Silent Sons

A Book for and About Men

Robert Ackerman

• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781439124185
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

It could be you or someone you love. Strong, silent types are everywhere, and it is their telltale silence that has kept their problems hidden until now. A silent son can come from a family that coped with violence, alcoholism, child abuse, extreme rigidity, or divorce, but all silent sons have certain common characteristics:

• They keep things that bother them to themselves.
• They deny that unpleasant events occur.
• They fear letting people know them.
• They have difficulty interacting with their parents, spouses, or children.
• They have a strong fear of criticism.
• They are often angry.
  

In Silent Sons, Dr. Robert Ackerman, a silent son himself, examines the problems that commonly confront silent sons, keeping them from experiencing the full range of human emotions. In a compassionate and hopeful voice, the author defines the silent son and examines the impact of parents, particularly fathers, on these men and shows how their dysfunctional upbringing affects their present relationships, especially with women.By putting aside anger, finding peace with one's self, and looking for support from other silent sons, Dr. Ackerman feels every man can realize his full potential and become a well balanced, healthy survivor.

CHAPTER SIX
Fathers and Sons: Our Fathers Who Art in Us

Doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

ANNE SEXTON

He is like no other man in the world. His influence is legendary. Without his so much as moving a finger, his look can give approval or stop you dead in your tracks. Without his saying a word, his silence says it all. He is a man who can seem capable of all feats in the world; a man who appears immortal and is supposed to live forever, or at least never grow old. He is a man of great emotions—if you could figure them out. A man of many contradictions and secrets. A man who wants to be close, but teaches independence. A man who stops hugging boys once they become 12. A man who has anger but won’t tolerate it in others. A man whose physical body eventually declines, but whose emotional influence continues to grow even after he is gone. He is love, anger, rage, compassion, teacher, confusion, and strength. He is your father.

Fathers are emotionally powerful men. In fact, for their sons they are the most emotionally powerful men in their lives. You can love your father, hate him, or be somewhere in between. You can move away, be abandoned, abused, or forgotten, but you never get an “emotional divorce” from your father. Whether he influenced you positively or negatively, who he was and what he was stays with you. There is something about your father that makes him like no other man.

I loved my father a great deal and looked up to him with AWE—to me my father was a god. At age 14, I made a declaration to be just like him.

CLYDE

Can you remember standing next to your father or having your father walk up and stand next to you? He didn’t have to say a word; his mere presence conveyed approval or disapproval. His hand on your shoulder was worth more than a thousand trophies. Standing next to your father either allowed you to feel his strength or drained the very strength from you. Standing next to your father you either felt proud and tall or small and overshadowed, but it wasn’t possible not to have an emotional response. Many silent sons still respond emotionally to their fathers, even as men.

The influence of a father is universal. If we sat down and made a list of sayings and behaviors common among our fathers, I’ll bet we’d find many similarities. Can’t you just hear our fathers telling us:

Watch this, you might have to do this someday.

For Pete’s sake, turn out the lights around here.

Who do you think you are, the King of England?

If you don’t like it, Mister, there’s the front door!

I was in Australia with John Lee conducting workshops for people who grew up in alcoholic families. John was curious to know if Americans and Australians shared the same father image and experienced the same fathering practices. He was greeted with some common responses to his questions, but the loudest cheers came when he asked, “Did your father have an obsession with his roof?” It seems that Australian boys constantly heard such things as: “As long as you’re under my roof …” or “You live by my rules under my roof …” or “If you don’t like it, get a roof of your own.”

It is ironic, however, that for all of our fathers’ influence and importance, we know little about them and understand even less. Fathers, fathering, and men in general have been overlooked for too long.

Silent sons, like all men, talk about their fathers, but with more confusion and emotion. In my interviews silent sons openly admitted that they were trying to understand not only their fathers, but also the influence they had had on them. In fact, unless I specifically asked about their mothers, most silent sons talked exclusively about their fathers. In many cases it appeared that the key to unlocking the son was the father.

