Overview:
• The article explores the negative stereotypes and absence of Black fathers in the community, emphasizing the impact on children's productivity, development, and self-esteem.
• The author encourages breaking generational patterns and creating new ones, highlighting the importance of acknowledging and addressing the trauma of being fatherless, and promoting healing and connection in the community.
By Terri M. Bolds Wilkinson-Hill,
MS, LPC
A topic that gets attacked and scrutinized in the Black community is fatherhood. I could use this opportunity to provide data and research to support my title; instead, I want to use this opportunity to speak to people in plain language. I want to capture my audience’s attention to discuss why Fathers Matter.
From the Black experience, not speaking for all, fathers lack inclusion in conversations about their positive contributions to the productivity, healthy development and esteem of their children. Black fathers are overlooked and at the same time lack presence. To understand the reason for that phenomenon is to understand our heritage and our evolution or lack thereof.
I first heard of the term psychological enslavement from my uncle. I would listen to him passionately speak about educating the Black community about economic empowerment and how we need to change our mindsight and understand the power of our dollars collectively. I understood the term to mean, one’s mind being held captive and bound to ideas against its will or desire. Being a therapist, I often use that term in relation to the watering of stigmas in our communities.
The depiction of Black fathers is mostly negative, unflattering and demeaning. In the scarce exploitation of socially acceptable Black fathers, a “Wow!” factor follows. “Wow, he takes care of his kids. Wow, he shows up to events. Wow, they know their father. Wow, he isn’t on drugs. Wow, he knows what they like to eat.”
It’s disheartening to see people – my people live in generational hopelessness.
Patterns are most certainly repeated, and patterns are most certainly able to be readjusted to leave room for a new design. When one realizes a pattern isn’t working, the best seamstress will go back to the drawing board and potentially gather pieces from the old design to help establish a pattern that fits perfectly with the intended result.
Repeating life patterns works very similar to that of a seamstress attempting to create a perfect and functional design. I used to watch my grandmother cut out sewing patterns on the dining room table as a child. She had a special cutting tool that she would role on the dotted lines to make sure the pattern was cut perfectly. My grandmother was an expert at her craft, so in times where a piece didn’t work, I saw her take extra pieces or scraps and still make them useful. She added to the pattern, and it still came out amazing.
Our experiences lead to the development or continuation of generational patterns. And like a seamstress, if a pattern isn’t working for us, we have the capability to change things up. That is, if we want to live in a space of the unknown. Time is up for using the “Well, that’s how I was raised” mentality when justifying absenteeism, physically, mentally or emotionally.
I guarantee you, the person selling that line, is wounded because of how they were raised. Not always it is a situation where someone wants to be deemed “a deadbeat.”
Culturally, expressing our feelings has not been acceptable. Our history didn’t allow us to feel. We have been too busy fighting for equality, trying to stay alive or just trying to feed our families. So, when life does not pan out the way we see it in the movies and on television, the luxury of having feelings, let’s take it a step further, discussing our feelings, is not common practice.
Down the street there are 50-year-old women dealing with repercussions of their choices as a direct correlation of not having their father. A strong Black woman doesn’t need a man, anyway, so they don’t have time to sit and cry over someone who didn’t want them. Somewhere out there is a 60-year-old man, housing a little boy that still thinks about how he wanted love and affection from his father, but real men don’t talk about that.
There’s a 17-year-old girl trying to do whatever she feels is needed to make people like her because she can’t understand why her father has no issues with getting in and out of relationships with women and showing up for her kids.
In the factory, there’s a 40-year-old man working excessively, because working and providing is what he knows as being a father. His father didn’t spend time with him, but they ate and had clothes, so how dare his kids be ungrateful and complain about him not being around.
Somewhere there’s a 10-year-old boy who needs hugs from his daddy. The daddy who tells him to stop being soft.
There’s a girl out there whose dreams of a father-daughter dance died with her father.
Our communities continue to breathe life in the negative narratives that were created for us. Healthy relationships between fathers and their children in the Black community should be praised and encouraged. The unhealthy patterns we have travelled with for generations are not set in stone; we can erase them.
Fathers Matter. We all remember that emotional scene that left a lasting memory of Will being let down yet again on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” He had Uncle Phil, a father figure, but he wasn’t Will’s father.
Or how about a recent episode of “The Ms. Pat” show, that depicted a scene between two siblings what had a complicated relationship with their biological father. They had a stepfather that stepped in the father role, but he was not their father. One sibling left room for their biological father, and the other completely closed the idea of him ever being relevant.
Within both examples, the absence of their fathers was masked by anger, frustration and the suppression of their feelings. Because what would acknowledging “I’m hurt, feel abandoned, scared,” sharing the simple phrase, “I want my daddy” accomplish? Why would I acknowledge my life has been affected by someone who seemingly does not care about me? He doesn’t care about me, so I will convince myself I don’t care about him; unhealthy patterns we continue to travel with generationally.
As a person who lived her life feeling like a fatherless daughter, I invite my people to join me in creating different patterns. Having an inconsistent father affected my life in ways that at age 42, I am still in the process of healing.
We can heal as a community. For these fathers we feel aren’t getting the job done, let’s start encouraging them. To the hurt women that don’t need a man cause a man ain’t never done a thing for her, today is the day to start your healing journey, sis. To the child whose father died and left a void, your grief is real. To the father who isn’t sure if his presence matters, it does. To the father that feels like he doesn’t have enough money, so what, show up. To the father who doesn’t know how to connect emotionally, start trying and keep trying. To the men and women who carry the trauma of being fatherless, the new you is waiting on the other side. Your spirit and soul are heavy from carrying the years of pain. Your heart is desiring to love. Your mind wants to be unchained.