Dad is Sad, Very, Very Sad
On the depiction of fatherly despair in family media
When I was a young father, I would sit down with my children and read Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop to them and try not to ruminate about all the stories of terror that OCD was intruding upon me. If you’ve ever read a children’s book for the 100th time, you know how terribly difficult it is not to daydream and go on autopilot. Your kids ask you to read the same book over and over again, and after awhile you can recite the book without reading anything. The problem with this, especially if you have anxiety of any kind, is that your mind starts to wander into places that feel more urgent. Maybe you start thinking about clothes that you need to fold or dishes that you need to wash. Or maybe you start worrying about ways you may have harmed people in the past and how you are now eternally condemned unless you “figure it out” right now. The latter worries were mine. And added to the anxieties was the sense that I was missing out on this intensely special moment of intimacy and cuteness with my children. They wouldn’t stay young forever (and they didn’t). And they wouldn’t always bring me books to read (they did eventually stop). And so there was a sense of shame at not being in the present moment and enjoying reading to my kids, even if it was Hop on Pop for the 100th time today. Then I would get to my favorite lines: “Sad Dad Bad Had. Dad is sad. Very, very sad. He had a bad day. What a day dad had.” And this is coupled with a picture of a dad in despair with a crumpled tie sitting in a chair, staring off into space, alone. Reading these lines would bring me back to the present because they helped me feel seen. I wanted to say to my kids, “See, this is your dad, too! He’s having a bad day! It happens and it’s normal!” And in a way, Dr. Seuss was already telling them that.
Cultural depictions of parents who struggle with mental affliction in family media are important for normalizing what real life looks like. Because the more I get to know people, the more I hear stories of fathers with mental illnesses, mothers with illnesses, people who struggle to get out of bed. People who fight and endure and strive by God’s grace to care for their family the best they can, but people who also have bad days.
I think this affects fathers differently than mothers, in general. But both fathers and mothers live under the expectation of perfection from their children. Fathers are expected to be stoic, unmoved by emotions except perhaps anger. Mothers are expected to bear everything and keep going. They can have emotions, but they must keep going. Both expectations are unreasonable and come from a childish understanding of parents as inhuman.
Which is one reason why stories that depict fathers (maybe I’m just sensitive to this as a father) as fully human and capable of “bad days” and mental afflict and even breakdowns are so important.
This struck me again while watching It’s A Wonderful Life with my family. Every year when we watch this great film, my favorite part is George Bailey’s breakdown in front of his family. It’s painful to watch, of course. The sharp words to his children and wife. The crying. The rude phone call. The violent smashing of the model bridge. The broken-hearted apology. In it all, the desperation. The hopelessness. The despair.
As someone who has felt despair in front of his children (how much they knew, I can’t say), these scenes offer a kind of comfort to me and an education to my children that breakdowns and crackups can happen to anyone. “Sad Dad” in Dr. Seuss and George Bailey are examples of fatherly mental affliction, and they help normalize what is normal. Men suffer mentally in this life, because life is really difficult.
Which is not to say that “normalization” equals being content to suffer without fighting back. If George Bailey trashed his house every evening and apologized every evening, we wouldn’t look at him as a model of dealing with mental affliction as a father. We’d be talking about an abusive father. It’s also the case that most of us don’t have a Clarence to set our anxieties in order in one day. Instead, most of us live in the space inbetween. We struggle with mental affliction, striving for growth and healing and recovery, praying and working with mental health professionals, eating well and sleeping, exercising, making lifestyle changes to relieve daily stress, and so on. And yet some days we come home like “Sad Dad,” sit in a chair and stare at a wall. But on the whole, we work toward healing, because that is the good that God desires for us. When we cast our anxieties on God (1 Peter 5:7), involved in that is a choice to turn from the lifestyles that were perpetuating the anxiety. But the point is, “normalization” just refers to the fact that it’s normal to struggle, not that it’s normal to choose to stay in your suffering without desiring to heal. As I’ve written about before, desire is the first step toward recovery.
For me, I sought help after help for my OCD while I read my kids book after book while they were young, and got no meaningful relief from my affliction. Every book I read, my head was lost in rumination. But I never stopped looking and praying and striving for recovery. And I never stopped reading. It wasn’t until my kids were much older, too old to sit on my lap and bring me picture books to read that I was blessed with recovery. But as I look back, I’m glad that at least they heard from Dr. Seuss that it’s okay that their dad sometimes had bad days, that they saw from Jimmy Stewart that despair can grip other dads, too. I like to think these stories helped give them patience to deal with me. And that’s what we all need, a little patience. Because healing doesn’t always come when we expect. That’s something I learned the hard way. But faithfulness is demanded of us and is always worth it.