A soft daddy
There aren’t many days that I don’t think about fatherhood. It’s simply impossible for me to be in the presence of any of my children without the conscious awareness that I am their father and all that comes with that. I think about what it means to me to be a father and the kind of father that I hope I have been. Supportive, consistent, present, approachable, and affectionate. A soft daddy.
Elliot Birch, Nick’s father in Kroll’s animated comedy Big Mouth, is a hilariously exaggerated portrayal of a soft daddy, the kind of modern feminist father I wanted to be. Elliot (voiced by Fred Armisen) loves his family and is not ashamed to show it. Almost entirely without ego, Elliot consistently puts his own needs behind those of everyone in his family, but his complete openness and his lack of boundaries are constantly embarrassing his son. He admits to Nick, for instance, that he isn’t incredibly well-endowed but that there are other ways to please a woman. He proudly praises his wife and her vagina. He kisses his male friends on the mouth. He is comfortable discussing safe sex and the blurred lines of sexuality.
But there’s a vulnerability to Elliot that explains his uncompromising commitment to this brand of fatherhood. This season, we learn that Elliot did some shameful things in his past in order to earn his own hyper-masculine father’s love and approval. Elliot ultimately rejects his own family. “I vowed to myself that I’d be the exact opposite kind of father,” he explains to Nick. “You mean like a soft daddy?” Nick asks. “The softest, and the daddiest,” Elliot says. This brought me to tears. This was the same promise I made to myself many years ago.
Through his difficult relationship with his own father, Elliot recognizes, “The only way to get love is to give love.”
Free to Be… You and Me turns 50 this year. Conceived by actress and activist, Marlo Thomas, in collaboration with the Ms. Foundation for Women, it was initially released as a record album and illustrated book. An ABC television special followed two years later, which is when I was introduced to it. The project was hugely influential. The Emmy-winning book was number one on The New York Times Best Sellers list. The album, expected to sell maybe 15,000 copies, went Gold and then Platinum within two years. In 2021, the album was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
It’s impossible to measure how much this project affected me. I never owned the book, but the TV special left an indelible mark. The basic message of Free to Be was that, in post-1960s America, anyone — whether a boy or a girl — could be anything they wanted. The project emphasized values such as individuality, tolerance, and comfort with one’s identity. To me, these values — and feminism, more broadly — are as relevant today as ever. An Opinion piece in The New York Times this week, however, questions the contemporary cultural relevance of a feminist utopia where all people are liberated from gender-conforming stereotypes.
On one side, conservatives argue that sex and gender are immutable and fixed at birth. On the other, some progressives argue that both exist on a spectrum and offer children a complete smorgasbord of labels from which to choose. In this paradigm, it seems we’re perhaps more defined by gender than ever. A few years ago, one of my children shared that a male friend who had chosen to paint his nails identified as “gender fluid.” My reaction at the time remains the same today, why is it necessary to adopt such a label? Why can’t a person paint their nails or grow their hair or wear pants or wear a dress without it defining — or redefining — their gender, as the case may be?
I wasn’t a boy who needed to hear that it was okay to play with dolls. But I did like to dance. I appreciated hearing former NFL defensive tackle Rosie Grier sing It’s All Right to Cry. And who wasn’t liberated by the newborn baby in the nursery (voiced by Mel Brooks) wondering whether he might be a girl, because he’s afraid of mice and wants to be a cocktail waitress? In Parents are People, Thomas and Harry Belafonte reassured us that parents no longer need to be bound by traditional roles and expectations for what it means to be a mother or a father.
As a boy raised by a father from whom I didn’t always feel love — and often felt something like the opposite — the affirmations in Free to Be meant something to me, and I carried them with me as I thought about the kind of person and, in particular, the kind of man and father I wanted to be. Psychologists recognize that our ability to sustain healthy relationships, find gratification in our work lives, be effective parents, and speak up for ourselves, are shaped by the relationship we had (and have) with our fathers. I was a kid with a hard dad who needed a soft dad. I wanted my dad to hug me and hold me. I wanted my dad to tell me everything was going to be alright when I was deeply afraid it wouldn’t be.
I realized I could be a very different kind of father from the one who raised me. I would show all of my children love and affection. I would support their interests regardless of my own. And most important, I would nurture their self-esteem and defend them against bullies. With my children now grown, nearly adults, I can’t help but wonder what kind of father have I actually been. Have I lived up to my own expectations? I am clearly a different father from the one who raised me, but have I ultimately succeeded where he fell short? Do my children carry wounds I could have prevented? Or worse, wounds that I created?
I was recently drawn to see a beautiful film about fatherhood, Aftersun. The film focuses on a father and daughter’s week-long summer beach vacation. In this film, we see a more realistic portrayal of a father as a whole person. Warm and loving, but troubled. The young divorced father, Callum, cherishes this special time with his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie, who lives full-time with her mother. As the film progresses, without giving away too much, we realize that the story is set 20 years earlier. The now-grown Sophie is reminiscing about the trip from compilations of old 8mm film with her own unreliable memories. Purely through these visuals, we realize that the older Sophie is trying to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t.
Because the film is largely from the perspective of the young Sophie, we don’t fully comprehend what is going on with Callum. We see their relationship from the outside, and it appears easy and affectionate. He’s a good dad, but we come to recognize that we can’t really know this father. Nor can young Sophie.
The final shot of this film wrecked me. At the time, I’m not sure I even understood exactly why. A father’s impact on his children is ultimately formed by millions of these kinds of memories. As children look back on their early childhoods, they don’t see a father’s intentions or his desires or his complexities, they only see what they experience. They can’t really know him as a person.
When I think about my own childhood and my experience with my own father, I can only remember events as I lived them. Only in retrospect can I see my father as a whole person, with his own insecurities, unfulfilled dreams, and explanations for his anger. Knowing now that this man adopted me at three years old, and that my birth father gave me up, I can see my childhood through a completely different lens. Similarly, while I didn’t (and still don’t) have conscious memories of my birth father from those years, I know I have repressed memories of being abandoned with no explanation. No adult explained what was happening. I was just left to develop my sense of self through these flawed, filtered, and fractured memories.
Elliot is an idealized soft daddy, taken to a ridiculous, hilarious extreme. Callum is perhaps equally soft, though more realistically rendered. Both have flaws and weaknesses, as do I, but we all love our children and aren’t afraid to show it. I raise my voice and lose my patience. I have insecurities that get in the way. I don’t always know all my kids’ friends’ names. I argue with their mother. And I spend too much time on my phone. But being a father is simply the most important responsibility I have, and I love doing it more than anything. I hope I’ve done it well enough.
Last month on the phone with my own dad, who’s suffering from Parkinson’s and looking back on his own life, we were talking about my kids. He was praising them, as grandparents do, but he made a point to credit me for what good people they’ve grown up to be. I deflected the compliment, of course. Through his own tears, he persisted. My dad wanted me to know what a good dad I’ve been. The best, he said.
