The Pain Caused by Passive Fatherhood

Abdication at the airport.

The boy complained from the moment they got off the plane in the weird amalgamation of a scream and a whine that grates the back of the throat before leaving the mouth. The type of noise that reaches in through your ears and flicks your spine over and over and over.

“Mommy, please. Please! Mommy, please!”

As if he was pleading to be rescued from the fiery pit. And it was constant. Neverending. He was in the stroller, and he wanted to be held by his mother. But his mother was holding the younger sister and a carry-on, so it was impossible.

Still he bleated, making about the same noise as a flock of sheep in distress.

The father pushed the stroller and did nothing.

At the baggage claim, it got worse. The bags were delayed. The mother needed to go get something and walked away without either of the children. The daughter started crying in a high-pitched whine. The boy started up his steady-pitch moaning that the CIA might record someday to torture suspected terrorists.

The mother rolled her eyes and picked up both of them, one on each hip, the boy being at least seven years old and almost too heavy, and she walked away to do whatever it was she needed to do.

The father looked up from his phone and shook his head in mild amusement before returning his eyes to the screen.

The bags still hadn’t arrived, so we continued to wait.

There were a few moments of quiet while the boy sat next to his mother in a wheelchair one of the airport staff had brought up in an attempt to appease this stampede of emotions. It worked briefly. The daughter, however, wanted to be held again and started whining. The mother picked her up.

The boy immediately started his routine again.

“Mommy, please. Please! Mommy, please!”

He wanted to be held again. Sitting next to her would not suffice. The mother tried holding both again, but then they both cried. It was obvious each one wanted their mother to themselves and jealousy rampaged unchecked. The father finally picked the boy up, but it didn’t help.

“Mommy, please. Please! Mommy, please!”

Both kids wanted to be held by their mother. Alone. Nothing else would satisfy, not even YouTube. At one point, the mother tried to push her phone into his face, telling him to watch something. Anything. “Here’s Ms. Rachel. Watch Ms. Rachel.”

The cries filled the baggage claim area. The sound was so thick and constant that it raised the temperature of the terminal a few degrees and made everyone uncomfortable.

The father continued to stand there, about as useful as a virtual assistant who barely speaks English.

The whole scene was ugly. It was after midnight, and the kids were obviously tired. Everyone was tired.

But when you’re tired, you tend to fall to the level of your training. Those kids did exactly what they had been trained to do. Attempt to manipulate their mother to get undivided attention. Again and again.

Their father could have stopped it at any time by taking the boy to the restroom or some other relatively private place. Or break the pattern and take him outside where it was cold and bracing. Or maybe throw the boy on his shoulders and sprint down the hallway. Something. Anything. But it’s obvious the kids had never been spanked and the father was used to being passive. It’s also not the first time I’ve witnessed such an ugly sight at the airport.

Abdication is ugly. It is not kind to leave your kids to be tyrannized by their own emotions and then let them slosh their pain all over their mother and anyone else within earshot.

Your disobedient, whiny kids are your responsibility. Act like it.

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