Dear old Dad

	James Hilston, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger version.

Today's theme is fathers, since it's our understanding that Sunday is Father's Day, and while The Morning File believes that every day should be Father's Day (as well as Mother's Day, of course), we'll play along. Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., not Hallmark cards, came up with the idea in 1909. She wanted to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who raised six children by himself on a rural farm. Smart was born in June, so it was chosen for the first Father's Day -- proclaimed for June 19, 1910, by Spokane's mayor. In 1966, President Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as the observance. President Nixon signed it into law in 1972. The British observe it, too. Not to start a fight, but Mother's Day was established by Congress almost 60 years earlier -- in 1914, meaning moms were honored before they got to vote.

The stats

The U.S. Census Bureau, the Official Statistician of The Morning File, offers this: The U.S. has 66.3 million fathers, only 26.5 million of whom are married with children under 18. Number of single fathers: 2.3 million, compared to 393,000 in 1970. Of single parents, 18 percent are men. Estimated number of "stay-at-home" dads: 98,000.

Tie goes to the father

Hard to believe, but neckties remain the Father's Day gift, says the census bureau. British writer Anthony Peregrine doesn't get it:

"I must say, I've never understood ties. I cannot begin to imagine what was in the mind of the first person who looked at a man and said, 'What that neck really needs is a thin bit of material around it, hanging down to, let's say, the belly button ...'

"And after-shave lotion? Not really. The first time I wore it, as an impressionable adolescent, I was told by a schoolmaster that I smelled like a 'fish's bosom.' I have never subsequently been able to check exactly what that smells like, but the notion haunts me still.

"So what does daddy want? Quite frankly, daddy doesn't want anything on Father's Day, except a smile and a kiss and a reasonably clear run at the Frosties. You insist? Well, a crate of something bottled in Burgundy would probably hit the spot. Ah, you've found a mini-torch which whistles in the dark and lights up keyholes at 300 yards ... How ever have I got to my age without one?" (BBC.com)

Quote No. 1

From the AP
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"English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did."

-- Malcolm Bradbury, British author

No French jokes please

French men are solicitous of women, but this is going a bit far. Agence France-Presse says a poll revealed that 38 percent of more than 500 fathers of children up to age 7 would like to get pregnant, if it were possible, (and that sound you just heard was women stuffing envelopes with cash for male pregnancy research.) But the results, published in the current issue of Enfants (Children) magazine, contained no information on how many of these men have a burning desire to experience childbirth or nocturnal breast-feeding.

Quote No. 2

"The guys who fear becoming fathers don't understand that fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man. The end product of child-raising is not the child but the parent."

-- Frank Pittman, psychiatrist and family therapist

Mothers like fathers

Mothers are amazingly positive about fathers, if you put stock in a study of 2,000 American mothers, commissioned by the Mother's Council and conducted by the University of Connecticut and the University of Minnesota: More than four out of five married mothers are "very" satisfied with their relationships with their spouses and with the emotional support they provide. The flip side: deadbeat dads. Eighty-three percent of single mothers have sole responsibility for the day-to-day upbringing of their children, and 77 percent provide all financial support.

Doh!

The top five TV dads: Cliff Huxtable, "The Cosby Show"; Sheriff Andy Taylor, "The Andy Griffith Show"; Pa Ingalls, "Little House on the Prairie"; Howard Cunningham, "Happy Days"; Ward Cleaver, "Leave it to Beaver." Also-ran, less admirable dads: Peter Griffin, "Family Guy"; Al Bundy, "Married With Children"; Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"; Tony Soprano, "The Sopranos"; Ozzy Osbourne, "The Osbournes." For the top 25, go to the source of this ground-breaking data, www.tivo.com.

Quote No. 3

"Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life." -- Oscar Wilde

Mr. Marmoset

Women fed up with roving men can only envy the female marmoset. A marmoset is a squirrel-sized primate from Brazil with more white hair coming out of its ears than even the most inattentive senior citizen. When psychologists at the University of Wisconsin exposed marmoset males to the scent of ovulating females, the researchers expected hormone levels to go through the roof across the board, just as they do when a marmoset and his main squeeze are sitting side by side in adjoining bathtubs on a sunset-bathed mountain. But the levels in marmoset fathers barely moved, even as hormones surged in non-parents. Unlike many other primates, marmosets are monogamous, with committed couples giving birth to two sets of twins a year.

Quote No. 4

"Contrary to all we hear about women and their empty-nest problem, it may be fathers more often than mothers who are pained by the children's imminent or actual departure -- fathers who want to hold back the clock, to keep the children in the home for just a little longer. Repeatedly women compare their own relief to their husband's distress." -- Lillian Breslow Rubin, family therapist