Last night I re-watched actor John Leguizamo’s 1998 Broadway show Freak, a semi-autobiographical summary of Leguizamo’s early years growing up in New York City. A prominent figure in the story is his father, described as violent and generally absent much of the time. The show ends with Leguizamo’s poignant reenactment of a reconciliatory moment between him and his father. His last words are “This is for you, dad.”
Too many Latino men can relate to Leguizamo’s story of growing up fatherless. In fact, many of us were raised with even less of a father than Leguizamo had. The abundance of fatherless children within the Latino community is something that undercuts our efforts to uplift ourselves and produce healthy, happy, and fully-functioning members of society.
While there are plenty of scholarly articles detailing the effects that fatherlessness has on children in terms of educational achievement, crime rates and future financial stability, this article deals with the impact on the soul of the individual and the community.
My father abandoned my family when I was young, and I was forced to
maneuver the labyrinth from boyhood to manhood virtually on my own. A boy first reacts to the perceived injustice of it all: Why did this happen to me? Of course, the world doesn’t operate on fairness, and we are bound to learn that lesson at some point in our lives. But the way in which a fatherless child learns, it leaves deep mental and emotional scars, which, for some, become debilitating. (You know how it feels when you have your heart broken? Multiply that by 100 and extend it over a couple decades.)
As the boy grows up and begins to understand that it’s not strictly society’s fault – that his father had a significant hand in his fatherless upbringing – he then has to contend with feeling rejected, which is exponentially worse than the initial feeling of unfairness. It’s a harsh realization for any teenager to face during their phase of self-discovery: my father, who saw me come into this world and helped raise me during my first few years, decided I wasn’t worth the effort and that he didn’t want to be my dad anymore. This tends to lead someone toward a single conclusion: I’m not worth it.
All of this is detrimental to the success of the Latino community, because these fatherless boys-turned-men are expected to be good lovers, good fathers and good citizens. It’s nearly impossible for a person to be something he has never known. Their sole guiding example exists only in their mind, like an ancient sailor searching for the North Star on a cloudy night.
As a community, Latinos must promote efforts like Planned Parenthood to ensure that children are brought up in a healthy, supportive environment. We must repudiate any man who abandons his role as a father, instead of giving them the usual pass of “boys will be boys.”
Men must be men.
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Go Hector!
My question what about when your mother is your mother and your father gives you everything forgives you everything overlooks anything and everything little thing you have done to hurt her/ big or small, keeps you guarded with her secret that your father was a batterer and thats why she had to get rid of him/do you still turn your back on her and go to see your father bring him his first grandson eventhough he shows up emptyhanded only to give you a sob story of being “in need” yet he has a wife and four other children and has renequed on your support for fifteen years/how does my son forgive him and is angry at me I have no idea but I know now that I should have never ever kept the truth from him I should have let him know from day one what a hyena the man was but guess boys need their fathers no? so much for the adage “the best gift a man could give his child is to love its mother?’…………
I totally agree with what this author says about effects, and the swelling numbers of Latino and African-American youth without fathers is beginning to scare me — literally. What type of country will we be 20 years from now with multiplied millions of young adults who were raised without fathers? It’s alarming.
I’m with the author until he mentions ‘Planned Parenthood’. Ummm, has anyone seen the statistics lately of Planned Parenthood and abortions within the Latino Community? Planned Parenthood has made the “job” of being a father non-existent.Girl- becomes pregnant.Boy-go take care of that.Responsibility=0…With that said, Men must be Men! Proud father of 4 from college sweetheart.
My father was a drug addict, a woman beater and a child abuser. Leaving him was the best decision my mother ever made, even though, as an eight-year-old boy, I was angry at her because I didn’t understand. She pulled my brother, my sister and I out of a terrible situation. She did it by herself — a young immigrant from Honduras.
It was something she or no woman should ever have to do. She deserved more from her partner. My siblings and I deserved more from our father.
Being fatherless affects far more than the boys, it affects the girls. My father couldn’t keep his willy in his pants and was a womanizer (like a lot of latino men I’ve seen, sadly…). He left us, only to go have more children with other women. To this day, a grown woman of 24, I cry over the fact that I didn’t have a dad for most of my life. My latest memory of him was when I was 7. I’m getting married next year and will have no father figure to walk me down the isle. I have seen my mother struggle and single-handedly provide us a better life.
But just like I have seen my brothers feel that “worthlessness,” so have I felt it. I even blamed myself, having been the oldest of the three and the only one with the recollection of his leaving us in his blue truck. We all want to be daddy’s little girl, and that is robbed from us by the same men we looked up to.
Yvonne, I am sorry your son cannot see what a brave and strong mother he’s had. My mother has been the same with my brothers, and it breaks my heart to see her be dismissed by them because they’d rather see the man who turned his back on us. The fact is, the fathers who leave are worth nothing except a nod of the head for having participated in conceiving us. It’s the mothers who deserve the credit, the ones who stick around hardship after hardship, and who love us unconditionally.
hector, two of my grandchildren are going thru this. i just blogged about it to get my feelings of saddness out about this. my older grandchild, victor, who is 15, longs for his father to recognize him as a human being. he is looking forward to attending university and his father is wrapped up i his life. his father does maintain financial responsibilty but boys need so much more. my hope is to keep him aware of all that is positive in this world, his world. thanks for putting the crux so well.
