Father's Day Apology

"Far from demanding my children’s gratitude, I want their forgiveness."

When I was a kid, my family never went in for Father’s or Mother’s Day. I had a vague sense that Hitler had invented Mother’s Day, though when I recently checked it turned out that the ancient Greeks had some version of the concept. All Hitler did was turn Mother’s Day into an official German holiday, with a special medal, the Mutterkreuz (“mother’s cross”), for women who pumped out lots of kids. The Mutterkreuz was popularly known as the Karnickelorden, or “Order of the Rabbit.”

Regardless of Hitler’s position on the holiday, now that I’m a father, I see that my childish skepticism of these occasions was correct. June 17th is Father’s Day, but I won’t be encouraging my children to honor me.

The idea of Father’s Day seems to be that your kids say, “Thank you for bringing me up, sorry about those times I vomited on you at 3 a.m. and apologies for taking 20 years to say thanks.”

But gratitude to a father doesn’t make sense. We raise our children not out of kindness but out of biological obligation. Even before they are born, our hormonal balance changes (testosterone levels collapse, for instance) in ways that prompt us to care for our kids. A friend of mine said that when he first held his baby son, he was physically conscious of a hormonal surge. This is what they call love. For years to come, it prompted him to do things for the boy that he would never have done if he were being rational. We fathers can’t help it.

Yes, I am aware that some fathers don’t bother raising their children, but that strikes me as a symptom of psychological illness or perhaps criminal behavior. For most of us, bringing them up as best you can, and prizing their own lives above your own, is to set the bar pretty low. Fatherhood is not some kind of favor we do them.

Far from demanding my children’s gratitude, I want their forgiveness. What I feel is, “I am sorry I am angry, impatient, selfish me. You deserve a better father.” The English poet Philip Larkin put it better, in one of the only verses of poetry that most of us Brits can quote:

They f*ck you up, your mum and dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

He ends the poem with a canny warning to anyone stuck inside a family:

Get out as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself.

Larkin, who spent most of his life as a miserable librarian in the unlovely northern town of Hull, followed his own advice. He even contrived to remain wifeless, much to the chagrin of his various middle-aged companions.

I used to read his “f*ck you up” lines as a child’s accusation. But now that I’m a father, I see them differently, as parental apology. Instead of Father’s Day, we should have Child’s Day, where they get to have nonstop ice cream, and we never shout.

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