psychotherapy:

Fathers who actively engage in raising their children can help make their offspring smarter and better behaved, according to new research from Concordia University.

Published in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, the long-term study examined how fathers can positively influence the development of their kids through hands-on parenting.

“Fathers make important contributions in the development of their children’s behaviour and intelligence,” says Erin Pougnet, a PhD candidate in the Concordia University Department of Psychology and a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development (CRDH).

“Compared with other children with absentee dads, kids whose fathers were active parents in early and middle childhood had fewer behaviour problems and higher intellectual abilities as they grew older — even among socio-economically at-risk families.

Regardless of whether fathers lived with their children, their ability to set appropriate limits and structure their children’s behaviour positively influenced problem-solving and decreased emotional problems, such as sadness, social withdrawal and anxiety.”

proustitute:

A telegram from Dorothy Parker to her editor Pascal Covici (source; via otherpress)

mirroir:

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

ontheborderland:

This is my sister and I inspecting a new life.  It was the last day of kindergarten and when I got off the school bus, a baby calf had just been born.  My father stands in the back of the frame, cut off and unnecessary, almost a distraction, which is probably appropriate for his actual role in my life.

Every year I struggle about what to say of Father’s Day and come to no conclusions.  The man exists and I am reasonably sure of where he lives but I have not seen him in nearly two decades.  I know my story is no different than most; the world is sadly full of thousands and thousands of daughters who are inexplicable disappointments to their fathers.  I can think of no positive stories that aren’t tinged with rotten edges and a sense of rejection.  It is hard to be born of parents who hate each other, and even worse to know that hate is completely justified.

He did teach me long division, though.  Although now a calculator would serve.

For some years after they went their separate ways, my mother would refer to him as “your father” as if I had chosen that particular set of parents against their will.  It was her way of distancing herself from the situation.  One day, I surprised myself with my own wisdom and asked her to refrain from doing so, as I shouldn’t be blamed for how things turned out.  From then on he was referred to as Mr. *Curse Word* which was sort of comic and sort of depressing that such an appellation could be used for the ingredients of one’s own existence.

I used to wish I could spring from a parent’s forehead fully grown and ready for life, like a Greek goddess.

I don’t think of him very often, but when I do I wonder if he sits, monster-like, in a dark and filthy house brooding with rage or if there is, in fact another new family entirely.  One with tow-headed children whose piano recitals he faithfully attends and graduations that are never missed and he shows how to throw a ball or identify insects, whose mothers’ cooking is praised and gets flowers on her birthday with no sense of malicious irony.  I am not sure which outcome I prefer: to be hated, to be mourned, to be regretted, to be ignored, to never have existed.

These feelings have sat digesting for many years and will sit for longer before I know quite what to make of everything, if I ever know.  Until then, the Sunday passes like any other for me and I form no judgment on what it may be like on the other side, for the one who leaves a dark blot in my memory and stands behind my very face in the mirror.