Club Crimsyn

So, I've been watching A Century of Fatherhood over the past few weeks. Interesting three-part series, albeit rather gushy and simplistic, in the way of TV documentaries that poke gently at the academic principles they're examining, but never do more than vaguely frame them.

I admit, I’ve found it hugely interesting, though I think I've come at it from a slightly idiosyncratic viewpoint. I don’t really know, so I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

The series was massively and unashamedly biased from a male perspective, which made my inner feminist very cranky. However, my inner post-feminist (who is probably a bit more outer than my inner feminist) found it a refreshing and rather necessary look at issues of domestic life and social perspectives of gender from a male view, because—please don’t beat me with copies of Sex & Violence—I believe that, in the main, men’s viewpoints have been grossly disregarded in this area.

There is absolutely room for more study of fathers, fatherhood, and the male role in social and domestic history. Traditionally, any discussion of changing roles in parenting, and the history of the home over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been, at some level, a discussion of women’s issues, women’s liberation, and/or women “on the home front” during the First and Second World Wars. Obviously, while the massive shifts in women’s liberation—and society in general—cannot and should not be ignored, it does mean we all too often adhere to accepted stereotypes and received knowledge without engaging with its sources, or challenging those assumptions.

One of the key things the first programme in the series pointed up, for example, was that working class men at the turn of the twentieth century were, in the majority, not the drunken brutes of film and literature, who never showed any emotion beyond uncontrolled and furious beatings (as the Temperance Movement would have had people believe). Studies were quoted that demonstrated men took an active role in the raising and nurturing of children, and the phrase “wait ’til your father gets home” was turned on its head, not as a threat of corporal punishment and anger, but as the far more meaningful fear of a child disappointing a much-loved parent, time with whom was an important and jealously guarded commodity.

Now, I hope most, if not all, the people reading this will be able to agree with the reviews I've read of the series, which basically came down on the side of saying: “What a lot of bollocks. Having a three-part documentary to say that men enjoy fatherhood is akin to a series of programmes explaining the purpose of oxygen for breathing. What a Statement of the Bleedin' Obvious.”

I'd agree, to an extent. As I said, it was extensively cozy, gushy viewing, albeit with some very interesting talking heads (including a woman called Dick, who ditched the name Barbara when she decided to become a mountaineer, just like her dad).

Admittedly, much of the second and third episodes I’ve either missed chunks of or had to read via interrupted subtitles, as the mother was yelling at the television quite a lot. However, as the series meandered on to the shifting tides of the mid-twentieth century, and then, last night, into the ’80s and ’90s, and so-called “new” fatherhood, I realised I was left with an interesting set of rather more personal questions.

The thing is, I’ve never had a father. It’s not something I was consciously aware of for a very long time, and neither was I aware of the fact I really didn’t (or don’t, I suppose, because this is probably a continuing thing) know what they do, or what they’re for.

( I’m going to wurble now, so I quite understand if you want to wander off and do something more interesting than read this bit. No? Sure? Well, I warned you. )

As I’ve grown older, I’ve started to find it bothers me more. Not in the oft-talked of “hole in my life” kind of way bemoaned by some people… I think it’s more to do with me disliking not being able to understand something, or worrying that I don't understand it, even if I think I do, and feeling vaguely concerned that my perceptions of fatherhood are, at some level, based on precisely the kind of received perceptions that A Century of Fatherhood has been fuzzily challenging.

The bottom line, I suppose - or at least I hope - is that all people are individuals. Enforcing binary or constrictive assumptions of gendered roles (or of gender itself) on people is shallow and basically meaningless: i.e. in saying, for example, “real men aren’t afraid to cry”, we are subverting the stereotype that “real men don’t cry” into a version of itself that is just as restrictive, instead of addressing the fact that men, like any other group of human beings, are not a homogeneous unit.

Of course, it’s more complex than that. Social conventions, and the myriad cultural influences of any given time and place will play into it. Different generations arrive at different zeitgeists and viewpoints, and for many different reasons. Within that, people may choose to follow or buck trends, or tread a different path entirely.

What I wonder, though, is how far my own lack of a father has informed my views? Has it done any number of other things to me? Is it responsible for my lingering desire to have a wiener, despite being pretty much cisgender (or at least only a tiny little bit genderqueer)?

I know we’re all the sum of our experiences—and a goodly number of other things—but it does still bother me to an extent that this is one thing I’m completely and utterly in the dark on, at least in terms of personal stuff to draw from.

I have no idea. Frankly, I’m not even sure it matters. But, I do find it fascinating, and I would love to know what other people think. So, come on. Be brave.

Zit on my couch, und tell me about deine Vater, ja?

Well, I have posted the woman to Truro for three days because - bizarrely enough - it is cheaper and easier for her to stay in a B&B in order to get to her appointment at the lymphoedema clinic than it is to get there at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning via public transport. You have to love rural counties. It's like those three weeks I spent hitching a lift on the back of a tractor to get to the station and commute to Exeter.

Anyway, though it took some doing to actually get her sorted and sent off, I now find myself with a lil' chunk o' free time. Woah. Need to get a manuscript edited tomorrow, but may actually manage to juggle it with catching up on the things I need to catch up with. Goodness.

In the meantime, I've been having a mini flakeout, which is as fun as ever, though - combined with this sudden burst of personal time - I've managed to do a few bits and pieces, like painting the ceiling I'd been meaning to do for the best part of a year (and going all wibbly afterwards, but shut up about that), getting some very odd letters indeed, playing with some artwork, fixing the crapped-out router, and polishing off a few other odds and sods. Right now, I'm full of couscous and tofu (and coffee-flavoured Baileys. Hurrah!), and listening to Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick, and Placebo. Whee. What larks. (Also, oh, the nostalgia: Brian Molko's package popping out of a £12.99 denim halterneck frock from River Island, and the summer of '96, when everyone at my school kept buying 'joints' that turned out to be full of dried pineapple leaves....)

Ahem. So, here's something that's kind of a continuing topic, and in fact now has its own tag, because I try to be organised, you know. Some of you may recall the unfolding story of my great-great-grandmother, whom I recently discovered ended up committed to Brentwood Mental Hospital, thus causing her to be basically expunged from the family tree in a rather unfair manner. Still waiting on any further records relating to her earlier 'attacks' (as her notes put it), but did get a hugely interesting communique from t'other side of the family, partially solving a mystery that's been tantalising people for some fifty years.

( Assumed names, hidden identities, and people popping up in surprising places. I swear, it's like a 1930s farce over here. All we need is a man with two jumpers, playing his own twin brother. )