By Laurie A. Couture.
A father’s love is a quiet, smiling, head-nodding sense of pride; it is ever-present and strong. Children long for the strength, protection, and sense of pride from a dad. While mom’s love is said to be unconditional, dad’s love kindles constantly and forever, even if he pulls away… or is pushed away. Dads love their children just as passionately as moms do, but they demonstrate this differently, in their own “dad” way. Their love is like the gentle yet driving, unstoppable force that carries a timeline through space-time. They joke and horseplay, they carry us up high on their shoulders, they provide the best that they can, and they ebb and flow—watching and allowing the child to take risks and fly, while holding on with overwhelming warmth during secure snuggles and warm hugs of pride.
Unfortunately, and heartbreakingly for the children, our society is convinced that a father’s love is optional; an accoutrement to mothering; a nice “extra” if it’s there. On the flipside, fathers are pulverized for being inconsistent, absent, flawed, or “deadbeat”, in many cases after years of being treated as ATM machines, optional “extras” in the films of their children’s lives, or believing themselves to be worthless to the wellbeing of their children. In fathers who are judged as having abandoned their children, oftentimes they believed they weren’t good enough for their children or even that their children would be better off without them. Trauma in the life of the father is often at the root of true cases of withdrawal, child abandonment, or neglect: Either his own childhood trauma or trauma suffered in the relationship with the child’s mother or family side.
However, when fathers are estranged, access-limited, alienated, legally cut off, abandoning, or deceased, the children are the ones who lose the most. They endure the lifelong pain of missing half of their identities, half of their legacies, often half of their families, half of their heritage, and half of their birthright of paternal love and validation of the paternal side of themselves. This is akin to being partially dehydrated at all times. How important is a father’s love? A father’s love is so crucial to the development of a child that research by Mitchell et al. (2017) found that children who have lost a father due to death, separation, divorce, or incarceration have abnormally shorter telomeres—the endcaps on the ends of their chromosomes that keep chromosomes young and healthy—and the effect of this was most prominent in boys.
Reference:
Mitchell, C., McLanahan, S., Schneper, L., Garfinkel, I., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Notterman, D. (2017). Father loss and child telomere length. Pediatrics, 140(2).
Laurie A. Couture is the author of newly released book, Nurturing and Empowering Our Sons (2023), and Instead of Medicating and Punishing (2008).
She is an expert in child behavior, learning, and attachment and a specialist in treating developmental trauma in children and youths. Through her writing, speaking, workshops, and consulting, Laurie helps families and professionals heal behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges naturally, by restoring the child’s natural cycle of homeostasis.
Laurie is a strong voice for attachment parenting, homeschooling, alternative education, and drug-free, brain-based mental health treatment.Laurie has over two decades of clinical and professional experience with youths and families as a consultant, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, and EMDR practitioner, as well as in the fields of foster and adoption social work, juvenile justice, and education.
Laurie was featured in the documentaries, The War On Kids and Class Dismissed and was a researcher for The Red Pill. She has spoken around the country, including at the 2019 American Public Health Association conference and the 2020 International Conference on Men’s Issues. Laurie received New Hampshire’s “Forty Under 40” honors in 2010.
In September 2017, Laurie tragically lost her beloved 23-year-old son to suicide. Laurie adopted Brycen from the foster care system when he was 11. He suffered severe child abuse and neglect and over a dozen foster and group home placements prior to finding his forever family.
The unfathomable loss of Brycen, and of the thousands of other boys and young men lost to suicide each year, impresses upon us the critical need for childhood trauma prevention and attention to the unique stressors and human rights obstacles faced by boys and young men in our society.