When Your Child's Experience With Fatherhood Doesn't Match Yours

I grew up a daddy’s girl. My dad asked me until I was at least 12, in jest, “Who do you love? Me or your mom?” And I’d proudly choose him. We’ve always been inseparable. Even today, at 35, either one of us can call the other, and after finishing our daily conversations, sometimes we just stay on the phone without words while we tend to whatever it is we’re doing. Naturally, I expected my daughter to have the same experience, and can even say I was a bit nervous thinking about how much of a daddy’s girl she’d be because I dreamed of having her as my little BFF. Her experience, at least now, is nowhere near a replica of mine.

I ended my relationship with my daughter’s father when she was 21 months old and never looked back. Still, I was committed to ensuring she had both parents active in her life, because that’s what’s right. However, he quickly showed he didn’t have the same idea. Over a year later, divorce finalized, things are very much the same.

I believe in the philosophy of happy mom, happy kid. Mothers are historically the nurturers and emotional stability of their family. I knew staying in the marriage would break me over time, so I chose to break my heart in the interim to save my daughter and myself later. Never did I imagine that by doing so, her father would choose absence, or become a pop up dad. 

As you grow older, your own image and experience of your father changes. You realize they aren’t necessarily the superhero you once thought, or maybe they are, just with a bit of scars. My father and I have had our fair share of trials in my adulthood, and I’ve come to understand his flaws. However, it doesn’t change who has been as a father to me, and who he still shows up to be with me at “my big age” - and this is regardless of the mishaps he’s had in relation to my mother at times, or what I’ve seen in his other relationships. He’s always been a steady presence. I expected the same for my daughter.

I don’t think men realize the potential damage being absent can cause. The mother and her village have to work overtime to ensure the child feels love, acceptance etc but the father's presence can never be replaced. Right now my daughter doesn’t ask about her father and I don’t mention him or put that responsibility on her. I don’t speak ill about her father around her, because I am aware that my relationship and disappointment in him can color her view of him and ultimately herself.

My daughter was just beginning to put sentences together when the relationship between her father and I ended. She’ll be starting Pre-K this Fall. So while she knows who her dad is, and she loves him, she was too young when everything first happened to have a real grasp on bonds. If we were still together now and she split, she’d be more aware of his absence. She’s surrounded by so much love now, so it’s all she knows. And when she sees him, she’s happy. In between, she’s unbothered. All she knows is what’s around her.

Still, it bothers me how he’s chosen to navigate this. Things ideally would be different, where I could shoot a Happy Father’s Day text to the man responsible for creating our child. I’d take my daughter shopping to pick out his gift. Co-parenting doesn’t have to be taboo or an issue. Unfortunately, not all adults are capable. It sucks even more because my parents have always been tight, regardless of their BS over the years, and it never affected how they parented together.

I haven’t been fully jaded by the current status. I smile when I see parents together at parks playing with their kids together. I smile a little harder when I see a father having one-on-one time with his baby girl, because I know the feeling all too well. 

Parents are your first example of love. Your father, specifically, is supposed to be a model of what unconditional love from a man looks like, the anchor in which decisions are made in romance. That could go either way as a girl grows.

While my daughter’s experience of Father’s Day doesn’t look like mine, I am optimistic that things can change for however God and the universe sees fit. I hold on to the memories that were built before the split, because it wasn't always like this, and no matter how it ended, that’s still her father. And when I see my child smiling, healthy, playing, and thriving, it reminds me that no matter what I may feel, she is okay.

And she has male figures in her life. She has my dad, who she affectionately calls “pops” and they are just as close as she and I. She has my brother, who is also her godfather, and she has a host of gay uncles who adore her lol. He is missing out. And I feel bad for him. 

I salute all the active fathers out there, especially those who are active in spite of the relationship with the mother disintegrating. It is not easy to navigate no longer having your family as you imagined no longer intact. I get that. And through it all, I still celebrate Father’s Day, not just because of what I share with my dad, but because I shared something so special with someone at one point that it created the greatest part of my life: my daughter.