George Bernard Shaw

            I t saddens me my father and I were not closer. Some blame is mine. I was forty-four when he died, old enough to know better, but like him, I could be only what I was. My mother said my sister's birth angered him. Until she was born he believed his first child would be a son. He wanted a son to further his aspirations, but again he was wrong. I rejected him in infuriating ways. He ridiculed reading as a waste of time. I was a voracious reader. He wanted an athlete. I was uninterested in games. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I championed classless societies, antithesis of everything he believed. We competed and, like all competitors, viewed each other with suspicion.
            After I became a lawyer, my father was my landlord, his office next to mine. It became our habit to lunch together and like the walrus and the carpenter, we talked of many things. I learned he resented the mother's habit of putting children first. I thought myself an innocent bystander until I had sons of my own. I wanted to spare my sons what I saw as life's tribulations. Keeping with my theory, I tried to encourage positive senses of self. To some extent I succeeded, but to a larger extent I failed. I, purveyor of equality, feared anarchy. I insisted they obey orders, eat vegetables, and go to bed when I said. When our eldest son was five he playfully stole my sandal and ran away, ignoring several commands to return it. He thought it a great joke until I hit him and he burst into tears. He cried because he was teasing and did not expect so violent a reaction, but I was too insecure for loose reins. I wish I could retract that spanking.
            I made mistakes with every child. The eldest cried at bedtime and instead of soothing him as his mother wanted, I insisted we follow Dr. Spock who advised letting dry, fed, infants cry. The advice is sound when you fear demands of spoiled children, but it satisfied no one. He cried upstairs and I fumed downstairs. With a certainty born of hindsight, I now believe it is wrong to let children cry. There is more. I am a middle child. My mother was forty when my brother was born in days when pregnancy, an embarrassment, was concealed. Siblings received no preparation, and his birth came as a surprise. I remember the fall from apple of her eye to middle child, but that did not help our son Mike when his brother was born. I thought Mike, nine and prepared for the event, could handle it, but I could not see beyond midnight feedings and dirty diapers. I am, therefore, of a mind to forgive my father his trespasses.
            We fought over authority and expertise. He believed experience made him wiser. I delighted in pointing out his mistakes. I grasped nuance in foreign policy and anticipated events, but I never made money. He asked, "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?". The question rankled. It is an article of collective wisdom that money proves something. Since he made it and I did not, being right satisfied neither of us. When I was in my forties I wanted us on an equal footing. I suggested I call him "Sam", but he would have none of it. It was "Dad" or nothing. In his last years it was nothing. I ask friends what they call their parents. They answer "Mom", "Dad", or similar title. They say it means much to aging parents, but they do not change the practice for their children. At a 'fathering' seminar years ago, I suggested to fellow seminarians they switch from 'Mom' and 'Dad' to first names, a break with tradition I see as anti-hierarchical and friendly. Every father rejected the idea but one was especially incensed. His daughters were the only humans entitled to call him 'Dad'. He could not, in conscience, deprive them of the privilege. Our sons were young when I suggested they call me "Ed". They were teenagers before they took me up on it. Young, defenseless children see fathers as protection from things that go bump in the night. No father, however well intentioned, can protect his children from life's vicissitudes, but children do not know this. It was years before they accepted a reality in which I was not mighty.
            In 1968, campaigning for the state legislature, I suggested that public school students call their teachers by first name. I was the only candidate the teacher's union invited to lunch where I learned they thought it a terrible idea. They saw Mister, Miss., Sir or Madam as essential for discipline. They insisted it had nothing to do with insecurity. Beset with problems ranging from truancy to vandalism, they were not inclined to examine their reasons for keeping things as they are.
            Titles represent hierarchical rank, influence behavior and separate us from reality. We call judges 'your honor' and rise as they ascend their benches, as if deference guarantees wisdom. Politicians, when elected, become 'honorable' and again expectations are more fancied than real. A gas station attendant calls me 'sir' though my car is compact and my dress casual. He either thinks exaggerated respect enhances business or he enjoys deferring.
