This father’s day, offer your father’s pardon as much as the celebration

What makes daddy? Most of everything alive has parents, but only a small minority of animals exhibit a paternal care rate. Almost none approach the amount of opposing investments in children who characterize human societies, and some of our closet relatives seem to be especially different from us in this regard.

We will probably never know where this picture of human peculiarity comes from, or who the first men to think of topics like fathers were. For most of our history as a species, it made no sense of reproduction to support something like what we now call “biological paternity”. In fact, only in the 1980s, with the development of gene -based testing, which becomes possible to establish paternity absolutely.

But there are common themes in fathers’ annals. Beyond the millennia, in the absence of an accurate understanding of paternity, men have told stories about what means being a father who have supported their claims to power and authority. Our unique human capacity for storytelling supports the importance of fathers in human families and societies.

And these stories share a major resistance. As far as we can go to historical data, the earliest codes of law and religious texts, paternity is presented as a god of godly father: I know what is best for you, and if you do as I say you will be protected and secured.

But this creates another problem. Men have historically made promises that only gods can keep, defining paternity in terms that can never be satisfied – for sure to raise themselves over women whose role in creating and maintaining life was clear.

As a result, time and time again, and especially in the moments of historical change and unrest, men have found themselves deceived in the crises of masculinity and paternity, unable to satisfy the expectations and responsibilities of the role. At such a moment, men have often tried to reassess the power of fathers by making new verses of the same old promises. This is without a doubt the oldest story in the history of paternity, and is very alive today.

At this point, Bob Dylan can talk about hundreds of generations of fathers. As a young man, he spent years claiming he had left his father, Abe Zimmerman, a diligent salesman who bought his son practically everything he asked for. In 1964 “The Times they are A-Changin,” Dylan told mothers and fathers to get out of the way. However, even when he wrote songs that defined a generation of protests against “The Man”, Dylan found himself wishing the traditional model of the home and family.

And at the time he was the father of five children (later six) up, he wanted to be “man” after all. Dylan 1973 song “Forever Young” sounds like a hymn but is really a prayer – that all his children’s wishes can still become true.

At one point, every father wanted the same thing, but none have ever taken it. When it comes to parents and children, “forever” is impossible. The nature of parenting and paternity in particular, with its promises to protect and secure, requires us to face the paradox of boundless love between finite power. Our congratulations to our children may be unlimited, but our ability to realize those desires is limited.