The television series Adolescence is a tragic tale of the murder of a pre-teen girl by a pre-teen boy who exploded in fit of rage. The series comments on a number of factors that contributed to the boy’s explosion – social media, a stressed school system. But the one that stood out was the relationship between father and son in a patriarchal culture.
“How?” was the father’s anguished response after a tormented morning months after the killing. He’s suffering with the rest of the family who are carrying this shame and guilt. In the scene where he shares his grief with his wife, the father gropes to understand his own culpability. He says that he didn’t want to be like his own father, who beat him and could be cruel. He wasn’t, he added, seeking validation. It’s like he was saying “I did good, didn’t I?”
There was another story that he told. He said he tried to involve the sensitive boy in outdoor activities, such as playing on a youth soccer team, to get him out of his room, away from the devices. I think that he even said, to toughen him up. The father goes on to say that he watched his son on the soccer field, aimless, fumbling, not performing. He noticed the boy’s teammates looking annoyed at the son’s ineptitude. Then he saw the fathers on the sideline and they appeared to be judging his son, and, by proxy, him. The father wept as he finished the story.
He said he looked away.
The series made reference to this soccer story in a previous episode. In this one, the boy is talking to a court-appointed therapist while in custody. It’s a jarring, heartbreaking scene as you watch the boy turn from sweet to manipulative, to menacing to needy. At one point the boy references the soccer story, but in his telling he relates the feeling of humiliation as he looks over at his father, who had previously been prodding him, and now sees his father is looking away. He viewed it as a rebuke and was shamed by it.
His father was looking away.
I see myself in the boy. I too was sensitive and could notice my own ineptitude. This showed up through baseball. I love the game and so did my dad. He was good at it. Not me. My dad learned how to play as a means of fitting in, is my guess. You see, he lacked a father for a number of years, because his father, my grandfather was deported back to Italy. My grandfather would eventually return, but for a number of years my grandmother was alone and couldn’t afford to take care of my dad and his brother. So for a number of formative years, my father was sent to an orphanage, as it was called back then. Baseball became a way to connect for him.
I remember a time when I wanted to try out for Little League ball. I was hoping to play on par with my classmates on what was called the minor league, which was one of a tier of leagues, the middle level. The minor leagues had uniforms and team names. But I would not wear that one. I was slotted into the “t-shirt league” the lowest level that gave out t-shirts with a common color for your designated team. No name. No real uniform. A mark of shame in my young eyes. I don’t remember talking about this with my dad or if he tried to address it.
Once he practiced hitting the ball by pitching it in to me while I was at bat. One pitch hit me square in the face. It was slowly tossed but it hurt, although the real pain was in my embarrassment and self contempt. I was angry at him. “He pitched me inside,” I thought. My memory sees his face with a smile and hears him chuckle a bit. That could be my child-mind conflating his reaction. My adult mind could explain why he did that – a way to cover his guilt or lighten the situation. My child brain thought only that he was laughing at me. I ran into the house. We didn’t practice hitting again. He didn’t say anything more.
It felt like he turned away.
I also see myself in the father of that television series. My father was a hothead and when he played in his workplace’s softball league, I witnessed him arguing plays, and with an intensity that would be frightening. What’s interesting is that when he umpired games for a town league, he stoically listen to a player arguing his call, until the moment that he had enough and then he threw him out of the game. He had control then, I suppose. But what I thought was, “I’m not going to be a hothead like him.” When I was, I held myself in contempt. And that could happen when I became angry with my son and desperate for some way to deal with what saw as disobedience, rather than the expected actions of a small boy.
I coached my son in a basketball league when he was first starting to play in an organized way. He was probably nine-years-old. Once, he became upset at his shooting and not being involved in the game. He became quietly surly on the court. My reaction? To chastise him for being a poor teammate, rather than trying to understand a little boy struggling with his own feelings of missing the mark.
When he played in high school, he had clearly developed some talent. But he would shy away from shooting when the shots weren’t falling. My approach was to remind him, “you can’t score if you don’t shoot” and try to fix him. I failed to listen and to understand him, to relate to him as could so easily have done.
I figuratively turned away.
What’s clear is that connection matters, the tending to how we relate and having a willingness to engage in that nurturing – empathy, listening, sharing my feelings with respect and to open up with a boy so he can see this as more of a conversation.
However, culture and societal norms have long prescribed a role for men that devalues connecting. We are to be in control, to get things done, to look down on showing “too much emotion.” To define strong as tough and hard. To feel embarrassed by the parts of ourselves that can feel, hurt and need nurturing. We men turn away from the deeper sides of ourselves.
A better path must be taken by men, by fathers. One that means learning how to reconnect to our inner selves and making a practice of this approach even when the contempt that we have been bequeathed shows up.
It’s a practice that requires engagement, interest, curiosity and compassion.
It means not turning away, but showing up.
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