Parental failure: fathers and sons

There's a passage in Plato's dialogue Protagoras, from about 319E through 320B or so, where Socrates argues that virtue can't be taught; and as evidence, he points to Pericles—the most successful and accomplished (i.e., "virtuous") politician in Athens at the time—whose sons were widely acknowledged to be worthless. If virtue could be taught, he says, then surely Pericles who was himself so virtuous would have seen to it that his sons learned everything he knew, so they could carry on the family fame into the next generation. But in fact he did nothing of the kind. Therefore virtue must not be teachable.

I assume we are supposed to laugh at this argument, at least a little bit. But part of the humor comes because Socrates's remarks are so believable. We are not so accustomed as Socrates was to the idea that the son of a cobbler will become a cobbler, or that the son of a pilot will become a pilot. But we can all think of men who are great successes, whose sons are failures—or (at the very least) whose sons would be failures if they had to compete with anyone else on a level playing field. Examples like that are all too easy to come by. 

Why is this so? There seems to be a natural drive on the part of sons to get away from their fathers, to distance themselves in some way. So if the father is shrewd and self-controlled (for example), there is a powerful pressure on his sons to be the reverse. In another sense, I'm pretty sure that one reason I married Wife was to use her as an obstacle between me and Father, to keep him somehow at bay. [I think I've written about this somewhere, but I can't find the post to link to it.]

Of course this drive takes many different forms, depending on the details of the people involved. Often a father with great public virtues also has serious vices that become visible only when you live with him up close. Maybe it's his temper, or his hygiene, or his drinking. Or maybe his very virtues make him an intolerant, self-righteous prig. It could be anything. Joan Baez once sang (alluding to her long-past relationship with Bob Dylan) that "idols are best when they're made of stone / A savior's a nuisance to live with at home." ("Winds of the Old Days," from the album Diamonds and Rust.) 

Even if a father's vices aren't so gross, sons still try to get away from them. When Fred Rogers died, and then later when Tom Hanks made a movie about him, there were a good number of articles in the news on his life. Many quoted his widow Joanne to the effect that Fred really, truly wasn't a saint.* Her remarks didn't stop others from suggesting that Rogers might almost be canonized anyway. But his personal saintliness didn't stop his sons from rebelling anyway. That's just how it goes.  

What this means, among other things, is that not all sons ever have the chance to appreciate their father's good points (if any). That kind of appreciation requires distance, time, perspective, and a willingness to rethink things that you thought you already knew. Not everyone has the luxury to enjoy these things.

Yes, since you asked, I have over the last few years at least started the process of rethinking my own Father's good points. (One of these points, for example, was his creativity; and if I had not given some thought to that, then this conversation I reported yesterday could never have happened.) And yes, since you asked, I started thinking about this topic after explaining one time too many to yet another of my relatives at Thanksgiving Dinner that no, I really haven't heard much of anything lately from my own boys. Sometimes I'm pretty transparent. 

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* It is only fair to add that her main objection to treating Fred as a saint appears to be her fear that people will assume they can't do what he did, rather than seeing him as a normal human that we can aspire to imitate. I have not found any news articles that hint at any serious vices.