On Becoming My Father’s Father
By Clinton Chan
7 minute read
Dedicated to Ray, my dad
To this day, I distinctly remember an experience from the age of 15 that said a lot about the relationship my dad and I had when I was growing up. It was a Sunday and my dad, being the committed dad he is, was driving me to my weekly tutoring classes in a faraway suburb (how very Asian yes). The ride took about 50 mins. I remember hearing an advertisement on the radio talking about HIV testing. Knowing how uncomfortable it would make my dad, I deliberately piped up and asked him what the best way to prevent HIV transmission was, baiting him into an awkward encounter.
I am not joking when I say that it took my dad the rest of the car ride, sitting in awkward silence for 40 mins, before he found the words just as he was dropping me off in the carpark, to say in a forced but clear voice: “Yuu do not have seks with a girl dat has AIDS”. He promptly sped off and we never spoke about HIV or anything sex-related again.
Whilst you and I might laugh at this experience now that we’re adults, this interaction was the epitome of our relationship. I wouldn’t say that I had a poor relationship with my dad, but nor would I say we got on like a house on fire.
On paper, he has been a great dad: he held a stable and high-paying job, he was committed, non-violent, and dependable in key ways. But like a lot of men since Generation X (and arguably the Boomers), my relationship with him lacked emotion and depth — I could barely ask him to articulate how he really felt about my sister and I, let alone ask him for guidance on my deepest insecurities. When it came to emotional intelligence, self-actualisation, or even a simple friendship, I often felt my dad had as much presence as a cardboard stand-in for a real dad.
My dad grew up in 1970s-80s Sydney, a far cry from Sydney today
However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve learnt to accept, with a great deal of dissatisfaction, that my dad will never be the ideal male role model I want him to be. Interestingly enough, as I’ve gotten older I’ve felt myself become that person for him — I am becoming my father’s father.
I want to talk about my experiences on this journey so far in the hope that other men growing into adulthood will cast aside the unmet needs of the past, and consider turning the tables by assuming the male role model they (and their fathers) have always wanted.
“Be Better”!
From the age of 13 I became acutely aware that I lacked a role model in my dad, especially when it came to emotional support.
Knowing this, I confronted him several times through my teens about why he wasn’t filling that role. I don’t think I went about it the right way because I ended up calling him a “bad dad”. This was a mistake and I regret how I phrased it, but like a lot of boys and men I knew at the time, as I do now, that I was missing a key part of my development.
Coming back to the HIV story, it was moments like this interaction in the car that both bemused and disappointed me by demonstrating the immense gap between what I wanted in a male role model, and the reality of my situation. Instead of a resolute and self-aware father figure, I got the socially anxious math nerd.
This gap festered away in my adolescent brain, like a wound on the brain that refuses to heal as the rest of the body transforms and pulses with hormones. “Be better!” I would tell him in my head, but with time I let go and grew to quietly resent my dad’s lack of guiding presence in my life.
Outgrown
As I gained my own experiences and grew more independent, I felt that I had “outgrown” my own dad, that I was by all accounts the “better man”. My quiet resentment and disappointment persisted deep down but had crucially evolved into pride and condescension.
I just chose not to say much to him because he seemed to not have much that was meaningful to say to me. Instead, I looked to “other” role models at school/university, at work, and amongst my own friends — I became a heat-seeking missile looking for validation.
I didn’t hate my dad, I just thought he was the biggest goof
I didn’t necessarily voice my avoidance of my father but from how little time I spent at home, and how little my dad and I had to say to each other, especially during my university years, it was clear to all that there was something thicker than blood.
Through my interactions with men outside of the home, I learnt more than I had ever hoped to learn from my own dad. I spent time with university lecturers who taught me about 2nd and 3rd wave feminism and why it was not a threat to “manhood”, and how to appreciate and critically evaluate these viewpoints without resorting to misogyny (or misandry). I worked with male bosses who worked from home most of the week and took time off because their partners had to be in the office. These men were not threatened by female authority either. I am grateful that these men stood in for my dad when he was still trying to figure out what kind of man he wanted to be for himself.
Becoming
Everything changed with the passing of my grandmother last year (my dad’s mother). I worried for him because I knew how attached he was to my grandmother, and I called him more frequently to see how he was going.
Crucially, it dawned on me through the grieving that even though my father was getting older, time only served to peel back the emotional barriers he had put up. With the loss of his last parental figure, I realised that at his core he was not that different to the 12-year-old boy who had arrived in Sydney in the 1970s.
I know my dad didn’t have a good relationship with his dad, the two barely spoke. He also dealt with seismic racial prejudices that I am lucky to only see a glimpse of in the 21st Century.
So I started a journey to begin questioning what it meant to be a man, joining a casual group of other men in monthly conversations and reading up on modern masculinity particularly Steve Bidduplh’s book “The New Manhood” which has been formative.
One of the takeaways that I gained form this book was that “Your dad is not who you think he is”. Knowing that life is short and that people do change, I took the chance and called up my dad to go for a hike the first of several father-son outings.
When we got talking I was honestly surprised at how coherently he spoke. For the longest time, I assumed my dad was an emotionless automaton living in the dictatorship of my mother. But instead, I found myself reconnecting with an experienced but unsure voice, not a tortured one, a voice that was beginning to meander and articulate the joy and inevitable suffering that life had to offer.
Spending time with my dad has meant that we can rediscover what it means to have fun together again
For many years I sat there expecting to receive love and to be guided by my dad into the battles of life. However, I am very lucky that I have grown far more emotionally intelligent than he might ever know. It is now up to me to help him gain an emotional and introspective voice he had never learnt through his own dad or other male role models, to ask questions, and to frame his experiences with words and affirmations that might sound alien to him, but feel homely.
To other young men, I urge you to consider this and do the same when you are ready. Yes, you will have years of resentment, anger, pride, and a fiery urge for something better. But one day all of this may be behind you and you will discover that your dad needs you to become your father’s father.
Through all this time, my dad was hoping that I would in fact turn around and have the courage to say “I love you” and that I would check in on his mental health. He wanted me to be his mirror so he could learn to imitate my words and actions, breathing new life into them as his own.
