Face To Face With Father And Mother

It is clearly an obvious thing to say. But, lately, it has been on my mind a lot. Being a father does not end. It will continue until I die...and then some. While the content is changing the form that this takes always remains the same: it is a kind of leadership that is defined mainly by being the older one, the one who was here first, the one who has more life-experience(s) (simply because I have seen more). I'm not saying these things to empower myself. No, they're nothing but descriptive. Just like I still look to my father for information about life, etc. my sons also look to me. Even when we don't look we're looking. Even when we don't want to look, we're looking!

And while I'm not wanting to empower myself it is important for a father to recognize that this being looked at and looked for gives us a kind power. It's a power of which many fathers are not so aware. It's a power we don't necessarily intend. It is subtle and yet our children often experience it as direct and in their face. It is a power they want and need to overcome and, yet, in some ways they never will. Our children will be independent, but they will never be free . . .  with the possible exception of a kind of freedom that occurs when fathers die. But will the voice of the father die?

And, really, would I want this freedom; the freedom of fatherlessness? Is the hole, the complete absence and the wound that comes from it, worth the freedom of fatherlessness.

And what about motherlessness? As a culture we seem to have a better understanding of the consequences of motherlessness. However, we may also be afraid of naming them for fear that we might fall into stereotypical and essentializing ways of speaking about mothers and fathers. I am wondering often what might happen if, instead of attempting to explain it more, we would instead fall silent before the mystery of such important things. Might we intuit their importance more clearly, more deeply that way?

I know a young man, almost 19 now, who does not know anything about his father. His fatherlessness is as deep as it can get. The only thing he knows about him is deduced from his own existence: My father must exist/have existed, otherwise I wouldn't. His hallmark personality trait has been silence. Utter silence. He is free of a father. There is no father whom he can experience as "in his face." And yet, it seems as if it is just in the lack of this experience of "a father in his face" may lie a key to his silence.

The French-Jewish philosopher and rabbi Emmanuel Levinas defined the ethical relationship as our relationship with the other. We meet this other face-to-face, panim-al-panim in Hebrew. (This expression first occurs in the Hebrew scriptures when Moses asks God to let him see God "panim-al-panim. God denies the request and, instead, lets Moses see God's backside (which has been cause for much laughter in some parts of the rabbinic community)). Levinas, of course, knew this and pointed out that the ethical relationship should not be with God anyway. Rather it should be with other human beings. God, in other words, was saying to Moses "Don't look for my face (it would kill you anyway)! Look at your fellow human beings." It is in this relationship that we're really called into moral existence.

Levinas' ideas about this kind of relationship are far-reaching. However, he never intimated that this relationship could possibly have its origin in a double face-to-face relationship, a relationship with two parents. He also never mentioned that this double face-to-face relationship might by biological necessity have to be with a mother and a father.

These are difficult thoughts at a time when we tout our freedom to form families of any kind. Single parent families, families with two parents of the same sex, families with more than two parents, etc. Not to speak even of those families in which mental health, addiction and others issues prevent healthy dual-face-to-face relationships between parents and children. These are difficult questions and it would be sheer arrogance to want to respond to them by way of a legal process.  But could we allow ourselves to be more thoughtful about this than we currently seem to be?

The psychoanalyst Carl Jung seemed to think that our psyche is made up of both male and female aspects. He called them animus and anima. This, it seems, is culturally accepted by many. But what if these aspects are not simply there but need to grow. And what if that growth is also impacted by the necessary connection with both a mother and a father? How do we get to a place where we can be mindful of these things without legislating them?

The only way I can imagine this is by thinking that we make a concerted effort to put a face, both to mother and father. Fatherhood in particular is in need of this. The faces of fathers as well as the face of fatherhood are still largely missing from our awareness. We're not seeing them and, perhaps, they don't want to be seen? And while we might find ourselves insisting on the importance of the biological relationship between father-mother-and child, we must also begin to understand the importance of father/mother figures, i.e., other adults who can enter face-to-face relationships with children and adolescents.