Life Without Father: Influences of an Unknown Man

Having lost his father when he was twotold he was dead, he was actually in prisonfreelance journalist Wartman argues that you can't miss someone you've never known. Yet he further contends that not to acknowledge the reason for a father's absence and refusing to tell a child about him can cause emotional problems like a sense of abandonment or having caused the father's departure, along with a fear of future hurt by others. At age 31, the author convinced himself that, like his father at the same age, he was dying of a brain tumor, a fixation expressed with symptoms of hypoglycemia and since successfully treated. The experience led him to undertake this study of fatherless children. He interviewed his own reluctant family and people who as children had suffered deprivation and fears like his, focusing his queries on what children need and want from their fathers. Wartman notes that the information thus gleaned has caused him to work hard, despite his divorce, to relate positively to his son hoping to spare him his own experience. The author also writes that from his quest he has achieved a sense of personal identity rooted in a belated discovery of his father's character. (April)