It is not easy to reach our fathers emotionally, even when we feel the same emotions, because we don’t know how to bridge the silence. Instead we settle for communication about common topics, and behaviors. For example, baseball talk between father and son is usually a “safe subject,” as is other sports talk or work, because it doesn’t involve any personal disclosure. It is difficult to talk about common feelings, but many sons try to reach their fathers through their behaviors and hope that somehow they can make a much-needed emotional connection.

Did you ever try to please your father by your actions? Were you really trying to gain recognition for your accomplishment, or were you hoping for an emotional response? Did you ever do what you thought he wanted and then feel that it still wasn’t enough? Maybe you settled for baseball or work talk, because without these there would be no talking at all. Like other silent sons, you settled for what was safe but longed for the emotional contact.

I spent most of my life trying to gain his love and acceptance before I finally realized and accepted the fact that he was incapable of showing love. In trying to break the behavior pattern, I swore I’d never be like him and yet I was until I started recovery.

DOC

In dysfunctional families communication between fathers and sons is infrequent. Dysfunctional fathers cause their sons pain, because fathers absorbed in their own pain are seldom aware or willing to acknowledge the impact the dysfunction has on their sons. Therefore, it does not surprise me how much silent sons talk about their fathers. The amount of emphasis on their fathers is directly related to how much they have been hurt. Perhaps what was wounded by a father can only be repaired by a father. But what if he won’t, can’t, or is no longer around to fix the damage?

He’s dead—now what?

MARTIN

The answer is that you must look to repair the wound. And the first step is confronting the truth about your father. In my work with silent sons, one of the most significant issues was wrestling with the fictional or false images they had of their fathers. When your father is dysfunctional, it is hard to admit it. You try to maintain the image of the father he was supposed to be, not the father he actually was. Eventually, maintaining a false image gets too heavy. You end up swinging in the other direction, and see your father as being dominated by his dysfunction. Neither gets you what you missed—a healthy father-son relationship.

When interviewed, all silent sons talked about wanting to have a true father-son relationship. Even if they were extremely angry and bitter, they acknowledged that at one time they wanted to be close to their fathers. In fact, much of their anger as men was because as boys they never had the kind of relationships with their fathers that they yearned for.

When a father is so dysfunctional that he cannot be a father, neither can a son be a son. He not only loses his father, he also loses part of himself. He grieves not just for the father, but also for his own losses.

Silent sons I interviewed were very much aware of these losses. Not all silent sons shared the same problems or the same images of their fathers. The issues were as varied as the attitudes held. Some silent sons possessed nothing but contempt and anger toward their fathers. Some only felt loss and grief. Some loved their fathers in spite of the dysfunction. And some expressed all of these feelings. But five common complaints stood out: (1) My father was a poor role model; (2) I never felt worthy of my father; (3) I felt under-fathered; (4) My father lacked emotions; and (5) I am afraid of becoming just like him.

POOR ROLE MODEL

I seriously doubt that when you were born someone handed your father an instruction booklet on what to do with you. Sons don’t come with instructions, but men certainly come with expectations. As sons we all have unwritten expectations of what fathers are supposed to do, how they are supposed to act, and how they are supposed to feel. We expect fathers to make rules, provide economic support, teach us how to be men, show us how to treat other people, be there for our games, school plays, or band performances, comfort us when we don’t do well, share our laughter, and above all, love us. During our lives we knowingly or unknowingly compare our father to these expectations. When your father lives up to them, you think you have a good father. When he doesn’t, you feel cheated.

How well did your father live up to your expectations? If you are like most silent sons, you probably believe he did OK in some areas and not so well in others, but your overall opinion probably depends on how good a role model he was. Unfortunately, most silent sons had fathers who were more negative than positive role models. Their failings included not performing the functions of a father, denying a son information about being male, teaching poor parenting skills, and teaching unhealthy ways of relating to both men and women.

A FATHER’S FUNCTIONS

We can evaluate performance functionally and symbolically. Functionally, we measure the quality of the performance by how well a person performs the role. How well did your father perform the functions of a good father? If your answer is “poorly” or “not at all,” then you consider him functionally deficient. Did you experience role reversal with your father and perform many of his functions for him? Did you find yourself doing things your father should have done, such as trying to fix the furnace or plumbing, making important phone calls about family matters, bringing money into the family, comforting your mother, or parenting your siblings? If so, you were like many silent sons—a child doing a man’s job. When your father noticed you were handling his responsibilities, did he then correct you or criticize you? In response, you probably just kept quiet and looked at him. What could you say?

