The Inadequate Father- M.I.A

Yesterday was father's day and many of us celebrated our fathers on Facebook and blackberry...but not many of us, are willing to face the truth about how some abnormalities we notice in our behaviors are a direct result of our father's inadequacies while we were growing up.

I listened to a teaching about the the wounds fathers unconsciously and/or consciously inflict on their children while they were growing up, and I'll we sharing it with you all (in my own words) in this series titled 'The inadequate Father'. We will start with the Missing-In-Action Father (MIA Father)

The Missing-in-Action Father is one who is alive but is/was unavailable. He  is the father that interrupts the emotional bonding between him and his children by his long absences. Fathers working in rigs are wounding their children without knowing it. Fathers who work elsewhere, like soldiers who get transferred on military assignments to other countries while leaving their children to be raised by their wives are wounding their children without knowing it. Every time they come back and the child is trying to reconnect, before he succeeds, daddy is gone. Children from a broken home also fall within this category of those who grow up with a M.I.A father

Considering the fact that children are egocentric, i.e. believing that everything is about them or revolves around them, these children grow up with the misplaced thought that ‘Daddy left because of me, if only I was a better child, if only I was a prettier child, if only I was wanted, daddy would have stayed’. They never consider it that its mummy and daddy's inability to make their relationship work. Such thoughts are not loud or outright, it is mostly in the subconscious thus is not easily identified or seen as a threat to their future relationship with others

The legacy absentee fathers leave for these children (who grow to be adults) include:

-          LACK OF EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT: These children who become adults have problems bonding with others. You have heard it often when a spouse says ‘I just can’t connect with him…he is my husband but when I try to reach out, there is a wall around him separating us'. This is the typical characteristic of an adult  from an absent father, they have problem bonding and attaching with people. He cannot allow himself trust anyone enough to let them in, for fear that they would leave too like daddy left. So he closes up, and lives his life in a world he has created for himself…and himself alone, regardless of if he has a wife or siblings. Because in his subconscious he is afraid of being left alone by someone he has given all his heart to. Thus he builds a wall around himself, not letting anyone in emotionally. He knows that he is the only one he can trust and he would never disappoint himself or leave himself

-       Drifts Without Direction: Some Adults who had absent fathers while growing up tend to drift, never will you find them tied down in a place of commitment for a long time, take for instance in the aspect of job. Amazingly they get the jobs like lightening…very fast. But after a year or six months, they are on the move again… it doesn't matter how right the conditions of the job are, they just can’t stay tied down for long…always searching for something else. 91% of the young men in prison did not grow up with a father figure, because the crucial role of a father providing direction for them while growing up was missing

-      BECOME SELF-SUFFICIENT:  Have you not people who would rather die than accept help from anyone? sometimes they react almost violently when you insinuate that they need your help, or you offer to help them with anything. They have to put up a hard face and be self sufficient so as to avoid relying on any other person… who might end up disappointing them like daddy

HAS A PROBLEM WITH AUTHORITY:  That is self explanatory... especially for the females, they regard every male figure especially those in moral authority and/or otherwise, the same way they regard their absentee father: with distrust, because he represents the person who wounded them emotionally


Are you a product of a Missing-In-Action daddy? Do you recognize these characteristics in yourself and/or in someone you know? First of all you might want to help yourself first and thread very carefully with that friend. Shutting them out, or leaving them, only helps in reinforcing the mindset that people always leave.


The next episode of this series, will focus on the "CRITICAL FATHER'. Stay tuned



Nutty J.