Where are you, father?

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza started a serious debate about the absence of the father, his disappearance from family life, his atrophying ties with his own children. It started with a poll.
In November 2007 a research company IQS and Quant Group asked 5,500 adult Poles about their fathers.
As many as 92 percent of respondents believed that the father should be involved in family life on par with the mother. But the reality was different. People remembered, for instance, that it was their mother who had talked to them about things like love and sex, never their father.

Asked who offered them greater support in childhood, 61 percent pointed to the mother and only 20 to the father. In only one respect did the fathers beat the mothers – they were far more likely to mete out corporal punishment.

Female respondents were only half as likely as male ones to complain about the father’s ”strict attitude”. They talked to their father more often, confided in him, told him they love him, took offence at him far less often.

Adult Poles did not have it easier with their father either. When they had a ”personal problem”, they would go to some other family member, or to a friend, for help. Even if the problem was of a financial nature, they were more likely to turn to their spouse, mother, or sibling than to their father.

The poll proved that there were no differences between any demographics: age, education, wealth, being conservative or liberal etc.

It was therefore something of a consolation that as many as 73 percent of male respondents with children believed they had a better relationship with their kids than they themselves had had with their own father.

1. Letter to the Father

Piotr Pacewicz, a deputy editor-in-chief, asked in his editorial on the front page:

Can the fathers return? Can we ourselves return to our families, our kids? Is it possible in a society that is running in a civilisational race, but is immersed in a tradition where the family is fundamental and other ties are almost nonexistent?

How to launch such a debate? How to talk to somebody who is absent? Maybe it would be an idea to write a letter?

Three Gazeta writers decided to examine their own lives in stories that were like master plans of conversations with their fathers, conversations that had been missing until today. These three journalists wrote in fact letters to their fathers: personal, honest and anonymous so as not to harm their relatives.
They started:

There are words that we have been afraid to say for the last 10, 15, 20 and 40 years. And questions that we are afraid to ask until today.

Readers followed the journalists and wrote their own letters. They described their fears, hopes, anger, gratitude, sadness, compassion, joy, jealousness, nostalgia, hatred and of course love.

We got over 1400 letters in total. In May 2008 we published a selection of these letters in a book ”Letter to the Father”. Read more about this book.

2. Features, interviews and opinion articles

In both November 2007 and May 2008 for three weeks in total Gazeta launched a dedicated section in the newspaper: ”Dad’s come back”.

There were features about good and bad fathers, ie. diaries of fathers who try to come back and a series on family small businesses like Kowalski & Son, Nowak & Daughter.

The features were accompanied by interviews and opinion articles written by leading psychologists who disputed models for traditional and modern families.

Gazeta’s photo reporters told the story from their perspective – we published photo essays documenting daily lives of families titled ”Father’s day”.

Readers joined the debate: published tens of letters in the printed newspaper and many more on the net. Gazeta’s online edition launched a dedicated blog to cover the discussion among readers and experts.

All the articles and photos were posted in a separate section on Gazeta’s website.

3. Online diaries

Gazeta launched a dedicated blogging platform for fathers’ diaries: www.powrottaty.pl.

200 readers blog there about their families, share views and advice on fatherhood.

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