Excerpt from The Mysteries of the Father

Were we doing a bad thing? Two women raising a child, denying her a father? Thirty-three years ago, the first wave, families like ours were denounced by conservatives and were targets of skepticism even by some allies. No man around the house, no masculine influence. I couldn’t brush the concern aside. Why did fathers matter? What is fathering and what essential thing does a man provide?

Fathers: people who earned steady money, mowed the lawn, fixed things around the house, told war stories, threw a ball and admired a child’s small victories. Warm and wise, they laid down the law. It was a mystery since my father did none of those. My wife and I did them, minus the war stories.

Did our daughter need to have a man taking care of her? Our fathers hadn’t done that. Would she grow up to feel estranged from men? Old roles tugged at us but neither of us wanted to be “father.” More pressing was the question of whether one of us was the primary parent. Neither, we both were. Two primary parents—but how do you split number one?

from The North American Review