I have always wondered if fathers and their sons have the same complex confusing relationships that seems to be so common between mothers and their daughters. The mother daughter struggle is one that is easy to find A surplus of novels, numerous movies and afternoon specials exist dealing with that intricate, sometimes tenuous bond between a mother and daughter, but I cannot think of a single novel, movie or even corny afternoon special that deals with the relationship between a father and a son. We have always been taught that guys and girls are different, but in this we are amazingly similar.
I have always had this mental image of a son learning how to throw a football and catch a baseball under his father’s careful tutelage at a young age and then learning from his father how to throw a girl into confusion with the “family charm” and catch himself a girlfriend. I did not really see how this relationship could even begin to compare with the pressures of living up to your mother’s expectations and fearing that one day you would either meet those expectations to the detriment of your own expectations or worse turn into your mother to the detriment of your individuality. I never thought that boys could become lost in their father’s hopes and dreams for both themselves and their children. I always assumed that the male children did not deal with these fears. I always assumed that guys just did as they wanted no matter what their father wanted because the two just happened to coincide.
However, this misconception was changed dramatically by a tiny glimpse into the life of Foster’s brother Dan. Even though All the Lost Girls mainly explores the complicated female relationships in the Foster family, one little section of the novel intrigued me far more than Foster’s main tale. When Foster paused her own recollections to tell about Dan and Charlie’s friendships and the pressure her father put on him to play for Bear Bryant, I felt one of the ideas that I has always believed to be true crumbling.
Boys do not have an easier time growing up than girls do
Yes, girls do have to deal with obsessive, oppressive mothers but boys have to deal with obsessive, oppressive fathers. Just as Foster only wanted to pursue her art and be her own person while at the same time doing what her mother wanted, so Dan only wanted to be his own person playing while at the same time pleasing his father. Playing for Bear Bryant would socially elevate Foster’s parents in a way that Dan couldn’t if he did what he wanted. It was astonishing to me that guys have to choose their own dreams over their fathers, that fathers sometimes want to live vicariously through their children even as mothers do. As heart wrenching and painful as Foster’s story was it has been told countless times. But those few short pages about Dan’s decision to go to Georgia Tech are much more poignant than the rest of the novel.