            We instill the habit of acknowledging rank early. My parents told me children should be seen, not heard. As far as they were concerned, I never matured sufficiently for my opinions to matter. I respected my father's greater wisdom until I landed on a psychiatrist's couch. It then occurred to me what worked for him had not worked for me. It took all my courage to tell him I wanted different things in my life. Were he introspective, he would have anticipated my resistance to his point of view. He decided his parents were wrong about religion and his mother, who would not eat in our un kosher house, felt the loss. She dealt in eternity, and believed in her teachings as much as he believed in his, but he never dreamed his son would reject him the way he rejected his mother. Mark Twain said that when he was eighteen he thought his father an awful fool, but at twenty he was surprised how much the old man learned in two years. My father quoted those words often as he waited for me to see the light.
            I treated our sons with the same honorable intent. I believed I knew something relevant to their lives. To spare them unhappiness, I nudged them towards truth as I saw it until the familiarity of the refrain stopped me short. I suggested skiing lessons to our youngest who preferred taking his untutored chances on the slope. A few years later he changed his mind and admitted instruction had been worthwhile. I quickly said I told you so, only to realize, I was playing my father's role. I told Jon he had every right to change his mind. If I ever peddled anything called superior wisdom, he was to tell me, in no uncertain terms, what to do with it.
            Unlike my father, I admit mistakes. Time passes between mistake and admission, but I change my mind without remorse. I also apologize, something he never did. He said friends need no apology and it makes no difference to enemies. He never acknowledged error except when he claimed to have relied on me. When I failed him, as was often the case, he admitted he should have known better. I hated his regrets, but again I learned nothing. When David, our eldest, attended his first school dance, I insisted he wear jacket and tie because they dressed like that in my day. When I dropped him off, I learned casual dress was the order of his day. Had he worn the jeans he wanted, he would have achieved the conformity we both desired. As it was I taught two lessons. First, he is wiser to trust his intuitions about his reality. The second, that conformity matters, is foolish, but again he was ahead of me. Had I not interfered, he would have been dressed like his friends.
            I did not want a son to complain, as I complained, that no one told him life is played for keeps; that time wasted is lost forever. I regret not having studied harder in college, and it seemed reasonable to tell my sons they would regret it if they merely got by. In the process of imparting this wisdom it was inevitable I damaged their senses of self. When you tell children you disapprove of their behavior, they think you disapprove of them. I know the sadness that comes from disappointing a father, and I wanted to avoid damaging judgments. I instructed our sons in the ways of self-image psychology, told them only their opinion mattered, but I also said college is important. David left Tufts University after three semesters. I remember his joy the day he was admitted. We toasted his success at supper which made it difficult for him to say he found life there intolerable. He hesitated because he believed leaving Tufts diminished him in my eyes. It was my relationship with my father again, except this time I was the father.
            I hurt David as I was hurt when I crashed into the rock of parental expectation, but each of us must find our own way, no matter how well intentioned our parents. My sins, if anything, were worse than my father's. He promoted the collective wisdom of his day. I wanted utopia. I do not think our sons got the better of it. Our lives turn on random, insignificant incidents that motivate us forever. In kindergarten I decided I wanted to be president of the United States to prove something to my classmates who made me so unhappy. I refuse to admit how old I was before acknowledging the foolishness of the fantasy. Every kindergarten has a child who cries at the prospect of school. In my year, I was that child. Today they call it 'separation anxiety', but labels mean nothing to children caught in unreasoning fear. I was forever at odds with my classmates who were as mystified at my rejection of them as I was envious of their equanimity. The comparatively few times I attended class, I led the rhythm band, an exercise where the teacher played the piano and the class followed on drums, blocks, or triangles, anything beatable to music. I insisted on leading in pain of tantrum. I expected to lead the annual recital, but the teacher chose a more popular boy. It was then I decided to be president.