I don’t hate this article. It’s fine. However, the argument reminds me of all those other heteronormative, male-centric, and insidious ideological beliefs that fathers (i.e., heterosexual fathers) are the key to a successful family unit and society, regardless of how awful they might be as individuals. It seems to me that you’re specifically dealing with fathers abandoning sons, and I get that you’re conveying your emotional experience coming to terms with being abandoned; that’s fine. However, are you at all concerned with the negative implications of your piece concerning children with 2 mothers or single-mother households? You don’t even try to preemptively clear up any potential misreadings that suggest families with 2 (or more) lesbian mothers or 1 mother are ill fit to be successful and healthy because there is no father.
After reading your piece, I think it’s important to be reminded of:
“There is ample evidence to show that children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. More than 25 years of research have documented that there is no relationship between parents’ sexual orientation and any measure of a child’s emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment. These data have demonstrated no risk to children as a result of growing up in a family with 1 or more gay parents. Conscientious and nurturing adults, whether they are men or women, heterosexual or homosexual, can be excellent parents. The rights, benefits, and protections of civil marriage can further strengthen these families.”
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/118/1/349
“The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.”
http://www.aaanet.org/issues/policy-advocacy/Statement-on-Marriage-and-the-Family.cfm
gg, I’m sorry if my article came off as promoting heteronormativity. Earlier drafts of it had me clarifying that I don’t believe that a heteronormative family structure is the best. But due to the 500-word limit, it’s hard to deliver the message and address any side issues that may arise.
The point of my article, mainly, is that if you take on the responsibility of raising child, whether you’re a man or woman, gay or straight, you need to stick to that responsibility. I only focused on fatherlessness because I feel it’s a conspicuous problem in the Latino community and was the main topic of Leguizamo’s show.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
In proving that I don’t believe in heteronormativity (it scares that someone might think that I’m heterocentric), you’ll notice that in the second-to-last paragraph, I use the label “good lovers” instead of “good husbands,” a remnant from the earlier drafts.
Its such a honest piece of writing. I completely agree with everything said here, me being Salvadorian I can relate to this very personally with one exception I actually experienced the complete opposite. I have a mother and a father still together loving each other till this day. My father is man with many flaws far from being perfect but he always showed up as best he could with what ever he could bring to the table to help and nurture me through this journey called life. I turned up pretty well and I consider my upbringing pivotal to my success-a lot of it to the influence of my father.
Now in contrast to this I had the privilege of running a youth group and this is where I experienced first hand the other side of my coin. Kids with no father at all. Absent, indifferent and apathetic. It showed me first hand the true importance of what it is to have a guiding light which to set our compass too. Without it we can be lost at see trying to find other stars for which to set our course too. Like mentioned in the article the results are devastating, we produce men not capable of being men (no only just in Latin communities). Emasculated, absent or violent at times unable to deal with life cause no one ever handed them the right tools.
I guess I now; from a christian theological perspective can see the real relevance of why God is so often called God the father. When all else fails hope can still cast its rod towards the only constant father that seems to weather the stand of time. I now fully appreciate the concept of the father… the need is for those who have never experienced the love of the father, starved from it we can still opt to taste it-the choice is ours-even if life takes away our biological choice from us.
Again another account about being emotionally wounded from the pain of a childhood with a physically or an emotionally absent father. These wounds cause a condition known as the orphan heart. We are now in a pandemic of fatherlessness. Understanding what the conditions are of an orphan heart and the process for inner healing is of utmost importance. It is all about establishing an intimate relationship with the Father. Having an experiential encounter of the Father’s love. It is a condition the majority of people do not know about and do not understand.
In 2010 statistics showed that the number of fatherless children in the United States was 18 million and 163 million in the world. This doesn’t even cover those with physically present but emotionally absent fathers. Today’s children seek affirmation from all the wrong places including gangs. They are longing to belong. They are aching for acceptance. They are trying to fill a void of a father’s love in their souls. There is an epidemic of soul sickness in this world.
We need to know who we are in God the Father’s eyes. God wants to have an intimate relationship with us and will use any means available to draw us close to him and His heart. But, it depends on our image of God.
So how do we develop our image of God? As children, we develop our image of God and understanding about love from our earthly fathers. Children are growing up without knowing a father’s love. The results are that these children become adult’s with childhood emotional wounds, just like I did. You may be one of them. How can we be good Christians, parents, spouses, and/or friends if we have an unhealed inner child? We need to experience God’s love. We need a personal encounter with the merciful Savior Himself to enable us to personally experience the love of Jesus Christ and the Father.
Seek Him and His love and know that you are His beloved child in whom He is well pleased.
Blessings,
Bruce Brodowski
Author of:
My Father, My Son, Healing the Orphan Heart with the Father’s Love
President
Carolinas Ecumenical Healing Ministries
Minister, missionary, author, publisher, speaker
http://www.brucebrodowski.com
I was blesed with a good fhaetr. I always recognized that blessing. I got to know my fhaetr in a different way when my mother unexpectedly died some ten years before my Dad. In those years, I got to know my fhaetr, adult to adult. We had great times as long as his health permitted, and his health was good up until that last two years.I miss Dad every day, now that he’s gone. I miss Mom, too, but it’s a different kind of absence. Also, I count as a blessing that my mother passed away first because, otherwise, I’d never have had the chance to know my fhaetr so well. Your last paragraph is a gem–and true.Thank you for this excellent commentary.