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A Father's Emotional Legacy
What Will You Pass Down to Your Children?
By Ann Haarman
After his father died, Andy Olsen and his family found his father's poetry. In the poems, he wrote that "he needed support and wasn't getting it because he had so long been the anchor of the family." "He was so good at hiding emotions," says Olsen, of Minneapolis, Minn. "I didn't even know that he was writing poetry."
Now, like his dad, Olsen struggles with expressing his feelings to his wife and son – especially when there's a family conflict. "I just feel like it's an attack on me somehow," he says. "I get mad and I get quiet and keep all of my emotions inside."
Every father wants to raise children who are in touch with their emotions and are able to express them in appropriate ways. And fathers play an important role in a child's emotional development, says Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Ph.D., professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University and author of The Measure of a Man: Becoming the Father You Wish Your Father Had Been.
In general, moms and dads parent differently, Shapiro says. The child needs both the security the mother provides and the freedom the father represents. "When you put the combination together of security and freedom, you have an awful lot of emotional health for that child," Shapiro says.
But many dads lack a road map for emotionally savvy fathering.