Salem, Oregon–Sometimes fatherlessness is the result of dad’s decisions, but sometimes it’s the result of mom’s decisions. I’ve made this point countless times in the media but never have I done it as effectively as columnist S. Renee Mitchell does in her recent column Mom might be the reason dad’s absent (The Oregonian, 8/20/08).
Mitchell has lived it, and instead of giving us the “You go girl!/Single motherhood is great for kids” nonsense, she’s big enough to tell the truth–kids need their dads, and sometimes it is moms who make kids fatherless.
Mitchell writes:
What I will miss most is my sons’ laughter. Next best: hugs and kisses just before bedtime.
This afternoon, my 12-year-old twins fly back to Detroit, Mich., to resume living with their father and stepmother. Our one-year co-parenting experiment turned into a pledge to keep them through high school.
I never thought mothering would be this complicated. Or that I’d have to deliver my homemade nurturing through a postal carrier.
But this is my way of making amends for contributing to the epidemic of children being raised by single parents. I’ve come to realize: Fatherlessness can sometimes be a result of the mother’s choices.
When I made the decision to divorce my children’s father and move to Portland when our twins were age 2, I thought I was the only parent my sons, Alex and Zavier, would ever need. I was mistaken.
No matter how much love I poured into my children’s hearts, my sons were starving with “father hunger” for the man named Lee, who named them and held them when they were just a few seconds old.
So, about a year ago, I had an epiphany. I decided to let go of what went wrong in the marriage and I shipped my boys off to Detroit, where they were born, to experience puberty through their father’s eyes.
I owed them the chance to discover all of their father’s charms as well as his failings and be shaped by Lee’s modern day initiation rites, where a father teaches his sons secrets that only men know.
When they returned to me for the summer, my now-taller and hairier sons took awhile to get readjusted. They too-often repeated the warnings their father drilled into their heads: Don’t be a burden. Offer to clean up. Be respectful…
I share this journey with readers because I know men aren’t always the only ones to blame when Daddy isn’t a part of his children’s lives. Women have a larger role in that than we’d like to admit…women of divorce need to lose the anger so our children don’t become unintentional pawns in a game to prove how much we don’t need a spouse to survive. At times, a man’s character, life circumstances or domestic violence keep children from having access to their father. Sometimes, though, women just need to get out of the way.
Of course, letting go is so, so hard. But, I don’t regret sharing Alex and Zavier with their dad. Both sons are on the honor roll. They say “Yes, ma’am” and open doors for their elders. They’ve learned how to wash their own clothes and cook simple meals. They are becoming young men, in height and in heart.
Of course, Mom will be in their corner, in spirit and in flesh as often as possible. But I have to give Dad credit, my sons are becoming more like their father than they’ve ever been. I’m so proud of us all.
Read the full column here. Please take the time to commend Mitchell for her courageous, dead-on column by clicking here.
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