Early Bonding for New Fathers

Men and Mothers

As it is with women, a father's attachment to his baby is influenced by his own experience in childhood. In infancy, a boy may first identify with his mother, identifying with her childbearing and nurturing capacities. She seems all-powerful to him, the source of all gratification, stimulation, and care. Wishing to become as powerful as she, he identifies with her. Many boys simulate pregnancy with pillows and tenderly act out their capacity for childcare with dolls. In this make-believe play, they develop a core of identification with their mothers. Meanwhile, they are also beginning to identify with their fathers. Out of this interplay of opposing forces, a boy's identity develops. A young boy must integrate his core maternal identification with his growing identification with masculine behavior. The solution of this dilemma, the "paradox of masculinity" (Bell, 1984)¹, will shape both his gender identity and his future fatherhood. Many resolutions are possible, including difficulties with sexual identity or a stern refusal to acknowledge any feminine attributes, as in the "macho" complex. A balanced resolution, however, makes possible a boy's future acceptance of his nurturing role, a capacity both to identify with a woman's pregnancy and to contribute to childrearing as a father. The conflict leads to adaptive solutions, preparing a boy for his role as a caring father.

Traditional fathers from our past have often been described as "aloof," absent, and not showing emotion (Bell, 1984)¹. Whether this has been really true or not, in the past most boys remembered their fathers as non-nurturing. Has this been an assigned role or a real observation? Have fathers in the past been more nurturing than reported? Have their so-called feminine inclinations and behaviors been merely shielded by an aloof or distant surface? Have there always been hidden nurturing forces in men — which men, until recently, have not been permitted to express? Could the fathers of the present display such evident positive attachment to their pregnant wives and to their infants had they not perceived models in their fathers as well as in their mothers? In all likelihood, their fathers' model for nurturing played some role, though in no way parallel to that of mothers. Will this change in the future, or does this imbalance serve a lasting purpose?

The main developmental task of the boy, in the gradual achievement of fatherhood, is to relinquish his wish to be just like his mother and to bear children as she does. Not all men accomplish this task. Some persist in envying women's childbearing capacities and never accept that they must be excluded from this process. Unconsciously, they compete with their wives, exhibiting symptoms similar to the couvade of primitive tribes (in which men exhibit symptoms of pregnancy and labor), or else flee from these wishes by absenting themselves during their wife's pregnancy. Men who can successfully sublimate these wishes may feel renewed creativity, or increased professional productivity during their wife's pregnancy. Such rechanneled wishes may even become the incentive for choosing a career in a childcare profession.

The Wish for a Child in Men
A man's wish for a child, first grounded, as we said, in the desire of the boy to be like his mother, was described by Freud in the story of little Hans, a five-year-old boy who imagined that he too could bear his father's child. Other determinants, similar to those we described in women, are active. The narcissistic wish to be complete and omnipotent by producing and identifying with one's child is universal, as is the wish to reproduce (mirror) one's own image. This is certainly one reason why fathers are likely to prefer to have a boy. In India, the very name for the son, "putra," means "one who delivers from the hell called put" (Kakar, 1982)². In the Mahabarata, one of the fundamental sacred texts in India, it is said that the father himself is born as the son, and in the placing of his own seed in the womb, he has conceived his own self. This wish to reproduce one's own sex is stronger in men than in women; it may reveal a greater need in men to bolster and confirm their masculine identity, which is so constantly challenged. In one author's experience [BC]), nearly all children who are referred to psychotherapy for evaluation of cross-gender behavior are boys.

For fathers, sons are more likely to become the carriers of the father's unfulfilled ambitions than daughters. Fathers are more likely to be concerned about their sons' achievements, their progress in the areas of motor development, cognition skills, and scholastic achievement. A son often has the mission of shoring up a father's doubts about his masculine self-image. This is why fathers become so anxious when they see signs of weakness, insecurity, and lack of drive in their sons. Such weaknesses seem to reflect, in an amplified and socially visible form, the father's insecurity about himself. Possibly contributing to this strong identification is a man's deep-seated feeling that he can influence his son's masculine identification, but not his daughter's outcome.

A woman, as we have seen, longs for a child to quiet doubts about her own fertility and reproductive capacity. The equivalent, in a man, is expressed in doubts about his potency, his power to make his wife pregnant. An extension of this is the father's need to raise a boy who shows all the signs of future manhood. While these stereotypes about sex roles are changing, the wish of fathers to duplicate their masculinity and power in their sons is still strong.

Fathers, like mothers, also need to renew old relationships with important persons of their past, and they expect their children to provide this link. Fathers wish to ensure the continuity of their lineage, "our only path to immortality," said Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1955)³. Freud named his own sons after men he admired and loved; beloved teachers and admired historical figures. The practice of giving one son the first name that the father himself inherited from his father is a testimony of the powerful drive to maintain filiation and to find in one's child the loved attributes of one's ancestors.

A man's wish for a child is also influenced by his old oedipal rivalry; not only does having a child provide a way to equal one's father, but raising him provides an opportunity to do better than one's father. Each new father resolves to be a better father. Today, he turns to the abundant literature on child raising to provide himself with the technical know-how of fatherhood, in the hope that his informed fatherhood will be totally new, surpassing past methods.

All the threads described above weave together into the incentive to have a child, stirring new conflicts as well as offering new solutions to old conflicts. A wife's pregnancy is an important time for the consolidation of a man's identity. With it will come all the anxiety and self-questioning that besiege mothers. Each stage of pregnancy is a new challenge, as it is for women.

¹Bell, D. H. Being a Man: The Paradox of Masculinity. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

²Kakar, S. "Fathers and Sons: An Indian experience." In S. Cath, A. J. Gurwitt, and J. M. Ross (eds). Father and Child: Developmental and Clinical Perspectives. Boston: Little, Brown, 1982.

³Freud, S. The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). New York: Basic Books, 1955.

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