A Father is a Father, and a Mother is a Mother

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there, from my own father, Joseph Jenkins (AKA Mobarez Abdul), to all the other fathers out there.

I hate to be the one to do this, but I feel a strong compulsion to make the argument I am about to make. As texts and phone calls pour in from around the globe, and wellwishers using all manner of new media (Facebook, Twitter, IM, etc.) give me encouragement, praise and support, I see the occasional "Happy Father's Day also to all the single moms out there doing it by themselves." I tensed at the first text I read with this idea, but quickly relaxed and went about my business. When I logged in to my beloved Facebook, I saw many of these types of posts. It is an itch that must be scratched. I clearly have a problem with this.

First of all, a little background. My mother was a single parent for most of my childhood. Even when she remarried, it was painfully obvious that our stepfather was interested in her, but not her three children. She got very little support from him when it came to child-rearing. My paternal grandmother was also a single parent, raising five children on her own, and is, as you might expect, a very strong woman for having gone through the experience. So I believe I am not just talking about things just to be talking. So here goes...

A woman who does the mom things and the dad things with her child or children is not both mother and father. She is mother raised to another power. No matter how good she is, no matter how good a job she does, she cannot fill the void the missing father has left. My mother did a phenomenal job with us, I think. We grew up in severe poverty, but she never let us internalize that ghetto mentality. We are all self sufficient and well socialized. But as a young man, I was filled with intense anger towards my father for not being there. It took a long time to resolve. It has shaped my behavior in attitudes in ways I probably do not realize. My mother was not both mother and father. I still needed my father.

It's weird, because I know his father was not there for him. You would think he would not want the cycle to continue. But it did. For whatever reasons, he was not in my life (or in my siblings lives') the way we needed him to be, and it has left us all affected in different ways. Does this diminish the absolutely outstanding job my mom did? No. It shows just how drastically, how desperately we need fathers. How desperately we need both parents in our lives.

I remember when my father's father died, I was asking my dad, and my aunts and uncles if they were they going to the funeral. They were unanimous in their refusals. They were unanimous in their resolve. He wasn't there for them in life, why should they be compelled to be there for him in death? They still carried residual damage from his absence, all those years ago. I know my granny, and she is a tough as they come. As loving and dedicated and protective as any mother could be. But all of her grand gifts could not obliterate the need for the man of the house to actually be in the house doing the hard and inglorious work of raising his children by her side. No matter how hard she worked, how much she sacrificed, she was not both mother and father. She was mother, going above and beyond.

I have limited experience being a single parent (my wife is in graduate school in a separate state, and is gone for sometimes weeks at a time). But I don't look at the time when I am braiding my daughters' hair, helping them with their homework, cooking for them, etc. as being mommy and daddy. I'm just daddy, busting my tail. No matter how hard I work, I can never negate their need for their mother. They need us both. Fortunately, children that have both never realize how desperate this need is. Unfortunately, there are far too many children who are missing one or the other, and it is usually the father.

I fear that this tendency we have to celebrate single parents as both mother and father leads us to false conclusions. To paraphrase Jill Scott, the fact is... we need each other. We need fathers and mothers to sublimate their own needs, wants, desires and aspirations for the sake of the children. One parent is never enough, if we are honest. Can we get by on one, of course, but should we be so nonchalant about it? It needs to be much less commonplace than it is. It needs to be the exception and not the rule.

Wishing mothers a 'Happy Father's Day' subtly minimizes the father's impact on his offspring through their entire lives. It is crucial that we get men to understand how important they are to our families. Rationalizing that women can just "double up" on the responsibilities and everything will be fine is dangerous and foolish. A parent who is not a constant in a child's life is leaving a void that is shaped like that parent, and nothing can totally fill that void as if it never was. Let us recognize this.