As we celebrate Father’s Day with all the joy that comes with that, it’s hard to imagine the many brutal ways a father can introduce his son to the ways of toxic masculinity. However, to understand the importance and significance of positive parenthood, we can’t ignore the stories of woe and loss that hang heavy in many men’s lives because of the relationships they had with their own fathers.
While many men survive these damaging back stories by finding other role models and developing healthy coping mechanisms, for those for whom no better male role model came into their lives, the pain can be long-lasting.
Traditionally, mothers have been held far more responsible than fathers for the damage caused by not meeting their children’s needs. “Daddy issues” are mostly bandied around in a frothy, dismissive way to describe women whose relationships with unsuitable older men can be traced back to their difficult relationship with their dads.
When it comes to men, a father’s relationship with his son is comparatively unexamined. Yet “father wounds” can be a powerful force in a man’s life and can shape it in disturbing ways.
Some of the highest-profile and outwardly successful men have been left with deep scars from the difficult relationships they have had with their fathers. And this has consequences not just for them, but for the rest of us too.
In his wide-reaching biography of Elon Musk, celebrity biographer Walter Isaacson writes of a billionaire whose father was emotionally damaging. Musk himself said in a 2022 TED Talk: “I did not have a happy childhood, to be frank. It was quite rough.”
Isaacson has said that Elon’s erratic personality can be traced back to his childhood, pinpointing his relationship with his father, Errol, the 79-year-old with a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, as key. A “volatile fabulist” who reportedly berated him as “worthless” after he was beaten to a pulp by a classmate, something Errol deines, Isaacson said the way his father treated Elon “has left deep scars”.
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Errol also flouted sexual conventions. In his case, he fathered two children by Elon’s step-sister, Jana Bezuidenhout, 42 years his junior. Isaacson also says Errol still has the power to reduce the fiftysomething tech billionaire to tears.
Donald Trump’s father ‘viewed kindness as a weakness’
Another example is Donald Trump, whose harsh, authoritarian father is believed to have been critical to his worldview. The US president’s niece, Mary, a psychologist, has painted a picture of a boy irrevocably damaged by Fred Trump Sr, a NYC real-estate developer and so-called “high-functioning sociopath”. In her book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man, Trump’s father is described as a racist and sexist tyrant who pitted his children against each other and viewed kindness as a weakness.
“He did his best to beat it out of his sons,” says Mary, the daughter of Donald’s eldest brother, Fred Trump Jr. He died at age 42 from an alcohol-related illness, which Mary believes was brought on by the pain of not being able to live up to his father’s expectations.
As a parenting writer who is also a trainee Gestalt psychotherapist, I know that it’s impossible to get to the core of these issues outside therapy. But, it is hard not to see a pattern in these difficult father-son relationships and conclude how these have cast a long shadow on the lives of these high-profile men.
“The relationship a boy fosters with their father sets the scene for the development of a sense of identity, as well as a sense of safety within oneself and in the world,” says Dr Sarah Davies, counselling psychologist and author of How to Leave a Narcissist for Good.
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“If fathers are narcissists who see their sons as only useful as reflections of themselves, boys may develop a core sense of unworthiness and shame,” she says. “This can manifest in a variety of negative ways, including addiction issues and workaholism, to feel ‘enough’. And children of emotionally abusive or inconsistent narcissistic parents can find they inadvertently repeat the abusive patterns as this is what has been modelled to them.”
Author and psychologist Phillip Hodson agrees that damage comes when boys learn masculinity from the toxic relationships they have with those closest to them.
“More than a few fathers are distant, dysfunctional, or downright dangerous,” he said. “Even if the model is inadequate, the boy still has to support it in order to survive. On the one hand, he needs an example; on the other, he must live to tell the tale. And there’s the sting: any son who cannot get the male approval he craves may grow into an adult who never stops seeking it, while still unconsciously aping his father’s behaviour.”
‘Wounded men are ambitious – so it also matters to the world’
Because of the far-reaching consequences these kinds of relationships can have not only on the men, but the women around them, we need to reassess what “daddy issues” mean for men as much as women, says life coach Noor Hibbert, author of You Only Live Once.
“The narrative needs to change if we really want to reduce the debilitating effects of the father wound on mental health in men. To break this cycle being passed down from father to son – and then out into the wider world, the first step is awareness.”
There is a lot of grief that comes with coming to terms with the damage a father has caused, adds Davies. “This can include feeling angry and resentful to feeling bitter and depressed.”
A technique that can help, she says, is to re-parent and become the father you never had. She says: “Good parents are kind, patient, supportive, and encouraging and help you to feel more confident and secure. In the first instance, re-parenting involves ‘turning down the volume’ on our inherited ‘dad voice’ in our minds and turning up the volume on your own loving, caring, supportive internal voice.”
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And what if you are the father of a son who wants to stop “the father wound” from being passed down? Psychotherapist Dipti Tait, author of Planet Grief: Redefining Grief for the Real World, says the first step is to be a parent who understands how your upbringing has influenced your parenting style.
“As a father, strive to be emotionally available for your sons by demonstrating healthy emotional expression. Give your son an emotional vocabulary so he can express his feelings. Encourage open and honest communication.
“Challenge traditional gender stereotypes too. Discuss with your sons how it’s okay to express a wide range of emotions, debunking the outdated notion that boys should be stoic and brave.”
After all, understanding the causes of the “father wound” is not just critical for the happiness of every child. As the famous men who may have risen to the top because of scars born by difficulties in their backgrounds show, it may repair much more.
Phillip Hodson points out: “It’s difficult for a son to have happy relationships if they’re stuck trying to compete with a rejecting, critical dad. But wounded men are ambitious – so it also matters to the world.”
Tanith Carey is the author of ‘What’s My Child Thinking? Practical Child Psychology for Modern Parents’