            I suspect people who spend their lives proving themselves, people with ambition, do it to avenge an early defeat. Watching Cloris Leachman shake her Oscar into the television camera, daring the sixth grade of some mid-western elementary school to call her crazy Cloris, I knew how she felt. Children dream, and dreams come true often enough to attract multitudes of strivers. When we are down, we dream of being up, and we devote our lives to making that grade. We say nice guys finish last and think it right greed defeats decency. When our youngest tried little league, I asked if he got a hit, an unsubtle way of saying I wanted excellence. I equated concern for hits with concern for him. His ego was on the line, and I, ever the conscientious parent, thought I wanted no more for him than he wanted for himself. Little league was his idea, but I decided he should succeed. He wanted a baseball game. I wanted to tell nearby spectators that was my boy who got that hit, a curious position for a proselyte of equality. Competition is a sad social assumption, but I purveyed the nonsense that was foisted on me. If we are not careful, we become our parents, and sometimes being careful is not enough. A character in an Arthur Miller play says, "Every morning I shave my father's face". I do not shave my father's face. I am thirty pounds lighter, but he is in there.
            Parents scold children for rejecting parental perceptions the way my grandmother scolded my father for leaving orthodox Judaism, and it is difficult, if not impossible, for parents to admit the child is right. My grandmother could not comprehend a God who rewarded apostasy with success, but there was my father who rejected her teachings at the top of the heap. She was no different from today's mothers whose daughters sleep with boyfriends. The mothers, raised in less permissive times, are outraged when daughters find happiness, not perdition. Change means breaking with the past and every break creates conflict with parents. It is an article of Jewish faith that it is a sin to reject parents, but the Jewish God who demands honor for parents, did not anticipate societies in which knowledge obsolesces quickly. Parents cling to the assumptions of their lives. Having done what their times demand, they resent the lesser demands of more modern times.
            Philosophies based on hope assume tomorrow will be better; that new ideas are better. They believe in 'progress'. Nuclear families operate on the opposite premise. We obey parents because they purportedly know better even after their older knowledge is overwhelmed by change. When I was young chickens were sold whole and my father appropriated the best parts. I anticipated the day I would be father and those parts mine. When my time came, chickens were sold in pieces and everyone got what he wanted. In my house if a drumstick was disputed, the child got it, which is, I believe, the way it should be.
            Collective wisdom intrudes upon parent-child relationships. Men come first to orthodox Jews. My father ruled the roost. Dinner began when he sat at the table no matter how many were missing, and he did no 'women's work' until he retired, when, having nothing better to do, he shopped for groceries with my mother. His was a man's world, and while female liberators still see it as such, the most ardent feminist must admit things are not as lopsided as they were. We change, but change is uneven. Parents do not want to know their lives might have been different, nor is it enough to know their time improved on previous times. Advancing years surprise us, and we regret what might have been. A Paul Simon lyric contemplates the strangeness of being seventy when, with life mostly lived, it is difficult to greet change with enthusiasm. Parents cling to older values, and wait, like my father waited, for children to admit error. It is a futile vigil, selfish and unrewarding.
            Children come naked to this life, and financial imbalance allows parents to manipulate by reward and deprivation. My father controlled me with money when I was sufficiently frightened. He propelled me towards goals he wanted, but never towards anything I wanted. When my relations with women were especially confused, I corresponded with a girl I knew at college. I suspect she had as much trouble with men as I had with women, and it occurred to us we might solve a mutual problem together. My father, after denying my request for plane fare to Chicago, told me his experience with women resembled mine. He said the problem resolved itself and he predicted the same happy result for me. He was right.
            Being a parent means more than imposing on children, but who knows how many children, coerced into music lessons, thank their parents for lifetimes of music? How many children blame parents for not pushing them harder? It is a sad child who says, "I could have been a contender", had you pointed me in the right direction. Blame is a risk parents run, and it may be the nature of things that disappointed children find fault. I hated my father's certainty and am more tentative. Our sons may decide their greatest problem was my indecision. To right that wrong, they may be more forceful with their children.
            A more benevolent society spares parents many dilemmas, but it remains to be seen whether collective habit will continue to disrupt parent-child harmony. We love automobiles and demand driveways and garages. We need streets to reach those garages, but cars near homes are dangerous. It falls to parents to enlighten toddlers whose world view is benign. I spanked our son Mike to teach him unescorted forays into the street were no laughing matter. He was two and thought it hilarious that a step in the direction of the street brought me running. I diverted his attention, said 'no' with firmness, but nothing worked until I hit him. I regret the spanking because it stifled his sense of adventure, but I see it as necessary even if streets and fathers became dangerous in the process.
