With the disappearance of the old fashioned, extended family, parenting responsibilities often fall entirely on one or two working people. Dr. H. Stephen Glenn recommends that parents not punish themselves for mistakes, for what really matters is that they treat their children with love and respect. They describe their difficulty with their own parents and their determination not to repeat the same mistakes. We see the nurturing environments they have created in their homes. For series information, see page 101.
Nobody gets over the loss of a father.
This sensitive film portrays several articulate men who describe the emotional problems resulting from the absence of a father. Whether through death, divorce, alcoholism, or simply the inability to relate, each of the men portrayed was left with an emotional void which they spend their lives trying to fill. Poet Patrick Lane grew up with an emotionally distant father, with whom he never had a single conversation. He set fire to his father's wheat field, glad to endure the beating just to get his father's attention for once. Chris Kaplan was fortunate in that his father who had left the family reappeared eighteen years later.