Excerpts from Chapter 2
Is There a Fathering Instinct?
Many wild animals boast dedicated fathers. Yet the dedication
disappears with domestication. Thus no domesticated male animal
assists the female in raising young. Why not?
Let's look at what happens to the paternal instinct of the wolf--or
even a wild dog-- vs. the domesticated dog to see if there is
a parallel among humans. Genetically, wolves and dogs are virtually
the same -- only a one percent difference.
In The Emperor's Embrace, Jeffrey Masson describes the typical
fathering behavior of a wolf. Daddy wolf returns from hunting.
His six cubs "leap up to his face and kiss him wildly about
the mouth, pawing, nuzzling, nipping his mouth and head."
The dad has taken the food from the hunt, and stored it in his
stomach, as if his tummy were a shopping bag. Now he opens his
mouth wide -- very wide -- and disgorges the food to the puppies.
He doesn't want to trigger a competing frenzy among the cubs,
so he has already chewed it up and organized the food in his
tummy into several little piles!
The daddy wolf often licks and cleans his cubs, guards the den
from predators, and then, when he feels they are ready, leads
them out of the den and teaches them how to hunt. He does this
by teaching them the rules of the game, so to speak. He and
the mom socialize the cubs together. Similarly, coyotes and
foxes are active and loving dads. As are dogs that live in the
wild.
What happens to a domesticated dog, which is usually a neglectful,
non-participatory dad? With domesticated dogs, Masson explains,
the human family replaces the wolf pack. The human family takes
care of the puppies, feeds the puppies, pets the puppies, holds
and loves the puppies, and often gives them away. Daddy is not
needed -- he has no incentive to do the caring. He does, though,
care -- he cares for what can give him love. Thus he cares for
his owner, and the owner's children. His protective instinct
is transferred to protecting the human children, from whom he
also receives love. With the human children, he will often guard
them, protect them from danger, and protectively play with them.
The implication for humans? Domestication is to dads who are
animals what mother custody is to dads who are human: Dad's
daily love is not needed, so dad's daily bread is not provided.
Thus 85% of fathers with shared parent time (joint custody)
pay child support in full and on time; when mothers have custody
but do not discourage or deny fathers the opportunity to see
the children, 79% of these father paid child support in full
and on time; when seeing children is undermined or denied, only
56% of fathers paid child support.
What would happen if a dog owner required the daddy dog to "make
a killing" for its puppies, only to have the owners take
the food out of the daddy dog's mouth, give it to the mother
puppy, and have the mother puppy feed the puppies with the food
the father has just killed? The daddy dog would go off and never
return.
Suppose the owners could always track down the daddy dog, and
then punished him until he "made a killing"? The daddy
dog might produce a little food, but as little as possible --
just enough to avoid punishment. Meantime, during his outings,
the daddy dog would search for someone who wanted his love,
someone for whom he would be willing to hunt.
The human father thus acts similarly toward the government's
mandate to pay child support. He begins hiding money and tucking
it away, hoping to find a new family for whom he may use his
money and love to receive love. In brief, as any animal psychologist
would immediately intuit, the papa dog will have no incentive
to risk its life being killed (in order to make a killing) without
the puppies leaping up to his face, and kissing him, as Masson
puts it, "wildly about the mouth, pawing, nuzzling, nipping
his mouth and head." (I am not, of course, opposed to a
mother or the government playing substitute father when the
father is a genuine deadbeat -- only to the mother believing
she can be a substitute father and the government paying her
to believe that.)
Read
excerpts from this book:
From
Introduction | From
Ch. 1 | From
Ch. 2 | From
Ch. 6
See
Table of Contents | Order
this book online
Reprinted
with permission of Warren Farrell, Ph.D., from his Father
and Child Reunion (NY: Tarcher/Penguin, 2001. Do not reproduce
without proper authorization from the author or the publisher.
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