What are fathers for?

I thought that writing something that went beyond biology and stereotypes for Mothers’ Day was hard. Then I started thinking about fathering.

For Mother’s Day, I found myself writing about mothering as a choice: a way of caring for what is vulnerable. It felt surprisingly coherent. Fatherhood felt different. More contested. More uneven. More shaped by personal experience.

What are fathers for?

In a moment when many men seem increasingly uncertain about masculinity, fatherhood, and their place in society, I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. Partly because my own experience refuses to fit neatly into any story I know how to tell.

So I asked my audience:

What is something a father or father figure gave you that would have been difficult to receive elsewhere?

More than fifty responses arrived from around the world.

Some people answered immediately. Others took days. A surprising number struggled to answer at all, and that, too, felt significant.

One person responded:

“A longing for a father… If I had my father, I wouldn’t long for one in others.”

Another wrote:

“There is something uniquely painful about being hurt the most by the person who was supposed to love you the most.