As our bonds to historic roles loosen, fathers are finding new ways to express themselves within the family dynamic. In 2014 Pew Research Center identified two million stay-at-home-dads in the United States. Those men tell us that tending their children is more rewarding than chasing a paycheck. Being liberated from the hunter-gatherer role has allowed more men to incarnate aspects of the Father archetype infrequently seen since the industrial revolution. Being caregiver and homecreator does not diminish their experience of masculinity but rallies inner resources that had been set aside. Despite the national call for a redistribution of family duties and liberation from traditional paradigms, at-home dads face isolation, suspicion, and stigma. 

Historically, as father’s left the home to work at factories and offices, their presence in the family psyche dimmed. Children often lost touch with the significance of their fathers, and family courts consistently relegated them to providers of income. Poet Robert Hayden captures this ambivalence and regret in his poem Those Winter Sundays.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Growth and change are central to Jung’s ideas. Making room for the incarnating Self in all its complex diversity is the task of humanity. When we muster understanding and support, cultural and personal transformation might be a little less painful 

REFERENCES

Dad Saves the Day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6YmKIoUdZc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEPq2rGLKZU
Farrell, W. (2019). The boy crisis: Why our boys are struggling and what we can do about it. BenBella Books. Available on Amazon: https://a.co/d/abRKOzW 
Hayden, R., & Glaysher, F. (2013). Robert Hayden: Collected poems. Liveright. Available on Amazon: https://a.co/d/ay0nLoi 
National At-Home Dad Network: https://athomedad.org/advocacy/statistics-on-stay-at-home-dads/
Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2014/06/05/growing-number-of-dads-home-with-the-kids/#:~:text=Just%2024%25%20of%20stay%2Dat,%2Dat%2Dhome%20mothers).
Warren Farrell: https://warrenfarrell.com/ 

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Episode 240 - STAY-AT-HOME DADS: Emerging Potentials in the Father Archetype

We all understand the Ugly Duckling complex because we lived it at one time or another. Hans Christian Anderson’s famous tale paints a poignant picture of a child’s experience of rejection only because he’s born in the wrong nest. People who seem different or have not yet matured into their natural beauty endure a kind of scorn that can bring them to despair. The ugly duckling’s capacity to endure and find refuge once he is recognized by fellow swans can hearten us during the long winters of our lives.&nbsp; &nbsp;As an individuation metaphor, the tale dramatizes how many of us feel essentially different than our playmates and family. The combination of alienation and desperation drives us to merge with others’ feelings and paradoxically escape into fantasies. When the Self finally activates, it drives us toward the reality principle—only through regarding ourselves accurately and meeting the eyes of others can we discover our true nature and feel welcomed. As Jung suggested, we need relationships to feel whole despite the fear of being hurt. The Ugly Duckling shows us the archetypal theme from misery to fulfillment. Born into the crushing poverty of Odense, Denmark, Andersen, too, felt marked by his stark divergence from the norm. His father, a cobbler with an affection for literature, instilled the young Andersen with a zeal for reading, an enthusiasm not shared by most of his peers. His narrative of becoming was intertwined with his homoerotic identity, a fact that he could neither fully express nor openly explore in the conservative climate of the 19th century, which amplified his sense of estrangement. His unreciprocated affections, extended towards both men and women, nurtured a profound isolation that catalyzed his writings, infusing his narratives with empathy and personal experience. His genius resonated with every underdog and ostracized child who yearns to break the chains of circumstance and find a place of acceptance. Like Hans Christian Anderson, we may find ourselves alien in our own homes. We may flee only to discover the world cannot understand us. Yet one day, perhaps in the nadir of despair, something greater will claim us from within. Then, quickened and set aright in the world, our true kin will recognize us, and in their embrace, we may understand our suffering as a process that eventually enabled us to fly. &nbsp;HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE: &nbsp;“I was eating at a restaurant with a familiar group of people, though many of them were just familiar dream people, not people I know in real life. I felt something on my foot and thought I had dropped a piece of food, so I looked down. It was a small frog jumping across my foot. I picked it up and recalled feeling repulsed by it. I started cutting it across its back and pulling its legs off, but it was dying; it remained alive and kept looking at me, almost as if it was begging me to stop. Suddenly, I thought, “Why am I doing this?” “Why didn’t I just take it outside and set it free?” then, I knew I couldn’t fully kill it, so I asked someone at the table to come outside with me, and I wanted them to ‘finish the job’ and kill the frog so it wouldn’t suffer anymore. The dream ended with the other person killing the frog and me crying uncontrollably at my callousness and gratuitous violence towards the frog.” &nbsp;

THE UGLY DUCKLING COMPLEX: a path of transformation

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