            Parents who promote financial success as life's major goal, equate their advice with warnings about streets. They say money is essential for living in this society. An acquaintance I knew who did well, reminisced about the depression year his family moved nine times. His father, reduced to cheating landlords, was one step ahead of the sheriff. He thought I remembered his family's predicament and took pleasure comparing his situation with his father's. He was surprised I had forgotten, but his splendid home and financial security have not eased his anxiety. His energies, like mine, were focused in childhood. He was a workaholic. I write this book because childhood scars linger.
            When I drove my father to the airport for his last flight to Florida, I apologized for not having built a merchandising colossus. I said if he could forget his disappointment, we could be friends. I wanted things to be different, but a lifetime of antagonism cannot be reversed in an hour. The next time I saw him, the cancer was so advanced, he could not speak. Those words in that car were the last we exchanged and they got us nowhere. I suspect the movers and shakers of this world are motivated by the same ambivalence, the desire to defeat fathers at the same time they want their love. Freud has us lusting after the parent of the opposite sex, but my father's ambivalence damaged me more. He wanted me to succeed at the same time he wanted to be more than me. I disappointed if I succeeded and I disappointed if I failed.
            One need not be a sociologist to see a widening generation gap. The supposedly self-indulgent young live in the present while goal oriented parents work towards brighter tomorrows. To the older generation, the young are too narcissistic to grapple with larger values. We think so little of ourselves, we make narcissism a vice, but there is no question these days that youth is 'in'. Plastic surgeons lift more faces, and athletes of every age jog up hills questing after fitness. As I was growing up, I was told to act my age, and each year added new responsibilities. Maturity was a prize because society respected its elders. Our constitution, reflecting the values of its day, fixed age requirements for elective office with higher offices requiring greater age. Today parents dance to rock rhythms at the same time they criticize the young. We reduce the voting age to eighteen. The day may come when thirty five is the maximum, not minimum, age for presidential service.
            When I was young songs were written by middle aged men who crooned of moon, June and love in bloom. Differences between Irving Berlin and the Beatles startle, and the Beatles are dated today. As a child I sang Harvest Moon for visitors so often I remember the lyric. "Shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky. I ain't had no lovin' since January, February, June, or July." Our son Jon, a Bruce Springsteen fan, paid sixty dollars to see a concert. Bruce Springsteen sings about going down, down, down and how this gun is for hire even if it's just for dancin' in the dark. At thirteen Jon knew more about life than I did at twenty. I read faster, with better comprehension, but neither of us believes that amounts to much. His superiority gladdens me because we must change, but the old men who run things may not die fast enough. We leave our children a legacy of pollution and aggression. To insist we know something worth teaching is hubris.
            Insecure parents think they avoid time's ravages by achievement, theirs or their children's, but comparing generations is as foolish as believing space shuttles mean more than Viking ships. Each requires, courage, imagination, and ingenuity. Each takes us further than we were. To say Vikings were primitive adds nothing to us and takes nothing from them. They did what their times allowed. So do we, but as parents we train children in the ways of a world that no longer exists. We say, "Spare the rod and spoil the child" or "This hurts me more than it hurts you." We wash mouths with soap. We insist on our way because we want to believe our children need the lessons we learned. We create hierarchical systems in our homes and train the young in inferiority. We dampen enthusiasm by insisting this is the best of all possible worlds. We destroy hope because we have no hope, and we alienate children who cannot abide the world as it is. We do it out of ignorance and despair. We do it because we are afraid to change.
            Television brings the world to today's children and they wonder about nuclear war and pollution. It is a sad species that so troubles its young, but it is better they know the worst than inhabit their parents' fantasies. Change means draft resistance and hippies. We see it at rock concerts and football games where audiences rise and fall in waves that move around the hall. We see it at nude beaches where the shame God imposed on Adam and Eve is replaced by pride in one's body. We see it in computer hackers who help strangers they know only through messages moving across monitors.
            Change is everywhere, but we persist in ancient patterns although the obsolescence of ancient ways is obvious. The idea experience counts for little and that children know more goes against everything we want to believe, but the alienated young represent our best hope for brighter tomorrows. If we are smart, we will follow them.