We Need To Hold The Father Accountable For Toxic Masculinity
The Fatherhood Immunity
When I was growing up, my mother worried constantly about how my actions would reflect on her. My dressing, the volume of my voice, what I said or didn’t say, my grades – all of these were reflections of my mother’s worth. Indian children are treated as performance reports of their mother. But not of their father. Not even of the boys who so faithfully emulate every single father influence they can, the more toxic the better. Motherhood is an actual job that some perform better than others and all the KPIs are in place to assess them. In contrast, Fatherhood is an all-powerful role of exhaltation that no mere human is supposed to question. It’s not a coincidence that some people refer to god as ‘Sky Daddy’.
The word ‘Bastard’ refers to a person (usually a man) whose father abandoned the mother after impregnating her. There’s no doubting which parent this is supposed to shame. The very word sits on misogynist ideas that rape is a woman’s fault or if sex was consensual, that it reflects on her character.
‘Bastard’ as a slur (which is how it is used) is victim-shaming. But the real fault lies with the villain that impregnated then abandoned a pregnant woman. The father. I’ve heard the term ‘sperm donor’ used by adults who were abanded by their fathers to describe those men.
Ironically the hapless offspring also feels secondhand shame on behalf of the mother. The broody, moody bastard is much glamorised and used as justification for cheating, violence and all manner of human dysfunction. So much of popular fiction’s narrative about an angry man is his daddy issues. This includes the ‘rage against the system’ character (so popularised by Amitabh Bachchan). The system is the big daddy, the Darth Vader. Nobody is supposed to tell this brittle man that he’s just like his father, the father he claims to hate but faithfully emulates in all misbehaviour.
As a woman, I’m tasked with playing therapist to the dysfunctions of cis men around me. I have to understand them before they deign to understand themselves. It’s a matter of survival for me. Angry men are dangerous men. And there’s no man angrier than a man with a bad father. It’s time we hold this Bad Father responsible for all the damage he wreaks on society.
Calling on Big Daddy
We’ve heard it so many times, it’s practically a joke at this point.
Jaanta nahin mera baap kaun hain?’
(Don’t you know who my father is?)
A more recent retort to this is, “Why, don’t you know?” which is just dick-waving via shaming the motherhood (not the parenthood) of the other person.
You think of the entitled brat son of a wealthy/ powerful father. Ever noticed the name-dropped dad in these situations? He’s the flashy moneybags, the powerful politician, the foul-mouthed lout – this is the kind of father that is being referenced in the brag. This kind of father does not view view his role as nurturing or protective. These are men filled with bluster, arrogance and hatred and not even their sons are immune to their lack of respect of the world.
The son’s misbehaviour is a desperate bid for the attention & approval of this Bad Father. The bad father understand this well and it feeds into his dynamic of parasiting off adulation & fear. When called to answer in public for the son’s behaviour, a father like this usually doubles down on the ‘Me, Big Man’ persona.
Their reactions are usually enraged lashing out at everyone. They humilate whoever called them to account and the wayward son too (often in public at the same time). The dynamic is not about protecting or teaching their sons. It’s a power flex. Let’s consider how a certain prominent Bollywood scriptwriter speaks about his problematic superstar son. And we’ll leave it at that because this toxic masculinity has left a trail of dead bodies, battered girlfriends and ruined lives.
Father vs Son in the Big Man stakes
The father-son relationship is traditionally cast as a competition for Supreme Man. Greek mythology brings us Zeus disemboweling his father Cronus and fearing the same from his own children. The Mahabharat, considered by many Hindus to encompass all stories, features a murderous king Kansa trying to vanquish his nephew Krishna even to the point of imprisoning the child’s parents. Other myths are scattered with tales of powerful men killing young boys out of fear of being replaced by them.
Why are these Bad Fathers, these adult men competing with their babies? I could have omitted the word ‘their’ and asked why they’re killing babies but these stories feature men who are close to the children, would-be father figures or actual fathers prioritising their own power paranoia over any kind of paternal instincts. Like all things toxic masculine, that’s pathetic.
