It is only fair, if I was writing about Mothers and Daughters, that I should mention Fathers and Sons. There appear to be two areas of angst that I hear about the most.
The "Lost father" and the "I'll show him father" .
The Lost Father is a set up where the son feels that he never really knew his father. Where he saw his father have fatherly relationships with other young men - especially at work so he is aware that his father has the capacity to be a father but this relationship does not happen between the true son and the true father. The saddest example of this is Col John Boyd (the father of the OODA Lop and Shock and Awe) who was one of the great mentors of the modern era but who ignored his own sons. In the final irony, as he lay dying Boyd called out to his intellectual sons as his natural son sat by his bed in the vain hope that maybe, at the moment of death, his father would acknowledge him. For many of us in this category of sons, I am one, much of our adult life is a quest to find a father substitute. Sometimes these relationships can be nourishing and good - especially in the early years in boyhood or early adulthood. But others, if you keep on seeking into adult life, can be based on trying the same failed tricks to win the attention of the fake father that failed with the real father. If you are lucky, one day you find an older man who tells you that it is time to grow up and look after yourself. Thank you Fraser!
The "I'll show him father" - good examples are Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner. Both men had successful fathers whose constant discourse to their sons was that they were no good layabouts. For these men this was the lash of ambition that drives then so hard to "show him" that he was wrong. Like much mania, the it appears that the pinnacle can never be reached and that the need to show him never ends. The sadder side of this set up is the son who believes his father's sentence of failure and acts this out his entire life.
Are there fathers whose relationships fit their sons needs? I am sure there are - but good stories are never about comfort
2:29:56 PM 
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