In Defense of the Ideal Father

At the end of his book American Fatherhood, Jürgen Martschukat writes:

The middle-class nuclear family with homemaking mother and breadwinning father has never been the living arrangement of a majority of Americans, not even before the 1970s. However, as the book [American Fatherhood] has shown, even if people were not living according to the dominant model of family life, very often they were judged by others in relation to that model and also measured their sense of self in relation to it. (245)

For context, each chapter before this surveys a different period of American history and highlights a father, who often deviates from the protective-provider-with-wife-and-children type. However, the influence of this ideal is felt throughout. It’s established from the country’s founding and remains a powerful norm thereafter.

Many, including Martschukat, seem to conclude from this that the normative power of the nuclear family is unwarranted at best and oppressive at worst. Why should non-traditional fathers be judged by an ideal that most American men don’t achieve? Why not expand the definition of fatherhood instead?

This begs a deeper question: What are ideals for?

Merriam-Webster defines “ideal” as:

1. a standard of perfection, beauty, or excellence

2. one regarded as exemplifying an ideal and often taken as a model for imitation

3. an ultimate object or aim of endeavor: goal

By these definitions, an ideal doesn’t need to be achievable. Even if nobody ever meets it, an ideal can still serve as a standard, a model to imitate, or a goal to aim for. Its function is not undermined by the fact that nobody gets there.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that the nuclear family should be the ideal. I’m just saying we shouldn’t do away with it (or any ideal) simply because so few achieve it. The point of an ideal isn’t to be achievable. It’s to be a guide, a north star toward which to aim.

Of course, you might still object to an ideal if it’s been imposed on you unfairly. For example, if idealizing the nuclear family is merely an attempt by some to marginalize those who don’t fit its definition, that’s a valid reason to challenge the ideal.

But just because you don’t meet the ideal doesn’t mean you’ve been treated unfairly. It just means that for whatever reason you’re not there. Maybe you’ll never get there. That could be your fault or nobody’s fault. Your inability to achieve the ideal alone doesn’t justify getting rid of it. Still, that doesn’t stop many from trying.

In Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, for example, the judge (the antagonist) claims that a child whose father dies before they are born is left unfairly crippled by an idealized impression of him:

Now the son whose father's existence in this world is historical and speculative even before the son has entered it is in a bad way. All his life he carries before him the idol of a perfection to which he can never attain. The father dead has euchred his son of his patrimony. For it is the death of the father to which the son is entitled and to which he is heir, more than his goods. He will not hear of the small mean ways that tempered the man in life. He will not see him struggling in follies of his own devising. No. The world which he inherits bears him false witness. He is broken before a frozen god and he will never find his way.

There’s no doubt that not knowing your father can be a big disadvantage in life. And that knowing your father’s flaws and struggles may help you overcome your own. But the judge goes a step further by suggesting that not knowing your father is somehow unfair because it leads the son to idealize him into a “perfection” he can never attain. But is that such a bad thing?

My mom’s dad died in a helicopter crash when she was two. She doesn’t remember him and admits to idealizing him.

Granted, daughters have a different relationship to fathers than sons do. They may not try to emulate them in the same way. Still, failure to live up to an ideal doesn’t make the ideal wrong. If anything, the ideal is telling. Why is the absent father idealized in the first place? Surely, a son doesn’t idealize him to set up unrealistic expectations for himself. He’s just filling the void left by an absent father with the form of a perfect father.

Whatever that form is and wherever it comes from, the fact that it exerts powerful influence doesn’t make it unjust.

A father who idealizes himself to exert undue influence over his child is another matter. He pretends to be perfect by hiding his flaws. But for a father who dies before his child is born, this is impossible. Whatever form he survives in is necessarily a product of his child’s imagination. Sure, it can be informed by other family members and friends who knew the father. Maybe they idealize him. But again, the ideal is not the issue. It’s the intent behind it.

For some, any ideal is the result of a conspiracy to marginalize those who don’t fit its definition. And certainly, some ideals are just that. But are ideals always a weapon?

Maybe some ideals just reflect the full potential of something. As a kid, I don’t curse my parent for being taller, faster, or smarter than me. I take it as a sign of what I can become. And if I don’t match or exceed them in life? That doesn’t mean they’re out to get me.

What the judge in Blood Meridian is challenging is not an imperfect father who exerts undue influence. It’s the notion of a perfect father, i.e. God. The rest of the novel makes clear that the judge’s attitude is actually rebellion, his intention patricide.

So apart from the flawed human father who deceives, maybe the idealized father is not such a bad thing. Maybe instead of rebelling against him, it’s best to reach for him.

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo