Fathers

Two new books assess our contemporary scripts for fatherhood.

At thirteen, I went to sleepaway camp, consumed by crushes, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and my father’s worsening battle with AIDS.

Accompanying my dad to dialysis doesn’t feel like the promise of the future I had imagined.

My psychoanalyst father wanted to prove the existence of the unconscious in the lab—and at home.

Sometimes, now as parents, we say things and only a while later realize that it was an echo of our parents, from decades before.

When Jamie Ross learned about their father’s unexpected history—in ballet and romance—it opened the door to discovery and reconciliation.

In a short documentary about a troubled family relationship, Diana Cam Van Nguyen uses cuts, folds, and mixed media to bring old letters to life. 

What would he make of my middle-age obsession with basketball?

More than anything, Diana had wanted to be a mother. Now my three-year-old daughter and I had to find a way to live without her.

“Avery, did you know snails move super slow?”

My father was troubled, moody, and struggling with alcoholism. Making dinner for our family was what brought him back to us.

My mother was a white woman. Until I was sixteen, I believed that, on my father’s side, I was descended from the enslaved people who had crossed the Atlantic in chains.

From the archive: a collection of memorable pieces about fathers and our relationships with them.

In Stephen Michael Simon’s “Bacon ’n’ Laces,” John Diakakis shows off his memory and sense of humor while managing the Bendix Diner, with the help of his oldest son.

The Heartbeat Act is forcing families to journey to oversubscribed clinics in other states—offering a preview of life in post-Roe America.

A relationship reconsidered by reading between the lines.

Paloma Canonica and Cristina Vilches created a vast visual world to show a father and daughter’s shared history.

None of us thought my dad was the enemy. Perhaps booze was. At the time, thick as we were with shame, the enemy looked like other people.

I was well aware that, until I told my father that I had dropped out of school, I would have only one foot in my new life.

One of the reasons I began thinking about I.V.F. was that I was overflowing with love for my wife and wanted a place to put that love.