Story time with dad can enhance language skills and inspire children to explore a broader range of reading materials, says Nancy Flanagan Knapp, associate professor at the University of Georgia, “And perhaps most important, it sends a message to boys that reading isn’t just for girls.”
While the house has largely been the domain of women, men have strong domestic leanings, too. For the 20th century Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, home is the Good Mother who meets our daily needs, gives us our first memory of belonging and sets the stage for our intimate relationships.
On the surface, the comfortable escapes inhabited by 21st century men seem worlds apart from the dark, stoney initiation chambers fashioned by their ancient brothers. The carpeted contemporary cave and the jagged cleft in the earth, however, share common foundations in the male psyche.
Boys are in trouble. They’re diagnosed at two to four times the rate as girls with learning disabilities, have higher rates of depression and suicide, and are more likely to end up in prison or on drugs, or be killed in foreign wars. One reason: they are suffering from dad deprivation.
Our children are grieving; they miss their schools and their friends, their birthday parties and play dates. They miss beloved grandparents and nannies, aunts, uncles, cousins and babysitters. An entire season has been excised from their lives.
The snake has carried a projection of evil since it first upset the applecart in Eden, and, if anything, our phobia has grown stronger the more civilized we’ve become. Why do most people shudder when they see a sudden flicker of movement on the garden path?
The coronavirus has been a kind of waking dream, calling up our worst fears and anxieties. Are our dreams more frightening than usual? How can we feel at home in our beds and in the world again?
“There is another crime that humanity is committing against itself, the breaking of the Animal Contract. This is the contract that exists between ourselves and the other animals, making us partners in sharing the planet…” –Desmond Morris
As our towns and housing developments encroach on the private domain of wildlife, there are more and more sightings of foxes on manicured suburban lawns. In Japanese mythology, they are supernatural beings. In Finnish folklore, the fox is a cunning trickster.