What Role Do Fathers Play in Feminism?
Friends,
Today’s essay is part of a fatherhood memoir-in-progress. If you’d like to read all of the pieces I’ve assembled, you might begin with “The Boy Is Father to the Man.” Other potential book chapters include “Do You Really Lose a Book for Every Child?,” "The Not-So-Funny Valentine,” “Fathers and Sons,” “In Search of Simplicity,” “How Sugaring Feeds My Soul,” and "Are the Alpha Dad and the Clown Really Our Only Options?”
I have to say that this chapter has been one of the most difficult to write. As always, I strive to tell the truth and to remain attentive to what writing allows me to discover.
Thank you, as always, for supporting my art. It is a privilege to write for you.
Josh
What Role Do Fathers Play in Feminism?
“There is no sweeter sight than to see a father with his little daughter…. At that moment, the right relation between the sexes seems established, and you feel as if the man would aid in the noblest purpose, if you ask him in behalf of his little daughter.”
– Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century
1.
I was speeding down the Atlantic City Expressway, having just escaped the Philadelphia traffic, when my ex (whom I’ll call Sarah) announced that Roe v. Wade had been overturned. We were driving to the Jersey Shore, our three children watching Netflix on an iPad wedged between the two front seats.
There had been warnings — a leak of Samuel Alito’s draft opinion and years of analysts gaming out the impact that Trump’s appointees might have on the court. Now it was the truth. Sarah kept reading updates from her news feed. States where trigger laws would immediately ban abortions. States that would be rushing to pass new laws to do the same. The certainty that women would die from ectopic pregnancies, an almost unthinkable leap backward in medical science.
My thoughts soon moved to my daughters, ages ten and six, both still young enough to enjoy Paw Patrol. I was not thinking about birth control or how we might have to weigh college decisions against state laws limiting choice. I was thinking about how just a moment before my girls had been moving toward a future that held every opportunity open to them, the same as their little brother. Now they would grow up in a country that did not recognize their equality. For perhaps the first time I understood how fundamental sexual freedom is to the pursuit of happiness.
The hardest part of fatherhood is supposed to be letting your little girls go. That was the story I’d heard all my life: the young woman chafing for wide open spaces while her father wants to hold on to her butterfly kisses. I had been trying for years to avoid infantilizing my daughters in that way. Now I felt thrust back into a patriarchal role, worrying about safeguards for my girls, how to protect them long enough so that their futures would not be stolen from them.
It was a sunny day. We were driving to the beach. But the light felt menacing, the way it does when sickness throws the world off-center.
2.
During Sarah’s first pregnancy, when we learned that we would be having a girl, we made the mistake of sharing the family names we were considering. My father’s Czech grandmother was named Sophia, and one of my mother-in-law’s Italian grandmothers was named Luisa. Each side of the family began a quiet lobbying campaign that ended one day when my father texted something about “the Baby Sophie.”
Nope, our parents did not get to force our hand. So we started over.
It came down to Linden, the national tree of the Czech Republic, or Sarah’s middle name. One would be our daughter’s first name, and the other would be her middle name, but we were not sure, even on the day of her birth, which it would be.
It felt presumptuous to make this choice,1 but I like the stories associated with linden trees and their heart-shaped leaves. Linden groves have pagan roots, a history that links Czechs to Celts, Greeks, and Romans. Libuše, the prophetess and chieftain who foretold the creation of Prague, reportedly settled disputes among her subjects beneath a linden tree in her courtyard. And the singing linden tree gets its name from a legend about a farmer who hid in the cleft of a giant linden while singing forbidden psalms. He was hard of hearing, so he sang loudly, and it seemed to others as if the tree itself were bursting into song.
When our second daughter came along, we chose Tula, the name of our favorite heirloom tomato. One seed catalog describes the Black from Tula variety as having a “smoky, complex flavor and dark chocolate covered flesh.” Another praises its “unique purple color” and “rich sweet flavor.” The variety is believed to be Ukrainian or Russian in origin, but there are at least forty cities in the world named Tula in places as diverse as Australia, Indonesia, Iraq, Russia, Italy, Mozambique, Mexico, and Mississippi.
We chose the name for our memories of summer in Iowa, when the beautiful fruits gathered on our kitchen counter, turning every sandwich into a masterpiece. When I think of Tula tomatoes, I think of picnics in the backyard, the musky smell of tomato vines, and the unrivaled joy of carrying a handful of warm slicers to the patio, smothering wedges with salt, and closing my eyes as the flavor explodes on my tongue. Perhaps it is selfish of me to project personal pleasures onto my children’s names, but the garden is one of my spiritual homes, and an heirloom tomato can come true from its own seed for generations to come — forever, if the art of seed saving endures.
As charming as these histories are to me, they still project rather fixed identities onto my daughters. We live up to our names or we resist them. What if Linden discovers that she is actually Leo? What if Tula decides she doesn’t like tomatoes or that fruit names conjure harmful tropes about women?2
Some cultures expect children to shed their given names eventually. As James Welch reveals in Fools Crow, children among the Blackfeet are given placeholder identities at birth, and everyone has the chance to change their name through their actions. Welch’s protagonist is White Man’s Dog at the outset of the novel; he comes to be known as Fools Crow after a successful raid on a Crow village.
I wonder what it might have meant for my daughters if we had watched their true natures emerge and allowed appropriate names to follow.
3.
Every spring the sleepy Iowa town where we once lived observes a curious tradition. It is not the famous tulip festival, with its poffertjes, stroopwafels, and wooden clogs. Nor is it the hot air balloon race, when three dozen pilots fly their brightly colored crafts over the largest lake in the state. It is a cultural rite observed in many other communities: the father-daughter dance.
The premise seems fun: “Girls, grab your dads, get fancy, and enjoy a night of dancing, games, and refreshments!” But I have wondered, while standing in line for a prom-style photograph or speckling the gymnasium floor with sweat during the hokey-pokey, why quality time with my daughters must be framed as a date night. Mother-son events typically feature more neutral fun, like laser tag, dodgeball, or mini golf. But the father-daughter dance seems to imagine dads as something more like practice boyfriends or as the guardians of romantic liberty.
The history behind this trope does not hold up well to scrutiny. Fathers walking their daughters down the wedding aisle to give them away is a patriarchal gesture that derives from literal transfers of ownership in days when women were bargaining chips between men. This was one of the reasons that Sarah chose to walk hand in hand with me to say our vows, and I hope that my daughters feel the same freedom to design their special days according to their natures, rather than by custom. (Though if my girls ask me to walk with them, I will happily agree.)
When I think of closeness with my daughters, I think of kneading bread together, chopping up cherries and ginger root for a batch of kombucha, and tapping our maple trees. I see them nibbling on marshmallows in the bow of a canoe as I paddle across a lake in northern Minnesota, screaming with delight as they pull their first wriggling trout out of a lake in Montana. I want my daughters to be free of oppressive tropes, but I also want that freedom for myself, to be more than Daddy Warbucks tending the nest egg or the farmer with the pitchfork warding off would-be lovers.
Read on for my memories of the Women’s March in 2017 and of a trip to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls.