Deconstructing the Fear of Father Absence

Abstract

This paper critically examines Louise Silverstein's and Carl Auerbach's paper on Deconstructing the Essential Father. The paper provides research support for their position that children benefit from stable, consistent, loving, low-conflict parenting arrangements; irrespective of the gender of the parent. Silverstein and Auerbach, however, go beyond this conclusion to also recommend that children would benefit from being reconnected with their ‘absent’ fathers. The current paper challenges this particular conclusion to their critique and explores the apparently contradictory position that there is no essential need for fathers yet efforts should be made to proactively develop and support social and emotional connections between children and their fathers. The paper also examines other literature and research findings around the ‘unique’ contribution of social fathering in raising children, and concludes that there is no social, psychological, or developmental justification to legislate for father presence. There is no research-based credibility in promoting patriarchal, nuclear family formation as a preferred social and family structure to optimise children's emotional, social, physical, and economic outcomes. The political and social pretext that underlines ‘father absence fear’ is just that; a pretext to retain the hegemony of patriarchal nuclear family life and restore fathers to their ‘rightful’ positions of power and control within families. In developing a conclusion to this critique, the paper draws on a brief case-study from a lesbian-parented family research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, and illustrates implications for family therapists with a brief clinical vignette.