The significance of the role of fathers in lives of their children is now given more scrutiny and consideration than perhaps it ever has and Andrew Marchant’s thoughtful comment about Mark Smith’s 2011 article “Dad’s the Word” at http://goodenoughcaring.com/the-journal/dads-the-word/  offers further cause for reflection.

“Is it not a prime characteristic of adolescents that they do not accept false solutions? They have a fierce morality which accepts only that which feels real, and this is a morality that also characterizes infancy. It is a morality that goes much deeper than wickedness, and has as its motto, ‘to thine own self be true’. The adolescent is engaged in trying to find the self to be true to.       This is linked with the fact that, as I have said, the cure for adolescence is the passage of time, a fact which has very little meaning for the adolescent.”

Excerpt From: D. W. Winnicott, Clare Winnicott, Ray Shepherd & Madeleine Davis (1984) Deprivation and Delinquency.  London, Tavistock Publications