This article was first published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I still see my dad, pushing a wheelbarrow up and down the length of our barn, feeding his cows with his little boy atop the corn pile to help. This is how we learned to work.

I hear myself crying as he comes running after I’ve fallen in the farmyard, and feel him dust my pants off with a smile. This is how we learned he’d always be there, and to get back up.

In my months of becoming a father, I’ve faced a flood of memories, and emotions. But also, strong feelings about the broken state of fatherhood in our country, a problem suddenly more urgent to me than any other.

You’d think by Father’s Day of 2024, after years of talk about needing fathers in kids’ lives – and many households long sharing bread-winning responsibilities in homes where dads are present, but uninvolved – that we’d have this figured. But in some ways the problem is deeper than ever.

First is the continued fatherlessness crisis in our country – one in five men aren’t part of their children’s lives. It crosses all boundaries: fatherlessness is commonly considered an urban problem, but one study showed 34 percent of rural kids without a father, versus 32 percent of urban kids.

But this crisis also goes far beyond absent fathers, to America’s deeply flawed view of fatherhood – a role too ceremonial in the past, and too often treated as irrelevant today. Along the way, we’ve lost fatherhood’s meaning.

I asked myself whether this was real, or just me facing something new. I found America has struggled for decades to define modern fatherhood – as the boundaries evolved, we failed to preserve meaning. It’s the reason fatherhood went unmentioned in the pregnancy classes we took. It’s why when I sought groups for dads I found only shrugs and bottomless voicemail boxes, until finding a few useful corners of the internet.

Then there are the odd reactions to the three weeks of parental leave I took (which I admit was hard for me to imagine, having rarely taken more than a week off work). And the people who were surprised at how involved I want to be, while others behold a father taking a baby with him around town as a miracle (which I admit makes me feel good).

With such a mess, it’s no surprise more than half of fathers consistently report being criticized or judged, from all kinds of directions.

There’s a risk of sounding like I think I know what I’m doing, or feel aggrieved. Fatherhood has been far too humbling for that – like many new parents I question myself every day, and I’m honored to be a dad. I’m also not making claims about what makes the best family. I’ve seen, including among friends and family, how single parents and couples of all kinds raise healthy children. Often, whatever the kind of family, they value both female and male role models.

But our flawed sense of fatherhood remains, and I was blind to it until Ana arrived. I see her morning smile. I hear her when I sing or whistle one of the many country songs on which she already has strong opinions. I feel the moments her eyes glimmer, big and bright as the moon over the farm where I grew up.  

I can’t imagine the harm of abandoning those moments – to me or her. I don’t view feeding or changing her as outside my role, or an involved father’s special burden. I view it as helping my daughter. Along the way I get to see her grow, and show her things that give life meaning: the outdoors, music, stories. 

We have to help more fathers be part of such moments. It starts with dads doing better: refusing to become another statistic of fatherlessness, and never bringing harm to their home. But we also need to stop tearing fatherhood down, and start building it up with more definition and support.

There’s reason for hope. Research also shows most dads view fatherhood as central to their lives, and prioritize teaching values: hard work, caring for others, honesty. To me, a father is someone who cares for his children like any mother would, while still playing a unique role of teaching daughters and sons alike what to expect of the men they’ll meet.

That’s what I learned from my dad in the farmyard where we fell down and got back up together. Even if times have changed a little since.

Brian Reisinger is a writer who grew up on a family farm in Sauk County, Wisconsin. He is a regular contributor to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Ideas Lab. Reisinger has written about the hidden stories of rural America in a wide range of publications, and his forthcoming book, Land Rich, Cash Poor, will reveal the untold history of the disappearing American farmer.

Resources for Fathers

∎The National Fatherhood Initiative is devoted to addressing the fatherhood crisis in America: www.fatherhood.org/

∎Daddy Boot Camp provides training for new and expecting dads, geared around the unique role they can play: daddybootcamp.net  

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