He was never home. I had no role model to pattern for my goals, life, or aspirations. I became an adult as a child—I was trying to fill a man’s role as a kid. I had no childhood. I had to be a man. I was always ashamed, embarrassed, and angry at the world.

JIM

If your father was an alcoholic, or abusive, absent, angry, or frequently in a violent rage, then that was exactly what you had for a role model. Yet you probably would prefer to deny that those problems existed in your role model. Instead, you may prefer to say, “He was good at his job” or “Everyone in the neighborhood liked him” or “You should have seen him with a hammer and saw.” But that says nothing about what kind of father he was. It does, however, allow you to see him with less pain, at least for a while. A father can often be excused for his weak fathering abilities if he seems strong in other areas. However, you know and feel the real truth. The only role that really matters when you are talking about your father is that special part of the man that belonged to you and only you.

My father’s behavior was very erratic when I was 9, 10, and 11. He was physically and emotionally absent during my teenage years. I felt the lack of a role model, sought out substitute fathers, and also leaned on my mother’s idea of what a man should be. I was very angry and resentful toward my father for many years.

HARRY

Symbolically, we assess a father’s role not by talking about the things he did or didn’t do, but by what he meant to you. The symbolic part of a role is extremely powerful. Most silent sons feel that their fathers were not good role models, functionally or symbolically, but find it less painful to talk about actions than feelings.

Talking about your father symbolically causes an emotional response. What happens to you when I say, “Tell me about your father”? Do images and emotions fill you? Are these good images and warm emotions, or do you feel rage, anger, and loss?

Don’t mention that son of a bitch to me.

RALPH

DENIED INFORMATION

What did your father teach you? Can you list the positive and negative things you learned from him? A silent son often feels he was denied a lot of information, most importantly about what it is to be a man. Others report that if information was communicated, it was incorrect or useless. It is difficult for a dysfunctional father to teach his son positive lessons about being a healthy male. How can he teach what he does not know or understand? In my interviews, silent sons talked frequently about being denied information about sexual identity. In an average father-son relationship there is little talk about sexual identity, sexual preference, or sexual behaviors. But in a poor father-son relationship there is no information about these subjects, other than what is quietly observed. One of the most common questions I was asked by gay silent sons was whether or not having a dysfunctional father influenced their sexual preference. I don’t know the answer to that, but when I asked them, “Do you think you would be gay if your father was functional?” the majority of the men said yes. As was true for all silent sons, the lack of information from their fathers caused them to think about the effects of having a dysfunctional father.

Lack of information causes anger in many silent sons. Do you believe that many of your problems today are the result of your not being taught what to do or being taught what is inappropriate? Do you hold your father accountable for your own negative juvenile behaviors, such as not doing well in school (because your father never paid any attention to your school work), getting into trouble (because you didn’t have strong enough guidelines from him), or not feeling good about yourself (because he always put you down)? If so, it is as if you are screaming at your father: “You didn’t teach me what I had to know; these problems are all your fault!” It isn’t all your father’s fault. You are capable of learning on your own. But your rage may be keeping you from learning now what you didn’t learn as a boy.

PARENTING

We learn many of our attitudes about being a parent from our fathers. The theory of transactional analysis holds that in all of us exists a parent, adult, and child. Interestingly, it is b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One Are You a Silent Son?
• Two What Kind of Men Are We?
• Three Where Do You Stand?
• Four The Dysfunctional Family: The Battle Within
• Five Boyhood: Spirit versus Silence
• Six Fathers and Sons: Our Fathers Who Art in Us
• Seven Mothers and Sons: Don’t Talk about My Mother!
• Eight Relationships: That’s the Way I Am
• Nine “Are You Listening to Me?” What Women Say about Us
• Ten Parenting: Our Fathers Never Had to Do These Things
• Eleven Our Jobs: Occupation, Addiction, or Mistress?
• Twelve Pain, Power, Peace, and Potential
• Appendix: The Research Behind Silent Sons
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments