Shouting at kids not to get too far ahead on their bikes and make sure to stop at the kerb. We know that the lockdown has been a terrifying period for women and children shut in with cruel and violent men. We figure out what paternity means by emulating or reacting against, by running towards or away from, our fathers and their fathers and their fathers’ fathers. My grandson is Danish, and in that language “grandfather” is a term that gets divided up according to which parent you belong to: I am “farfar” – the father’s father. But this business of paternity always travels far, far away, into our own childhoods and the ideas of fatherhood inherited through the generations.

Source: The Irish Times June 20, 2020 04:52 UTC