And all but two of the men I asked for interviews said yes. The men I spoke with wanted to tell their stories. The intensity of their connection to their fathers. Even when a father had been dead for decades, sons spoke with passion, reverence, sadness, anger. It may seem that fathers and sons don't communicate much, but there's usually a tremendous depth of feeling between them.
Children look to the same-sex parent for guidance and acceptance.
I found that when a father didn't offer these things to a son, the son was deeply hurt. He often went through adult life looking for acceptance from other men, especially male bosses. When a man has a rough time with his male boss, you can almost guarantee he's had a rough time with his dad. You commissioned a national telephone survey of 300 men. We commissioned the survey because we wanted some hard numbers to go along with the in-depth stories, and because we wanted a representative sample.