Comedian Roy Wood Jr. once shared an observation about being a dad that lives rent free in my head: “It’s a weird thing when you get to be more of a father to your child than your father was to you. The hardest thing you have to let go of when you make a choice to be present in your child’s life and be there is that you’re fighting this battle of being happy to be a father while also being sad for yourself in that you didn’t get this. I remember when I played catch with my son for the first time, I almost cried in front of him because I just never did that with my pops. He was gone. So, you’re being present as a father while also trying not to be jealous of your kid but you’re the reason you’re jealous, so it’s your fault.”
I half-jokingly asked if that was a form of self-hate.
Wood, the host of CNN’s “Have I Got News for You,” replied: “Yeah.” Full-jokingly. I think.
Like Wood, I didn’t grow up with my father in my life and didn’t fully understand how that absence shapes parenting until I had a son of my own.
Wood and I are Gen Xers, making us middle-aged men who grew up when the divorce rate in America was at its peak: 1980. That year, stagflation became a thing; “Kramer vs. Kramer,” an emotionally draining film about a messy custody battle, won the Oscar for best picture; and millions of elementary school students returned home to be greeted by no one. The “latchkey kid” framing normalized the absence and even made it sound cool, but in retrospect, the rebranding obscured the fatherlessness undermining communities.
For men like Wood and myself, the absence of a father didn’t dissipate into the ether once we reached adulthood; it mutated into a ghost to fight. To paraphrase something former President Obama wrote about in “The Audacity of Hope”: Every man is trying to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for their father’s mistakes. When you don’t grow up with your father, there are no expectations to reach, only mistakes to correct — with the biggest being his absence in your life.
Of course, most of us don’t notice right away if we’re using our children as a proxy battlefield against the father who wasn’t there.
You are not conscious that you’re litigating the past — as opposed to parenting for the future — until someone holds a mirror up. Usually that someone is your kid. The insidious part is that whatever overcorrection you’re making feels like good fathering because you’re present. But shadowing the desire to be there is the emotional cloud of resentment for the father who wasn’t. Gen X men reached adulthood without language for this dynamic, but silence does not mean that pain was not baked into our individual life or the culture at large.
It wasn’t until my father died 10 years ago — and I found myself mourning what we weren’t more than what we were — that I realized his absence was informing my current relationship with my son. Not in a negative way per se, but in a way that inadvertently prevented us from truly getting to know each other. Because as long as the ghost of my absentee father was clouding the time I spent with my son, I was never going to be able to see him clearly. There was always going to be space in my psyche to compare my actions with my son to my father’s with me, in some desperate attempt to prove that I’m the better parent, that I’m the better man.
It took some time for me to realize our children do not need us to be better than the past. They just need us to be fully present.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
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The column reflects on a paradox many sons of absent fathers face: choosing to be a deeply involved parent can trigger both joy and grief, because each happy moment with a child highlights what the parent never received from an absent father.
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Drawing on a quote from comedian Roy Wood Jr., the piece argues that men who grew up without their fathers often find themselves simultaneously proud to be present and quietly jealous of their own children for getting what they were denied, a dynamic the article half-seriously characterizes as a kind of self-directed resentment.
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The piece situates this experience in a generational context, noting that many Gen X men came of age during peak divorce rates and the “latchkey kid” era, when being alone after school was normalized and the deeper social damage of fatherlessness was obscured rather than addressed.
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The article contends that for men who grew up fatherless, an absent dad does not simply disappear from their lives; instead, that absence lingers like a “ghost,” shaping adult identity and parenting choices as they try to correct what their own fathers got wrong.
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By paraphrasing Barack Obama’s writing about fathers, the column suggests that while many men strive either to live up to a father’s expectations or repair a father’s mistakes, those without a present father inherit mainly a list of errors to fix—especially the core wound of abandonment.
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The author argues that this history often goes unexamined: fathers may unconsciously use their children as stand-ins in an emotional battle with their own absent parent, believing their hyper-presence is unquestionably good while failing to notice that resentment and comparison are driving many of their decisions.
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The piece describes a personal turning point that came only after the author’s father died: grieving “what we weren’t” revealed how much the father’s absence was still shaping the author’s bond with a son, not necessarily in overtly negative ways, but in ways that kept both from fully seeing and knowing each other as they are.
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The column concludes that as long as a father’s energy is tied up in proving he is “better” than his own dad, the child is never encountered clearly in the present; what children need, the article argues, is not a parent locked in competition with the past but one who is simply, fully present with them now.
Different views on the topic
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Parenting educators who write about fatherhood often define “being present” less as working through intergenerational wounds and more as a set of concrete behaviors in the here and now, such as putting away phones, prioritizing quality time, listening actively, and doing activities a child enjoys, with little emphasis on exploring a parent’s own history of hurt.[2][4]
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Rather than focusing on an internal “ghost” of an absent father, many how-to resources frame presence as a practical skill set: they encourage fathers to model good behavior, regulate their emotions, and show affection physically and verbally, suggesting that consistent, observable engagement is what most directly shapes a child’s experience, regardless of the parent’s unresolved past.[2][4][6]
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Faith-based and family-support organizations in the U.S. tend to emphasize the power of a father’s steady presence itself—showing up, listening, playing, saying “I love you,” and entering a child’s emotional world—as the central task of fatherhood, stressing that fathers do not need to be perfect or fully healed to have a profoundly positive impact.[6][9]
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Some writers on fatherhood argue that any dependable, loving presence can be deeply protective for children, and that ordinary, everyday interactions—eating meals together, reading a story, taking a walk, or engaging in simple play—build security and confidence, without requiring parents to consciously frame their actions as a corrective to their own upbringing.[6][7]
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Commentators who focus on mindfulness in parenting often urge fathers to accept each moment with their kids as it is and to let go of idealized standards of what childhood “should have been,” but they typically present this as a general discipline of attention and gratitude rather than as a specific response to the trauma of fatherlessness.[8]
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Advocates for involved fatherhood sometimes highlight that men can draw strength from multiple role models and mentors when their own fathers were absent, stressing the value of “seeking wisdom” from trusted figures and passing those lessons on, an approach that reframes an absent father less as a ghost to battle and more as one influence among many to learn from or move beyond.[1][5]
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In public conversations about parenting, Roy Wood Jr. has discussed using humor, honesty, and openness to share life lessons with children and being willing to accept feedback from kids about how parenting is landing, presenting fatherhood as an evolving, dialog-driven practice aimed at equipping children for the future rather than primarily as a site to resolve a parent’s past losses.[3][10]
