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When it came to being a dad, my father says he was pretty much flying blind. My grandfather didn?t change my dad?s diapers, didn?t put him to bed, didn?t even play with him that much. One of the most prominent father-son memories he has is of when he was five and his mother was letting him stay up late to watch a show on TV; his father vetoed that and sent him to bed crying. He also remembers his dad coming after him with a belt. Then, when my dad was 13, my grandfather remarried and moved away.
?I didn?t have a role model for how to be an involved father, so I had to come up with that myself,? he told me recently. ?But I think it was also instinctive?it just came out of my desire to be close. I felt love for you, so I wanted to teach you things and play with you.? He added that, subconsciously, he was probably making up for the shortcomings of his own childhood. The idea that a man can possess a parenting instinct, and is not just suited to be a provider or a hapless sidekick, is relatively new. For my grandfather?s generation, it was highly controversial. When I was born, in 1976, the expectation that men should do more was picking up steam, but they were still considered a poor substitute for mom. In fact, up to that point, scientists who studied children?s early development looked exclusively at mothers.
?[The mid-?70s] was the heyday of attachment theory, which, as it was incarnated then, was very mu...