My daughter’s father is connected to her biologically, but this connection is basically the extent of their relationship. My daughter’s step-father is much more than a father; he is her daddy. The two men profoundly exemplify how different a father and a daddy really are.
In its original form, the word father is a verb. When defined as a verb, father means to create, to found, or to originate. To father is to procreate offspring as the male parent. Through social changes, we have been led to the analogous use of the word father in both the verb form and in the noun form.
When our society applies colloquialism to the noun form of the term, father, the end result is the word daddy. What is a daddy? The denotative meaning of daddy is father. But do the words daddy and father really possess the same connotative meanings? Perhaps that questions can be best answered by examination of some compelling examples of the two men my daughter has labeled: one as a father and the other as a daddy.
First, a clarification must be established. A daddy does not necessarily have to be the man who “fathered” the child. A daddy can choose a child; a child can choose a daddy. A father cannot choose a child; a child cannot choose a father. My daughter did not choose her father, but she did choose her daddy.
Children sometimes make the choice of accepting and allowing someone other than their biological father to become the significant male role-model in their life. When parents divorce and go their separate ways, remarriage is usually inevitable. When I remarried, I did not expect my new husband to be anymore to my daughter than a concerned and loving step-father, but his love, patience, kindness, commitment, and dedication have transformed his relationship with my daughter into a genuine and secure parental bond. Soon after my remarriage, the man whom my daughter had called by his first name and introduced to her friends as her step-father began receiving introductions and addresses which identified him as her daddy.
How does a daddy differ from a father? A daddy is involved in his child’s life. A father is involved in the act of conception and perhaps even for the birth. My daughter’s father was at the hospital for her delivery, but soon after the birth, he vanished from the scene. He did not return until the next day later in the afternoon, and he did not accompany me when I brought my special little baby home from the hospital. He chose to work that day. Several years later during a marriage therapy session, I would learn the reason for this betrayal. His lack o f involvement surrounding the birth of our baby was his way of avenging what he considered to the betrayal on my part because I have given birth to a daughter and not to a son: an omen that neither he nor I would ever conquer. Consequently, my daughter would never conquer this omen either.
My daughter’s father and I were divorced three years after her birth. Over the next few years, her most formative years, she unfortunately would be forced to accept the reality of what being her father actually meant by the examples he provided for her.
As she sat on the front doorsteps of the little, blue house where she and I lived, she would wait anxiously for her father.
“Mommy, what time is it now?”
My answers were usually a sequence of words much the same each time she waited: “5:00, honey…5:30, dear…6:00, come in and play a while…9:00 - o’ baby don’t cry – I’m sure something happened that prevented him from coming, or he’d be here.”
I always defended his inexcusable and irresponsible acts because I could not be a part of increasing my little girl’s pain, so I created excuses for him instead of forcing upon her the truth; her father just simply forgot her. At 10:00 or 11:00 at night, she would be waiting still for something that just was not going to be. He never called, and when she inquired why he did not make it to visit her, his answers were usually the same: she and I had confused what he had said.
“I said next weekend, not this weekend.”
Next weekend usually never came.
But another day eventually came, and that was the day when my daughter met her daddy. Even from the beginning when he became her step-father, in all actuality, he was already her daddy, but consciously, none of us had yet realized this fact.
After a short time, most everyone who knew my daughter and me soon began to notice that finally, she had a daddy. At every softball game she played, her daddy was there. Over the past five years, her father has only been seen at two of her games.
Her father lives 250 miles away, and he uses the distance to legitimize his absence: too far away to attend a piano recital or school program or anything else in which she is involved. When my daughter was crowned Azalea-Dogwood Trail Princess, her father was not there nor was he there when she crowned her successor. However, her daddy was there for both. When she was selected first chair French horn player for the All-City Band, her father was not there for that either, but you can be sure her daddy was there.
Only a daddy has no limits when it comes to being a part of his child’s life. Back a few years ago, my daughter’s daddy was working temporarily in another city which was approximately a four-hour drive away. She had a Christmas program at 7:00 in the evening. Her daddy finished work at 3:00 in the afternoon and drive to Dothan so as not to miss his daughter’s program. Afterwards, he went to dinner with his family, got back in his car, and returned to his job-site ready for an early morning wake-up call the following day. Her father is a teacher who has the summer months off, and he could easily make the drive up to our home to see her regularly. Guess how many times he has done so? The answer is too few to count.
