© Aargauer Zeitung from February 12, 2009 / Milena Moser
About the role of men in raising children
Something is missing. The father is missing. Not at my table (see below), but in public discussion.
Example Harmos, earlier school enrollment. Children's tears, children's laughter. Two mothers from each camp had their say in the “Tages-Anzeiger”. It was about the role of the mother and her importance in the child's development, it was about the mother's resilience and her needs. Who had nothing to say: the father. No issue. His role in upbringing, his importance for the child's development, or simply his opinion. That irritates me › where are the fathers? Are there no more? Or are you no longer responsible for child-rearing issues? Unless as a politician?
A possible explanation can apparently be found in the stable, where ultimately it is not the bull who takes care of the calf, but the cow. Don't get me wrong, I love cows, like any city kid who has moved to the country. But I've never tried to live like one. Even if one could say with some malice that the surface of my desk often resembles a pile of dung. Well, I've informed myself. The cows, these gentle-eyed creatures, are herd animals. They raise their calves together in a so-called kindergarten herd, which is monitored by individual cows who alternately stand at the edge. External care in early childhood, and in a matriarchal living structure. Radical feminists had similar visions of a harmonious, testosterone-free coexistence between women and children, of a society to which men were only sporadically invited for procreation purposes, but otherwise did not take an active role in everyday life. A surprisingly progressive recommendation, but not a really liveable one.
Because the fatherless society doesn't work. The experts agree on that. It is blamed for most of the problems of “today’s youth”. Alexander Mitscherlich warned about this development more than 45 years ago, Matthias Matussek polarized people with it ten years ago, and Allan Guggenbühl continues to come back to it today in his work with so-called problem children. Children need fathers. The not uncontroversial joint custody do justice to this fact. Couples fall apart, families remain. Parents separate, but not from their children. This is the ideal case. Will it be enforced? Should you at least try?
The reality outside the cowshed is complex: In Switzerland, half of all marriages end in divorce. One in six parents is not married, and even that often does not protect against separation. Parents separate and fall in love again, sometimes outside their own culture or within their own gender. Family structures change and new forms emerge. But it is not the form that defines a family, but the content. Children need people of both genders as role models, as sources of friction, as identification figures. They need their protection and their love. Regardless of what connects or separates each adult. The mother is not a holy cow. Perhaps it is my luck that I have always been aware of my shortcomings in this regard, perhaps that is why, despite all the personal (and certainly mutual) hurts, I have been able to remain a kind of family with the father of my older son.
A few days ago we celebrated his twenty-first birthday. With two fathers and three “kinds” of grandparents. The way we celebrated every family celebration, every Christmas: together. As a family. Not that it was always easy. And not that I'm imagining anything about it. It is the children who show the way through the new family forms. If we could follow their example, everything would be very easy. For the children, their brother's father is naturally part of the family. It is also clear to her that her father's new girlfriend will be invited to the birthday party and to the school play. She belongs to dad, so she belongs to us. And their children too. And the father of the father's new girlfriend's children too, and so on. As I said, this is not always easy. You sometimes swallow empty when the children come home with expensive nonsense that you can't afford yourself. When they rave about strange women who cut their hair over the weekend. All the beautiful childish curls, gone. But just because it hurts doesn't make it wrong. The Bern child and youth psychologist Liselotte Staub sums it up in her dry way: that divorced or separated fathers suddenly become interested in their children, interfere in the upbringing that they have left to their mothers for so long, and act like the cool daddy on the weekends , all of this may be frustrating for mothers › “but it’s great for the children”.
And putting the needs of your children ahead of your own is a basic requirement of parenthood. As I said, it is not the form that determines the family, but its content, love.