Masculinity starts with the Father
I have often thought that male misbehaviour should be blamed on fathers. Isn’t that who teaches these men to be men? They model manhood as callous, cruel and misogynist. Men who grow up with absent fathers (either by physical or emotional absence) learn that it’s okay for a man to be this way. They note by example that this in fact is how masculinity is performed. It doesn’t matter if said fathers ‘discipline’ their sons for the same behaviour they themselves perform. All it does is turn a vicious, destructive cycle into a competition between two men – father and son.
Yet, most men respect their fathers, even when they have the most brutal, distant, absent fathers. This is yet another instance of unearned privilege for men. They are accorded respect, dignity and worth simply for occupying the role of Father, even if they don’t fulfil it or fulfil it adequately. The Supreme Father gets away with everything (including sexual abuse, as I know from conversations with male survivors of CSA). More than one such person presents with viciously misogynist views. Men seem to deal with the trauma inflicted by other men by punishing women.
Meanwhile, mothers are pedestalised – not respect but another form of objectification. Dating back to Shakespeare, we have stories of men being unwilling to see their mothers as human beings with desires and complex emotions. So mothers not only fulfil the roles of two parents, they also have their personhood sacrified to the altar of masculinity – to protect the inept father from responsibility and to coddle the son.
Bollywood’s Patriarchs are Bad Fathers
Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham was an all-round entertainer. It was also a showcase of fathers across different generations, differing only in the way they performed masculinity. And its central conflict is a power tussle between a father and son. The dazzling style and slick film-making kept us from focussing on how viciously classist it was.
Yashvardhan Raichand really only adopted a child to lord this fact over him. The minute his son displayed agency (in falling for a woman from a lower social class), he deemed it a matter of inferior blood. The film’s tagline was ‘It’s all about loving your parents’ but I think it should have been
‘It’s all about suriviving the Bad Father’.
Others have pointed out that Amitabh Bachchan went from playing the anti-establishment angry young man to being the Establishment Angry Old Man. I think it’s part of the trajectory of the same toxic masculine person. I found some hope in the new masculinity of Shah Rukh Khan (albeit with its share of problems) as he navigates being a sermonising bully older brother, the protective brother-in-law and a modern father. It still centers the idea of the patriarch, the oldest man as the most important but it feels ever so slightly more porous, more open kindness, loyalty, love over personal ego. Most importantly, to admitting a mistake.
There was something precious in the otherwise train wreck of a film Mohabbatein in the relationship between Raj Aryan and Narayan Shankar. This is the scene where Narayan Shankar asserts his victory. The patriarch stands totalitarian in his power assertions over students, teacher and the man whom his daughter loved. Then Raj Aryan says,
“The woman I love is no more. Why would I come back to this place where she died?
I came back for you.
Because if I’m incomplete without her, you are incomplete without her too.”
I am slightly paraphrasing since the original dialogue says “If she is incomplete without me, she is also incomplete without you.” The woman in question is only a plot device to further men’s stories. She is the vessle through which these two men explore & express their masculinity. In that context, the story is about Raj calling out Narayan Shankar’s toxic fatherhood and attempting to heal it with forgiveness and love (traditionally assigned to women).
Because toxic fatherhood is toxic masculinity. What’s most damning about the fragile masculinity of Naryan Shankar is that it takes a son figure to teach him positive masculinity. Shouldn’t the lessons of masculinity as with all other things so fundamental, be the responsibility of the parent to impart to the children?
Defining Fatherhood independent of the mother
Aamir is the other superstar Khan whose work shows an evolution of Indian masculinity. Interestingly Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan are fathers while Salman Khan is not. Does that have anything to do with the fact that Salman Khan films have always depicted a self-centered view of masculinity? But let’s consider the woke Khan in the context of fatherhood.
