How good a father are you? I realize that this is a rude question and that it may make you uncomfortable. Sorry, but I want to use that discomfort to demonstrate something about being a father with perfectionist, compulsive, obsessive, or Type A tendencies. To someone already sensitive to how good, competent or hardworking they are, this question evokes the tension many men feel when they become fathers.
It’s a question that often runs in the back of their minds. Fatherhood becomes the stage in which their goodness feels tested. Whether conscious of that drama or not, perfectionist fathering can either divert attention from their child, or bring fruitful attention to what makes for good fathering.
Will their inclination to be providers, protectors and models make them rigid or flexible? Controlling or comforting? Horrific or heroic?
The desire to be a perfect father will, ironically, make him very imperfect, because he may then feel pressure to work too hard at it.
And I hope it’s obvious that the father who tries to make his child perfect will fail in that drama.
For men who have these compulsive tendencies, becoming a father is a crucible, a period which can make or break their psychological well-being. Well, ok, that’s a little dramatic, I admit. But fathering does set up challenges that can either diminish your need for control or pump it up with steroids. It pushes all the buttons that say you should, you must, and you will.
Extremes ensue and results vary.
My comments today are expressed mostly in traditional gender terms, but they’re really about the father role, whoever it’s played by. Let’s respect that women may take on roles that were usually done by men in the past, and men may take on roles usually done by women in the past. The challenges that I discuss here can be felt by anyone who takes on the traditional role of father. And families that have two fathers can experience these issues as well.
Contents
Perfectionism as an Autoimmune Disease
Think of perfectionism as an autoimmune disease: rather than protect, the immune system turns against the self. It attacks the body rather than the disease. In fatherhood, compulsive or perfectionistic tendencies, which could be protective, instead attack the father or the child rather than helping with the challenges of raising children.
When the father feels he needs to be perfect he may become more rigid, more demanding, and more insensitive to any suffering he causes.
So, the overarching challenge is to take the energy that turns against the father or child and use it for its original purpose, protecting them and nurturing them, rather than turning against them.
Perfectionist Fathers Sink or Swim
For these men, fathering is like exposure therapy—being subjected to frequent chaos can help them come to terms with it, though the unpredictability of real fathering can make it a daunting challenge. While pre-baby you might not have tolerated a kitchen counter that wasn’t pristine, alleviating such terrors becomes less of a priority as you contend with other challenges like poopy diapers, snotty noses, and, eventually, unruly, smartass behavior.
You’re forced to choose your battles.
Real life fathering can shift your values, and force you to be more intentional about where you invest your energy. You may learn to appreciate and be satisfied with simpler pleasures.
And if you don’t shift your values, the drama becomes a tragedy, rather than a feel-good story about a hero succeeding.
Your compulsion to do the “right thing” can feel so pressing that it may propel you to horrific stances regarding your children. If a father is insecure about himself in general, he may feel the need to prove what a good father he is by providing, protecting, and enforcing rules to a dangerous degree.
Or by trying to construct a perfect child.
For those of you whose fathers were in the horrific category, my comments today are not intended to let them off the hook. They’re intended to help you understand what motivated their behavior, so that at least you won’t feel that it was because you weren’t lovable. While I am exploring the issue of compulsive fathering as good intentions gone wrong, we also need to acknowledge that damaging fathering can also be caused by pure selfishness.
Love Moves to the Office
The most obvious tendency of new fathers, well-supported by research, is the tendency to work more hours in order to provide financially for the family. Of course they never ask the baby how they feel about this. But put a newborn into the arms of a previously chill guy and now you’ve got a money-seeking, over-protective, driven father who just might go overboard in trying to make the world a safe and comfortable place for his child by earning more money.
While this is a universal phenomenon, men who are the worker/doer type of compulsive are most at risk of abandoning their family to “take care of them.” Having a child can activate dormant workaholic tendencies.
It can also serve as an excuse for the father to do more of what he’s most interested in. The supposed need to work long hours for the family may be a justification for spending their time doing what they’re most passionate about.
Most compulsives have a deep need for mastery, whether that’s achieving a baseball batting average of 325, beating the stock market, or building a new online platform for race car drivers. That passion may override their concern for their children. And they might rationalize it as if it were for the children.
It’s better for a father to acknowledge his passion for his work and model pursuing it, rather than trying to make it look like he’s really taking care of others.
We should also note that financial pressure may be so real and pressing that a father may actually need to succeed in his career, work long hours or even move away to get work to support his family. Those of us who do not need to do so are privileged.
Passing it On….or Not
Most of us embark on fathering with the fantasy of passing our wisdom and principles down to our children.
Don’t count on it.