That long and unbearable drive proved to be too much of a match for her father even when she was extremely ill and in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit. He did call her while she was hospitalized and talked to her for about two minutes. A daddy would expend any means required to be with his child, especially at a time as fragile and as crucial as this. Her daddy was there with her until she was well and back home with him.
A daddy is a good listener. A father is deaf to the silent cries of his daughter. A daddy knows what to say. A father knows nothing to say. A daddy understands. A father is irrational.
A daddy knows who his daughter’s best friend is. A father not only does not know a single one of his daughter’s friends, let alone her best friend, he says that her friends smoke marijuana laced with crack. (This does not mention the fact, that in truth, he knows none of her friends nor has he ever met any of them).
A daddy knows his daughter’s favorite color. A father asks what his daughter’s favorite color is. Then, when he purchases a Christmas gift, he tells her that he could not find it in that particular color, but if she find the color later to exchange it. However, once his daughter does exchange the item for one in her favorite color, he then chides her by insisting that she mush not have like the gift because she returned it to the store.
A daddy knows his daughter’s favorite food, and he cooks it for her quite often. When it comes to a father knowing what his daughter’s favorite food is, the question becomes obsolete. When the daughter visits a father, he asks her if she is hungry, and if so, he asks, “Have you got any money?” If her answer is yes, he says, “Well goo, then I will take you to McDonald’s and you can pay.”
A daddy knows what kind of car his daughter would like for her sixteenth birthday. A father does not care what kind of care his daughter wants because he states quite often that his daughter is “spoiled rotten” because she likes nice things.
A daddy remembers his daughter’s birthday, and he helps Mommy create that special celebration just for the occasion. A father does not remember his daughter’s birthday because he says that he hates birthdays and that birthdays are stupid. If a father does remember his daughter’s birthday, he acknowledges the recollection with a midnight phone call on that special day to inform her that he did not get her a gift because he is broke. His manner and his voice unmistakably identify him as intoxicated, and the sound of loud honky-tonk music in the background indicates that he is in a bar.
A daddy issues a stern and profound, yet civil, lecture to that over-stimulated and hyper-hormonal young man who has hurt his little girl’s feelings and made her cry. A father does not confront a boy who has hurt his daughter’s feelings because he has never asked if she even has a boyfriend.
A daddy knows what his daughter wasn’t to be when she grows up. A father does not discuss his daughter’s ambitions because he is jealous and afraid she will make more of her like than he has.
A daddy sets examples of what his daughter should be when she grows up. A daddy loves his daughter’s mother, and his family is his life. A father sets examples of everything his daughter should not be when she grows up. A father is an adulterer and a “social” alcoholic. A father has been arrested and convicted of physically assaulting his daughter’s mother. A father has been married and divorced three times and was physically and mentally abusive to all three of his wives. A father informs his daughter that his most recent divorce was actually his wife did not like her, but the daughter knows this is not the truth.
A father has another child who lives in the same town as he, but he hardly ever sees that child either. Ironically, that child is a son. A father asks his daughter to come to a vist as he has not see her for months, and then while she is visiting, he send her to stay with other relatives for part of her visit. A father does not answer the many letter his little girl writes him, and when a daughter innocently and naively asks whey he does not write her back, a father tell his daughter that he never received any letters.
A daddy plans for his daughter’s future. A daddy worries about his daughter’s future. A father does not plan for his daughter’s future, and the only worry he has about her future is how much longer it will be until she turns nineteen because then he will not long be required to pay child support.
A daddy sings praises of his daughter to everyone he knows. A father has no praises to sing, but he frequently points out any and all her shortcomings. A father does not know any of his daughter’s achievements because he never asks.
A daddy teaches his daughter how to love. A father could learn about love from his daughter. A daddy speaks only the truth. A father knows no truth. A daddy is proud of his daughter. A father makes his daughter feel she is unworthy of his admiration.
Most likely a majority of people have never had reasons to differentiate between the definitions of a father and a daddy. Many people probably use the terms synonymously. However, my daughter and I have experienced many reasons which substantiate that the two words have extremely different meanings. Every human being has a father. A person may declare that he or she has no father, but the statement is ambiguous. It is impossible not to have a father. However, it is possible not to have a daddy. Fortunately, my daughter has a daddy.
Summer 1996
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