What is the biggest challenge for sons in the FOB?
Business Leader Post, January 17, 2014
Thomas D. Davidow, Ed.D.
The biggest challenge for a son is to be able to let go of his original image of his father as perfect, all knowing and “all powerful.”
It is absolutely normal and, indeed, critical, to hold our fathers in “awe” and to wish for their approval. That is how we develop as human beings. We respond to the level of accountability that the father sets for us. Our self-image, our sense of who we are and who we want to be are rooted in who our fathers represent for us. It is a deep, psychological and unconscious connection. This attachment provides us with security in the world. We even hear anecdotes about how children with absent fathers create a “father figure” in their minds or find other male adults who provide the idea and the reality of having a father in their lives.