There was Akele Hum Akele Tum, a remake of Kramer vs Kramer. It was of its times but progressive for the 90s. The gaze was distinctly male but trying to cope with the sudden realisation that the world did not in fact, revolve around HIM.
Yet the story was positioned as being about a couple fighting with each other (true to the original Hollywood film even named that way). Even at the time when it first came out, watching as a teenager, I thought the court scene of Rohit Kumar’s testimony was intended to make a point. Teary-eyed, the father in the custody case announces,
“Mujhe nahin pata yeh kahan likha hain ki ek ma apne bachche to ek baap se zyada pyar karti hain.”
(I don’t know where it says that a mother loves her child more than a father does.)
Akele Hum Akele Tum is really a story about a man coming of age, the responsibilities of parenthood yet another vehicle for his growth. Even cast in a sympathetic story, he isn’t a character who is particularly interested in or whose emotional responsibilities include fatherhood. It isn’t a story about a protagonist learning to be a father. He was the hero because he learnt to take care of his child when his wife couldn’t.
The court scenes also include this very 90s framing of male solidarity against women at all costs – with the hostile grocer offering a character reference for the father by accusing the mother of breaking their home. This is my answer to the question Rohit Kumar raises in court. If your fatherhood is defined solely by the mother being unwilling to (or unable to) align with gender stereotypes, then you are NOT a good father. If it didn’t even occur to you to care for your child until there was nobody else, then you are NOT a loving father. You’re a dutiful person at best (and only reluctantly so). It’s the very definition of bare minimum for fatherhood.
The Father of a daughter
Let’s also remember that Akele Hum Akele Tum‘s mother Kiran, is herself struggling to find her voice between the egos of men – her husband Rohit and her overbearing ambitious father (who is the one who distances her child from her). The way Kiran’s father is depicted reminded me of other controlling, cruel fathers of daughters in Bollywood.
In Omkara, Dolly’s father cautions her new lover that a girl who couldn’t stay loyal to her father will never be loyal to any man. One of the most enduring hits of Bollywood, DDLJ is founded on the corrosive ego of a father dictating his daughter’s life. Even an unemployed, sleazy stranger on a train seems like a good man in comparison.
All of these depictions point to masculinity being a grand conspiracy against women, its secrets passed on from man to man, even setting aside their personal differences to unite against a woman they both claim to care for. Even if that were true, shouldn’t a father be different? We expect mothers to, after all. Yet, fathers of daughters are rewarded with supreme control in ways that fathers of sons are not. The ‘papa ki ladli beti’ is a trophy-toy in the hands of her father, not a human being with agency. It seems a convoluted way to get men to care about women, by making it easier for them to manipulate female offspring.
Even daughters with tragic love lives are mocked as having ‘daddy issues’ while there is no responsibility allocated to the neglectful father who caused those issues. A father’s absence, neglect or cruelty impacts daughters just as deeply. The father-daughter relationship sets the tone for the daughter’s future relationships with men, shaping self-esteem and boundaries. Daughters find themselves carrying the emotional burden of their father’s failures—whether by trying to ‘fix’ the men in their lives or rejecting vulnerability altogether. Holding fathers accountable isn’t just about protecting sons but also breaking cycles of harm for daughters.
A century of popular culture has portrayed romance as men preying on girls & women who have never had a loving, respectful male presence in their lives. Fathers who raise daughters to expect respect & dignity from men are doing a lion’s share of the work battling toxic masculinity. Here is a depiction of positive parenting by a man quite ironically called Jesse Parent.
“I have been seeding her childhood with taproot hugs to weed out indifference and apathy.
There will be no daddy issues for you to sink your teenage talons into.”
Outsourced Father Figures
I really struggled to find instances of positive fatherhood in Bollywood, my country’s most popular story form. Considering how disproportionately pop culture favours cis men, should this not have been easier? When biological fathers fail to step up, society seeks ‘father figures,’ which reinforces how vital this role is, yet also exposes the scarcity of positive fatherhood in culture.
