Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] ofprimitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level.
Augustus NapierEven if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways, it is fathers and mothers who teach those ways to children not just in the words they say, but in the lives they lead.
Augustus NapierParenting is a profoundly reciprocal process: we, the shapers of our children's lives, are also being shaped. As we struggle to beparents, we are forced to encounter ourselves; and if we are willing to look at what is happening between us and our children, we may learn how we came to be who we are.
Augustus NapierEven if fathers are more benignly helpful, and even if they spend time with us teaching us what they know, rarely do they tell uswhat they feel. They stand apart emotionally: strong perhaps, maybe caring in a nonverbal, implicit way; but their internal world remains mysterious, unseen, "What are they really like?" we ask ourselves. "What do they feel about us, about the world, about themselves?
Augustus NapierAs we try to change, we will discover within us a fierce struggle between our loyalty to that battle-scarred victim of his own childhood, our father, and the father we want to be. We must meet our childhood father at close range: get to know him, learn to forgive him, and somehow, go beyond him.
Augustus NapierWe are intensely loyal to our parents. In spite of the pain we experienced at our parent's hands, we cling tenaciously to their views of life; and their examples of what it is to be a man or a woman follow us throughout life. Acknowledging the power of our loyalty to them, and especially our loyalty to our same-sex parent, is only the beginning of our journey to improve upon their model; but it is at least a first step.
Augustus Napier