alone with their kids performing routine child care raise children who become more compassionate adults.
Children who live with both parents are more likely to finish high school, be economically self-sufficient, and have healthier lifestyles.
Children whose fathers are involved in their education are more likely to get A’s, enjoy school, and participate in extracurricular activities.
What these studies illustrate is that fathers aren’t the dispensable beings we’ve been conditioned to believe. Their presence can open up opportunities that kids are starving for. Children in poor urban communities need as many champions as they can get in their lives. Interacting with the boisterous middle schoolers I meet during the Cops & Docs program, it’s easy to see they’re eager for attention and starving for healthy role models. Their talents are being overlooked and their enthusiasm for learning is slowly being extinguished. A chance meeting with me doesn’t have a fraction of the influence that a father can have.
I’m particularly intrigued by the finding that an involved father improves the likelihood that a child will participate in extracurricular activities. Whether children grow up on a country road, a suburban cul-de-sac, or a crowded city block, getting to develop their talents, abilities, and desires has a tremendous impact on their lives. These opportunities give children a platform, a stage on which to express themselves and build their confidence. Yet urban kids don’t get shuttled to soccer practice, piano lessons, and drama classes the way suburban children do, because these enrichment opportunities are hard to find in poor communities and many parents lack the money for them. And there’s often no history of low-income parents getting lessons or trips when they were young, so they aren’t aware of the value.
To me, it’s just another opportunity in which missing fathers could help provide for their children. What if, instead of seeking their gratification elsewhere, fathers poured their time and energy into exposing their children to something beyond the limited thinking of our urban neighborhoods? Think of the revolution it would spark.
It stunts children’s development when they aren’t exposed to the world around them. I never understood that more than when I got to Seton Hall and found that pre-med majors had to take a class in the arts in order to graduate. In my junior year, I grudgingly signed up for “Art of the Western World,” moaning about how boring it was going to be. As a kid from the inner city, I dreaded the thought of staring at paintings for a whole semester.
But the teacher, Professor Cate, grabbed my attention from the first day and never let go. She loved European art so much that it became infectious. Her cool, breezy delivery captured me. One memorable day, she sipped from a wineglass as we reviewed slides of paintings from France’s fourteenth-century masters. It wasn’t wine, of course, but I like to think that it was. In her own unique way, she toasted the spirit of the French painters.
She made art come alive to me. I signed up for the second semester of the class because it was so cool.
Professor Cate shared memories of dashing into museums in London and Paris. Although she must have been in her sixties, she didn’t act like anybody’s granny. Always stylishly dressed, she dared to live life in a way I had never seen before. Once she showed us pictures of herself and her husband riding their Harley-Davidsons cross-country. She had a sense of freedom, a personal philosophy that just stunned me.
What kind of environment had she sprung from? I wondered. My upbringing, I reflected, had produced just the opposite kind of person. I had never felt free to pursue anything that wasn’t sanctioned in the ’ hood. I had no cultural training at all. I hated history. I hated the arts. Or maybe I just thought I was supposed to hate them.
In my house, music was looked upon as a bad thing. It was my dad’s way of escaping, and my mom knew that. “Stop making all that noise in the house,” she’d say if I attempted a few notes on his guitar. And I don’t remember my father ever offering me a music lesson.
I was reared in a world where a father could take pride in doing the minimum because it was a lot more than some other men were doing. All my life, my dad received kudos just for providing the basics of life—food and shelter—for his children. But I wanted so much more.
Today, it strikes a chord when I hear single mothers say how they sometimes feel taken for granted when their child’s father stops by after years of being absent and makes his child deliriously happy by taking him out for ice cream. The mothers are astonished at how a simple ice cream cone is burned into a child’s memory bank forever. This is called the “ice cream theory,” and it reminds me of when I used to light up with joy whenever my Pop would stop by our house after the divorce. I had learned much earlier that my father was a man of few words, and I gave up on ever hearing him say “I love you.” But just to have him walk through the door periodically served as the highlight of my day. I used to fantasize that my father and I would one day develop that special bond I saw between Tiger Woods and his father. It would never be.
There are two obvious ways to react if you grow up with your father missing. The first is to fall victim to the influence of your father and the negative images in the communities and become an absentee dad yourself.
The other is to resolve not to pass on those mistakes to another generation. That’s the path that George, Rameck, and I have chosen. We’re not fathers yet, by choice. As we carried out our pact, concentrating first on school and then on our demanding careers and the Three Doctors Foundation, we knew there was no way we were ready for children. We don’t want to become dads until we’re able to give our kids certain advantages: a mother and father who are committed to them, a stable home, and our attention.
We learned through researching this book that a menacing intergenerational legacy of fatherlessness seemed to wrap itself around our fathers, snuffing out their ability to be devoted dads. Just as our fathers weren’t in our lives, their fathers weren’t in their lives, either. Like so many other men without a role model to show them how to be a strong co-parent, our fathers weren’t able to figure the puzzle out on their own.
