Sunday, June 21, 1998

Fatherhood's challenge has changed

By JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN / Bridge News

NEW YORK -- Father's Day is unusual among our important holidays because of its lack of an ancient heritage. Unlike Mother's Day, which can trace its origin to celebrations for the goddess Cybele, Father's Day is strictly modern.

In part, this reflects how distant the modern sensibility toward fatherhood is from the ancient. The hundreds of stories about superb and loving mothers in Greek and Roman mythology are seldom paralleled by equal stories of loving fathers.

The ancient view of the father was often of a stern and judgmental, even sacrificial, figure. Ancient mythology abounds with stories of kingly fathers willingly sending sons or daughters to terrible deaths to appease gods, monsters, nature or even military opponents.

Nonetheless, one of the most profound stories about fatherhood is the Greek story of the great craftsman Daedalus, a descendant of the god Hephaestus.

Daedalus had been brought to Crete by King Minos to design both the palace and the extraordinarily complex maze beneath the palace, the labyrinth. (Archaeologists know that the labyrinth truly existed.) Within the labyrinth lived the immense and terrifying bull that was fed yearly with 12 youths and 12 maidens from Athens.

Included in the sacrificial troop by his father, the king of Athens, the hero Theseus willingly sailed to Crete with his fellows, confident that he could outwit both King Minos and his bull.

This he did in part by seducing the princess Ariadne, daughter of Minos. Theseus slew the bull and, by following a golden thread laid by Ariadne, with the help of Daedalus, found his way out of the labyrinth.

When Theseus successfully fled with Ariadne, Daedalus incurred the terrible wrath of King Minos, who imprisoned both Daedalus and his son Icarus in the maze.

Daedalus knew he could easily escape the labyrinth, but not so easily the island of Crete. He made two sets of wings from feathers bound with finely molded wax. He warned Icarus to fly a safe middle course at his side, never flying so high that the sun would melt the wax nor so low that the sea's waves would rip the wings.

The thermal winds would be able to carry them safely to Naples, their destination -- then called "Neapolis," Greek for New City. Together they flew into the free skies above the Mediterranean.

At first, Icarus followed closely beside his father. But as he felt the glory and beauty of his freedom, he flew ever higher until the heat of the sun began to melt the wax.

His father called to him but, entranced by what Ovid called the "rapture of soaring thru the air," Icarus did not heed the warnings until too late. He plunged to his death in the Mediterranean below.

The story yields clear but complex lessons.

The strong father's wisdom can guide the son to independence and manhood. Because he is wiser and more experienced than his son, he must try to usher him along the safe, moderate course, avoiding extremes.

But the son's own needs will drive him to push too far, fly too high, to soar beyond the father's reach and discount the value of the father's advice.

If the son is lucky and shrewd, he may reach glory in leaving his father behind.

Indeed, human progress depends on children being able to separate from their parents, think on their own and move forward. Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard biologist, approves of the hubris of Icarus as "humanity's saving grace." It is the "vaulting ambition of man," says Wilson, that has always called us to reach ever higher.

Yet it is the father's role to encourage the reach while tempering the ambition. For the son may soar, but he may also crash and fall--and from that the father must try to shield him.

The son may overestimate his own strengths and disdain the advice of the father, whom ironic nature means him to replace -- but only if he is strong enough.

In last year's televised production of "Jim Henson's Greek Myths," Nigel Williams wrote about Icarus: "As the earth shrank beneath him, he beat on, up past clouds, past listening, past promises."

The father must command the child's attention, even as the child soars above the earth. Not easy.

This is a hard time for fatherhood. The American ideal of the nuclear family with the father as financial provider and the mother as caretaker of the home is no longer the common model--if it ever were.

According to the U.S. Census, over 51 percent of American children under the age of 18 live in single-parent households, with the parent who's present usually being the mother.

It is possible for youngsters to grow up successfully without attentive fathers. Many have through the centuries, and many do today. But it is certainly better to have the loving guidance of a good father than not.

Which is why we have Father's Day -- to honor the fathers who, through bad times as well as good, help their children soar while keeping them safe and warm.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Services