Fathers Day Edition: Daughters Make the Political Personal for Dads

Obama’s “Promoting Strong Fathers” speech and town hall last week was not just great role modeling and a politically smart thing to do, it had some very poignant moments that scratched the surface, albeit gently, of the president’s quest to know his father. He came to terms with that missing piece of his own identity long ago, as chronicled in his book, Dreams of My Father.

Still, I couldn’t help but feel sadness in my heart when he talked about his absent father, even as he expressed appreciation for his mother’s struggles and how his loving grandparents cared for him.

I was watching the town hall because fathers were much on my mind as I prepared for yesterday’s “Dads, Dudes and Doing It” panel, along with WomenGirlsLadies co-panelists, Courtney Martin, Kristal Brent Zook, and Deborah Siegel-Acevedo. Together, we span five decades in age and we speak through both gender and generational lens.

We had a lot of fun as we always do with our panels, but it was nevertheless emotional for each of us in different ways to be talking about our fathers. I’m the panel’s senior citizen, and I was missing my daddy who died almost 15 years ago. I speculated that he never connected his personal declaration that his daughters could do “anything their pretty little heads desire” with the political movement of women that a decade or two later would turn the political system upside down to make sure we actually could aspire without legal impediment to whatever heights we wanted.

That change is why Deborah’s story could include her nurturing father’s impact on her growing up to the twins she and Marco will soon welcome into the world:

Like the handful of other liberated dads in the neighborhood married to awakened middle-class women then heading back for more advance degrees, my father got me ready for school on mornings when my mother left home before dawn.

Similarly, Courtney talks about how her feminist father resigned from an all-male private club when she was born in 1979 because he didn’t want to belong to an organization that wouldn’t allow his daughter to be a member.

Kristal riveted us with her touching story of having used her newly hatched journalism skills in the 1990’s to track down the father who had been absent from her life almost since birth and persuading him to attend her graduation with a PhD at age 27.

I grew up in an all-female, working-class, African-American household…the unspoken messages we received as girls were crystal clear: Men don’t stay. And even if they do, they don’t necessarily help the situation. Women are stronger, better. We have to be. Independence is vital.

We panelists always talk about the unfinished business remaining to achieve gender parity and social justice for women. Courtney told the men to read Michael Kimmel [author most recently of Guyland] and Jackson Katz and to work with women on:

…creating the infrastructure necessary for all of us to lead whole lives—characterized by fulfilling work and family lives. Momsrising should partner with Dadsrising. Men should advocate for paternity leave policies in their workplaces and actually take the time off. All of us have to work towards a healthcare system that doesn’t leave women picking up the pieces when children and elders are sick.

Questions from our audience weren’t so different from those the president received, mostly on the practical, human level. We were honored to have in our midst journalist and author Jimmie Briggs, who has committed himself to addressing gender-based violence globally with his latest book, The Wars Women Fight , and by starting the ambitious Man Up initiative.

Man Up is a coalition that uses soccer and hip hop to engage boys and girls in figuring out how to eliminate gender violence in their own cultures. In the Congo and Nigeria, they’re working with youth to confront rape as a weapon of war; in Guatemala and Mexico, they’re tackling femicide; in the Balkans, trafficking and prostitution, in Europe and the U.S., domestic violence. “Whatever form of gender violence is most threatening and pernicious in one country or region, that’s where we start.”

Briggs, a divorced father very much part of his daughter Mariela’s life, wrote his book as a collection of letters to her to help arm her with the strength she will need as she matures, to fight on her own behalf and for other women in the world.

At the town hall, President Obama opined, “No rule that says you have to repeat your father’s mistakes,” and he went on to talk about how when his daughters were born he made a pledge to them to be there for them.

His words to fathers struggling to do their best: “It’s about showing up and sticking with it.”

Both in the political and personal sense, that’s the best possible advice.