On masculinity and fatherhood.

Our sense of what these terms mean are more important today than ever before.

Twitter is a cesspool on most days, and unfortunately, Father's Day is no exception to that rule. If one scrolls through responses to seemingly innocuous tweets about dads today (don't do it), some of Western culture’s thornier issues are on full display for all to see.

Those tweets do raise questions, though. For example, what does masculinity mean in a world where gender identity is now a radioactive political issue? Why does the incel movement exist, and how can we counter it? How do we achieve gender equality, equitably? Why do men comprise 75% of the suicides in Canada?

When confronted with the profoundly powerful emotions issues like these can bring forth, it’s sometimes useful to reflect on personal experiences. So on Father's Day, allow me to share with you some of mine.

When I think back to the first few dates I had with my husband, his inclination to talk about his three teenage children at every given opportunity was - at first - disquieting. I soon realized that Jeff was verbalizing what being a father now meant to him in light of the past and what he wanted the future to look like - particularly with the prospect of a new spouse on the horizon. Jeff's openness about his children confronted me with a choice. Would I be with him as a partner, as he chose to be a father? 

Years after making an affirmative decision to that question, I understand why this was so important to him.

Jeff, now 45, was first married at age twenty. His first daughter, and American military deployments followed shortly after that. And so his youth was filled with the responsibility of sorting out who he was as an adult while figuring out how to provide for his family as a serviceman in the middle of a war. His first marriage failed a few years after the birth of his third child. Then in his early thirties, Jeff found himself living in the aftermath a second failed marriage, another looming military assignment, and questions about how he would provide for his children.

Jeff felt that his primary responsibility at that juncture was to ensure his children were financially provided for. As he tells it, this meant staying in the army and seeing the children sporadically between deployments and leave weeks. But Jeff also knew sacrificing time with his children had a different cost. So did finding joy, purpose, fun, and meaning as a still-young man. He found himself constantly questioning the order of these priorities as social mores of fatherhood and masculinity changed around him.

So many men still struggle with finding balance in these challenges today.

Today, Jeff will admit to both successes and failures as a father during that time. To me, he'll express pride that he could financially provide for the kids, a role traditionally ascribed to male gender roles. But when the topic of the seven years he largely spent away from his kids, in unstable relationships during their formative years comes up, he tends to go quiet, his posture rigid, with his gaze firmly set off in the horizon. 

Jeff is far from the only man to confront choices like this.

In those moments, my husband usually brings himself back into the present. He will take responsibility for his own decisions. He'll express gratitude for the stability he's been able to build for his family - that now includes a blonde Canadian politician - and talk positively about the future. In that, Jeff's capacity for introspection, openness to change, and acceptance of responsibility paired with action have come to define my sense of modern masculinity and redefine my understanding of what fatherhood means.

That's not to say that Jeff doesn't experience the privileges and stereotypes of somebody who embodies the traditional archetype of Western masculinity. My husband wouldn't satisfy some people's notion of perfection, and he's not the type who would want to try. But yet, he is very much a deeply emotionally intelligent, complex human being who admits to his mistakes, owns them, gets up and brushes himself off, and does better the next time, every time. 

There's no doubt that there needs to be more work done to bring forth gender equality from systems of power that still rely upon the subservience of women. Every person in our country has a role to play in making - and securing - that change. At the same time, there's no reason why there can't be space, encouragement, and celebration of men who legitimately strive to live with honour in all those multiple worlds of expectation today's society sets out for them.

And so we have Father's Day.

So today, I celebrate my husband, my stepchildren's father, and express gratitude for the positive definition of fatherhood and masculinity he is carving out of his love for his family and his respect for himself. 

May our commentary and policy on gender roles include him, and countless others like him, in a place of respect too.

(Happy Father's Day, Jeffrey - the kids and I love you, and respect you, very much. ~MRG)