While there are rare cases in which the child happens to be very much like the father and soaks up everything he has to say, most children need to find their own way. Except to the extent that you actually model those values rather than try to shove them down their throats, their need to be independent and authentic will override your instruction.
It’s similar to how therapy works: it’s less about putting reasonable ideas into patients’ heads, and more about identifying what blocks them from accessing parts of their personality. The goal, in parenting and therapy, is to help children and patients become whole, and to help them live more flexibly and freely.
Not to create clones.
And here is where the horrific possibilities come in; If a father feels it’s his duty to shape his child, he can become quite severe in his efforts to accomplish it. This is especially true of the teacher/mentor/bully/boss type of compulsive. No light touch there. This can lead to verbal and physical abuse as well as withholding affection and support.
For a good example of this dynamic, watch the film or read the book, The Great Santini.
The Perfect People-Pleasing Parent
While it doesn’t happen often, fathers can go to the opposite extreme as well. I’ve seen some (the server/friend/people-pleasing type) whose compulsive strategy is to try to control the child by being “nice” to them, giving them whatever they want, and doing whatever they want, thinking that this is the way to help them cultivate confidence. (Not to mention that it bypasses the difficult challenge of saying “no.”) But it’s really just another way of trying to be perfect.
This tendency can lead the child to assume that they have the right to control everyone and everything around them. And that’s not setting them up well for real life.
Resentment
Another challenge for many perfectionist fathers is that they feel they are working incredibly hard for the family, but their efforts are unappreciated, if not dismissed. To their partner and children, it might seem that concrete issues like having money, hot water, and a working automobile are prioritized over softer issues like play, patience and affection.
To the father, the fact that they can buy food, take a warm shower, and drive to the volleyball tournament seems taken for granted.
They may feel pressure to take care of these things, whether it makes them popular or not, because if they don’t do it, it won’t get done.
The danger here is that while there is a reality to the need to take care of the practical matters, an extra layer of victimhood and righteousness may start to erode their relationships with their partner and their children. This calls for self-discipline not to become childish or passive-aggressive, and to remember that the purpose in taking care of matters is not to be seen as wonderful, but to care and provide for loved ones. This can be heroic.
Solving the problem requires communication with the partner before resentment takes over.
The Challenge of Time: Urgent Tasks and Important Play
Another challenge for the compulsive father is to prioritize the truly important over the merely urgent. This goes against the perfectionist imperative to be efficient and productive.
Imagine the conflict inside the father: fixing the leak from his son’s window feels urgent (and in fact probably is). Getting down on the floor and playing with him does not feel urgent. So, guess which one gets priority.
Even aside from how urgent tasks are, not all fathers come equipped with the capacity for child’s play. For them, play consists of balancing the checkbook, tweaking the investment accounts, and repairing the fence. Is this just who they are and they can’t really do any better, or is it just avoidance of what feels to them like an unpleasant task?
It can be both, and here I want to call attention to how growth mindset and fixed mindset affect how we parent our children. Growth mindset is the perspective that we can learn to live differently and improve our skills, whereas fixed mindset believes that your capabilities are mostly determined genetically. While researched largely in terms of academic and intellectual growth, growth mindset also applies to social skills and parenting.
Cool.
But here’s the real question; can a perfectionistic or compulsive man learn how to play with his child? To do so requires a loosening of his seriousness, efficiency, and judgment. My observation is that men can learn to change their behavior, though it may not always feel comfortable or natural at first. But if the perfection and compulsivity are applied to learning to play with abandon, you’ve got a chance.
The Final Question: What is Fathering For?
I can’t tell you everything you should and should not do as a father. But as a general guide, I will suggest that as you think about how to use your perfectionist, compulsive, or obsessive traits in a positive way, that you think about what fathering is for.
If you want to be the best father you can be, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?”
• So that your children survive?
• To make yourself immortal?
• To have an extra pair of hands to put out the trash?
• To prove your goodness?
• So that they can realize their potential and live fulfilling lives?
• To build a family where people love, support and enjoy one another?
• To take pleasure in witnessing a child blossom?
Having that in place will serve you well every time you feel the pressure to let perfection get the best of you, rather than bring out the best in you.
A Father’s Example
My father passed away at 95 this winter. By his own description he had a happy and adventurous life. He was not obsessive, compulsive or Type A, though he was driven enough to achieve a much higher standard of living than what he was born into. Still, he had good advice for those of us who are perfectionist and compulsive.
I interviewed him for Story Corps many years ago, and he seems to have known who he was talking to. Here was his closing advice for me in that interview: “You can’t do everything, you need help. Family is important. You’re going to make a hell of a lot of mistakes in life, you’ve just got to learn from them and move on.”
And he practiced what he preached. His patience with my mistakes was priceless.
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