When faced with such thinking, there is, in progressive circles, a vacuum where new ideas should exist. These new ideas about good-enough fatherhood would stress the father's active, direct emotional involvement with his children from the earliest age. Two crucial implications arise from two new approaches to fathering. Redefining the father would undermine everything that our society assigns or wishes to assign to men. Anatomy would cease to determine destiny.
Fatherhood is a male masquerade.
The role of the male parent must be made more interesting and meaningful for our younger men. The refusal of male dominance by women coupled with men's search for inspiring ideas about manhood and fatherhood, are crucial social and psychological changes on which the debate about fathers should focus. Nearly all social critics have explored what would happen if fathers were more active parents of very small children. There is an ordinary physical warmth which fathers can communicate to their daughters and sons. Firstly, in all the concern about child sexual abuse, we have forgotten about the positive aspects of a father's physical warmth.