I only saw my father once in 27 years. Then I became the dad I never had

“What do parents do on Tuesdays?”

This was not a rhetorical question when I posed it to my wife as the birth of our daughter approached. Before my daughter was born, I had seen my father only once in the last 27 years. That's more than 1,400 Tuesday. In fact, when I was a child I hardly saw being a father any day of the week, except in television comedies; Absent fathers were prevalent in my family and among my peers.

My daughter was born on a Saturday. My first Tuesday as a parent came and went in a blur of exhaustion. I always loved playing and working with children. Overall, I felt competent about what to do with my newborn daughter. However, as I hugged her, the insecurity of my father's absence made me wonder: Am I better than my absent father?

Absence takes different forms.

Years before my daughter was born, I was in the first year of my PhD. student who intends to study black men and how their childhood memories affected them as adults.

My pivot to fatherhood began while conducting interviews for a larger study on men of all races and unemployment. After completing these interviews, I was surprised to see that 85% of my respondents grew up with absent fathers. The nature of the absences (how they occurred and how they felt) seemed to me a more compelling area of ​​study.

Historically, scholars and policymakers considered whether parents lived with their children as the sole criterion when designating them as “present” or “absent.” However, my respondents' stories revealed distinctions that the term “nonresident” alone did not capture. Specifically, my analysis identified four unique patterns of absence: “consistent,” “inconsistent,” “extended,” and “absolute.”

Constant absence includes regular interactions, such as every Tuesday after school or every weekend.

Inconsistent absence involves irregular and unpredictable interactions: a parent who promises to show up on Tuesday but doesn't show up until Friday, or disappears for weeks at a time.

Prolonged absence occurs when years pass between interactions: meeting your father for the first time at age 9 and then having no interaction with him until he shows up at your high school graduation, for example.

Finally, absolute absence means that the interactions never occurred or can no longer occur, such as a parent who died or disappeared and their whereabouts are unknown. Some people in this category did not even know their parents' names.

These categories complicate what might otherwise be oversimplified.

For example, the fathers of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were absent, but in distinctly different ways.

Clinton's biological father died in a car accident before he was born: a complete absence. Obama's father abandoned the family when Barack was two years old and reappeared only once, years later, a relationship characterized by a prolonged absence.

In contrast, other famous people saw their absent parents more regularly.

The parents of rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, divorced when he was 3, but he grew up spending summers with his father, putting absence in the “consistent” category. Similarly, Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine regularly saw his father on weekends after his parents divorced, which I also classify as a constant form of absence.

Better than my father, or better than his absence?

Ironically, I became a father when I began my dissertation research on absent fathers. Using the four categories of father absence that I developed, my thesis examined how men's experiences with absence shaped their own aspirations for fatherhood and romantic relationships.

I wanted to show the complexity and variety of experiences of growing up with an absent father, while also exposing the disparity in how people remembered their absent fathers. Specifically, some people knew their fathers, while others only knew that their father was absent. This lack of memory makes it harder for some new parents to imagine what it means to be better than their own parents.

Like me, the men I interviewed for my research conveyed anxieties about coping with fatherhood. Like me, they wanted to be better than their parents.

But we all differed in how prepared we felt for the task. Some had vivid memories to guide them: one respondent, who experienced inconsistent absence, hated that his father never showed curiosity in meeting him. So when he became a father, he made sure to ask his daughter questions so she knew he cared about her life.

However, those who have few or no memories of their father can aspire to be, as another respondent put it, “a father like my mother.”

By doing this work, I have been able to reimagine my own experience with absence.

I used to assume that the pattern of absence I experienced with my own father reflected a standard. My parents divorced when I was 3 years old. I saw my father regularly until I moved out at 6, a form of constant absence. But I spent the rest of my childhood without seeing my father, which led to a prolonged absence. I used to mistakenly dismiss less extreme patterns of absence, such as seeing the father weekly or monthly, as “non-absence.”

My unique experience of absence has also clearly shaped how I remember my father. My memories come mainly from the age of 6 and earlier. Many are unfavorable, such as the fact that he smoked in the car knowing he had asthma. There are some loving ones, like the two of us walking on the beach or feeding the ducks at a local pond.

Still, what I remember most is the fear I had of my father. The origins of this fear escape me. I've been told he abused my mother, but I don't remember witnessing it.

These few memories presented a paradox as I entered fatherhood: I didn't want to be feared like my father, but I didn't know exactly what made me fear him. This uncertainty was present during my early years as a mother: When my daughter cried in my arms or preferred my wife over me, was it simply a sign of normal restlessness? Or had I unknowingly become a terrifying figure, like my father?

From abandoned son to current father

The last time I saw my father was 20 years ago. He was filled with hatred when that meeting began, but this hatred soon dissipated. First, I realized that I wasn't angry at my father, because I barely knew him. He was angry at her absence. Secondly, I learned that his father was also absent.

They say “hurt people, hurt people.” Before my dad was an absent father, he missed his dad too. This does not excuse his absence or his treatment of my mother. But it did make it harder to hate someone who was probably suffering like me.

As I continue to explore the impact of absent fathers as a scholar, I continue to reconcile my transition from abandoned son to current father. Lacking inspiration or guidance from my own father, I am practicing fatherhood on my own terms.

For me, that means building traditions. From the beginning, we have created routines around music, dancing, bath time, reading, and talking about “big emotions.” Our most meaningful tradition has been our weekly daddy-daughter breakfast, which I started when she was 18 months old. Now he is 8 years old.

Sometimes we go on Tuesdays. But any day of the week is fair game.