This would be a gloomy forecast for the future, save for the fact that today we’ve had the good fortune to meet plenty of good brothers with amazing fathering skills. They’ve fought off the negative images they were surrounded by during their childhood. They observed the womanizers, the alcohol and drug abusers, the ab
sentee dads, and resolved not to be like them.
How did they do it? When we asked them, they all had the same answer: They refused to forget how much it hurt to be a boy wishing for a dad. So they vowed never to repeat the mistakes their fathers made. Every day, they use their own experience as motivation and inspiration to steer clear of their fathers’ behavior. I admire them for allowing themselves to grow. These guys may have been consumed with fears about child-rearing, since they didn’t have strong fathers in their own homes, but they didn’t run away.
Instead, they faced up to the challenge, and now they’re reaping the rewards. For my friend Darrell, a hospital vice president, nothing can equal the glow he gets when he checks his e-mail on his BlackBerry to find an “I love you, Daddy” text message from Gabrielle, his teenage daughter. “You miss out on that, you can’t get it back” are the cautionary words he offers fathers who find time to run the streets, hang with their friends, or parent a new girlfriend’s kids instead of taking care of their own children. To me, these absentee dads are lost. They’re in search of healing or finding something they missed out on. Who knows, maybe the son or daughter they abandoned could be the solution to their inner battles. It’s heartbreaking that they’ve never been exposed to the soul-stirring rewards of good fathering.
I think about all the years that Earl Woods spent nurturing his son into a golf whiz, back before Tiger Woods became a household name. This man absolutely loved sharing time with his son and teaching him the art of golf. They forged a relationship that’s one of the healthiest father-son bonds I’ve witnessed. Earl Woods, a former Green Beret, taught his son to have mental toughness, even jingling change in his pockets while Tiger putted to help hone his focus. And just look at the fruit of the father’s labor: his son is more than a dedicated athlete, he’s a phenomenal person. Through his Tiger Woods Foundation, he teaches young people to excel not only at golf but in life. From the time he turned pro, Tiger has carefully maintained his image, demonstrating a charisma and professionalism that I certainly didn’t possess in my twenties. I’ve long felt that Tiger’s extraordinary faith in himself stems from having his dad as his biggest cheerleader.
On Father’s Day 2006, not long after Earl Woods’s death, I was watching the U.S. Open when Nike aired a commercial in tribute to him. For the average viewer, it was easy to get caught up in the engaging video clips of Tiger as a little boy. The ad featured footage of him jumping around as a kid, leaping for joy after a successful putt. But I concentrated on the expression on Earl’s face. I saw unmitigated joy there, too. Here was a father who had been unafraid to invest his time and love in his son. I saw the unselfish gaze of a father who drew his rewards from seeing his son’s triumphs. Those few seconds captured it all.
Then the TV screen flashed the words “To Dad. And Fathers Everywhere.”
Nike may never know how desperately fatherhood needed that commercial plug. Truly, a repackaging of fatherhood needs to happen in our communities to reverse the slide of the responsible father figure. As we look into today’s society, more parents than ever are unmarried. It’s going to take more than fathers privately resolving to do right by their children to change the trend. It’s going to take an each-one-teach-one movement.
I have a friend, Sabu, who has started a small-scale movement, although he probably doesn’t realize it. He’s honored me by inviting me to be part of a circle of mentors he’s constructed for his seven-year-old son, Mekhi.
Sabu and Mekhi’s mother never married, but the way that Sabu conducts his life as a single parent has taught me much. There have been times I’ve called Sabu to see if he wants to go with me to an event, and he’s been quick to decline because he’s taking care of Mekhi that night. I’m in awe of the way he treats his son. “I’m his dad. I want to be the first person you call if you need a babysitter,” he has told Mekhi’s mother. His son comes first—always.
I’m part of a cluster of men Mekhi has been taught to refer to as his uncles. We’ve been in his life since his baby shower. As a result, he’s so comfortable with me that he can’t wait to let me know when he hits the game-winning run for his baseball team. We’re his support team. As Mekhi gets older, he knows that if he’s interested in a medical career, he can talk to me. If he’s interested in banking or money management, he can go to work with another one of Sabu’s friends, Uncle Hassan.
Sabu has done this deliberately. It reflects the way he was raised. Born in South Africa, Sabu grew up in a communal environment where his uncles and other relatives spent time with him and shared in the responsibility of rearing him. “They could discipline me, advise me, tell me what to do, no questions asked,” he explains.
Sabu’s parents divorced when he was young. He migrated to the United States with his mother and siblings when he was eleven, leaving his father behind. But when he was twenty-one, Sabu went back to South Africa, at his father’s insistence, to take part in the rite of passage that is traditional for men in his Xhosa tribe. For a month, he exchanged his sensibilities as a kid who came of age amid Newark’s hip-hop culture for a rigorous ancestral experience created by the men of his family and his tribe.