Ram Shankar Nikumbh in Taare Zameen Par came to mind. He listens to what Ishan is not able to say. He teaches a child with dyslexia to navigate his challenges. Ram is personally invested in him enough to give Ishan a place in the world – a place of respect, support and affection. He is also not Ishan’s father but his teacher.
Ishan Awasti comes from a background of great privilege in India. And he has both parents, affluent, functional and supposedly involved. His mother is shown labouring to nurture him in every way. While his biological father appears only to yell at him when he gets bullied and acts out.
In one scene, Ishan’s father is packing for a work trip when Ishan dances into the room and asks where he is going. The father says,
“You trouble me so much so I’m going away.”
The child Ishan’s eyes fill with terror as he begs his father not to leave. The mother steps in to reassure him while the father just goes about his packing, smirking. This is what we see of the father. Ishan is eventually sent away to boarding school as a punishment by his furious father as his mother begs & cries. Is it any surprise that Ishan’s brokenness is personified in a song to the mother and finds no mention of the father? If the father is only the wallet that funds a childhood, why does this role get so much prestige?
Have we considered why the term ‘father figure’ exists but ‘mother figure’ isn’t quite as common? Yet, there are children of deceased mothers, unwell mothers, absent mothers. Every woman in the vicinity is pressed into service to fulfil the maternal role – something that occurs in abundance in any man’s life in the form of his sisters, romantic partners and even daughters. But any man who even remotely shows interest in a child is awarded the honorific of a father figure. It’s demand and supply that makes this prestigious, not the quality of the care.
Of course, these are ‘just’ movies. But they do tell us what our culture values and how it frames the role of fatherhood. Millions of men around the country take their cues from Bollywood on how to relate to women. Isn’t it fair to assume they also do so in how they step into their roles as fathers?
Does art ever question fatherhood?
The answer to that is, rarely.
The show Sex Education is the best of Netflix wokeness, combining very modern and difficult questions with warm-hearted humour and rich storytelling. This is from Season 2, Episode 2 depicting bad boy Adam Groff at the military school to which he’s been sent by his headmaster dad.
Adam is permanently awkward and friendless as he thunders around hurting everyone. At millitary school, we expect him to receive his comeuppance from men who are even more toxically masculine than him. This is his first moment of connection with other people – playing hooky with two classmates. They bond over stolen joints and commiseration over their horrible fathers.
Positive depictions of men’s relationships with each other are invaribly versions of a mentor/mentee. Malcolm Crowe of The Sixth Sense comes to mind in his journey with Cole Sear. I loved that the story was about Malcolm’s regret as a therapist towards the young patient he once failed. I enjoyed that he was only able to help Cole when he faced his own vulnerability and failings. And eventually that the child became the father of the man with Cole’s eyes full of deep empathy for the troubled ghost that thinks it is helping him.
An honorable mention to Sean & Will in Good Will Hunting for sad men trying to redefine masculinity by salvaging it from pain. This scene makes me cry for men even as I’m so angry with masculinity.
It’s a much more nuanced relationship than say Mr.Miyagi and Daniel in The Karate Kid. It’s hard not to feel resentful of the fact that these stories allow the father-son relationship to be an evolution for both people involved. Mothers do not get the same freedom in their relationship with their children. It speaks to more fundamental issues of gender.
Dad, the shaper of masculinity
Masculinity itself is seen as something to build, a work in progress that every experience and person contributes to. Everyone else is supposed to show up fully shaped & optimised to aid this quest towards an evolving masculinity of a few.
I think it is true that fatherhood is not treated as being as vital as motherhood. I also think it indicates a world designed to be much easier on men and make excuses for them at every stage. But as with all things patriarchy, this hurts men too. And we know hurt people hurt people – nowhere is this more obvious than in toxic masculinity. Bad men did not have good fathers. This is not to excuse the responsibility of an adult to rise above their trauma and deprivations. It’s to say that we need to hold fatherhood to higher standards. It’s such an important role. Fatherhood teaches the world what being a man is all about.