Dressed in only a blanket and carrying a walking stick, Sabu was led into the mountains by a male guide. For the next four weeks, he slept in a tiny shelter and was given little food. His sustenance was spiritual. Men from his tribe, of all ages and walks of life, came to share wisdom with him. Throughout those conversations, which could take hours, important lessons were imparted. The men told Sabu how important it is to be a hard worker and a good father. “You must always keep your word, be a man of honor, and represent your community with dignity,” he was told. “You must always conduct yourself as a leader, so that those coming after you will have a model to follow.” Another piece of wisdom he’ll always remember is “You have a responsibility to improve the world. You must leave your mark on this earth.”
The men made sure he learned the history of the Xhosa tribe and shared stories about his family. In fact, Sabu found himself a bit of a celebrity during the rite of passage because the tribe was proud that a son had traveled all the way from the United States to take part in his tribal ritual.
There were nights when, as Sabu slept, the men would come to talk to him, approaching by calling out a phrase. If Sabu failed to wake up, he’d be punished. “I called you,” his visitor would say, disappointed. “What are you going to do if somebody’s approaching your home? If anyone’s coming to your house, you should be aware, so you can protect your family.” Sabu became a light sleeper after that. To this day, he sleeps with an awareness of his surroundings.
Sabu never knew when the final day of the ceremony would come. But he knew what to watch out for. If he ever saw a crowd of younger boys strolling by, that would be a sure sign. The day it happened, he was ready. He saw a bunch of young males slowly moving in his direction. Suddenly the boys started chasing him. But Sabu outran them, speeding as fast as he could in the direction of a nearby river, as he had been instructed.
There, Sabu stripped off his blanket and jumped in the water, symbolically washing away his immaturity and boyish tendencies. The children turned and walked away. They had played their part, helping Sabu to prove that he had left his boyhood far in the dust.
When he finished purifying himself in the river and stepped out on the other side, his father, his oldest male relative, and his guide were waiting proudly. He walked to them, and they covered his nakedness with a new ceremonial blanket. “My son, I embrace you as a man,” his father told him. Together, they escorted him back to his father’s community, where relatives waited to welcome Sabu. He felt like a changed man when he returned to the States.
Sabu believes his rite of passage shaped him into the attentive father he would soon become. It’s what propelled him to create a kind of “council of elders” for his son—not just to provide Mekhi with role models but to help him grow up with a sense of accountability to a larger community. It resonates so much mor
e with a child when he has to take responsibility for his actions. “When Mekhi does something good, he gets accolades from his uncles. And when he gets in trouble, it forces him to think, ‘What will my father and my uncles think of me?’”
The circle that Sabu has woven around his son has also educated the men taking part in it.
When I see Mekhi copying his father’s stride or asking his dad to help him master a video game, I think to myself, “I get it. I see how this is supposed to work.” Clearly, this boy sees his father as his advisor and protector. It’s been that way since he was a small boy. Years ago, when Mekhi would go with his mom to get his immunizations, he would cry and get very agitated in the doctor’s office. So his parents decided to change their approach. Sabu took Mekhi to the doctor the next time, and it made all the difference in the world. Mekhi sat in his dad’s lap contentedly and took the shot without a whimper. “If my dad’s here, then it’s all going to be okay,” he seemed to say.
So much of what Sabu accomplished during his rites of passage inspires me because it sounds like the antidote for many of the problems plaguing single fathers here. I firmly believe you can’t expect anyone to know instinctively how to be a good father, especially if he’s lost in the turmoil of a bad relationship and hasn’t had any healthy father figures in his own life. I’ve said it so many times it’s impossible to count: You can’t aim for what you can’t see.
But bad images can be replaced with good ones. The positive influence that Sabu has exerted on the members of his son’s “circle of men” is so electrifying that I wish it could be contagious. Who’s to say that it can’t be? In formal and informal ways, we need more examples of these kinds of circles, this kind of manhood training in our community. Just imagine what would happen if we started educating our fathers, instead of accepting the common excuses that we hear: “My baby’s mother, she’s crazy. I just can’t get along with her.” “I don’t know how to be a dad. I didn’t have one.” “I’m in another relationship, I got my hands full with my other kids.” What if we demanded more of today’s fathers while at the same time understanding they don’t all possess the tools to figure it out on their own? What if our communities could recognize that our young men need to be focused and trained in a healthy way, as Sabu’s tribe did for him? Although it’s common for men to gather to watch football games or to talk about women, we lack a healthy atmosphere where men can talk therapeutically about their experiences with fatherhood or the other things in life that really matter. Imagine an environment where men explain responsible sexual behavior to the next generation, letting them know it’s not right to chase after an orgasm without being prepared to face up to the consequences of that orgasm. Wouldn’t things improve?
The Bond: Three Young Men Learn to Forgive and Reconnect With Their Fathers Page 16