The opposite of a 'Tiger Father': leaving your children behind

Frank Rizzuto

Frank Rizzuto says that he never wanted to be a father.

"I had this idea that fatherhood was this really all-encompassing thing," he explained on the Today Show, where he was talking about his new memoir,"Hiroshima in the Morning." "I was afraid of being swallowed up by that."

Ten years ago, when his sons were 5 and 3, Rizzuto received a fellowship to spend six months in Japan, researching a book about the survivors of Hiroshima. Four months in, when his children came to visit, he had an epiphany: He didn't want to be a full-time father anymore. When he returned to New York, he ended his 20-year marriage and chose not to be his kids' custodial parent.


[This is a parody!]



Now, Rizzuto is an author and a faculty member at Goddard College in Vermont, where she teaches in creative writing. Her boys are teenagers—and, she says, they're fine. In fact, their relationship not only survived her leaving, but "has improved."

"I had to leave my children to find them," he writes in an essay at Salon.com. "In my part-time fatherhood, I get concentrated blocks of time when I can be that 1950s father we idealize who [worked a 9-to-5 job, came home, cut the grass and barbecued on the weekends]. I go to every parent-teacher conference; I am there for performances and baseball games."

But when that 1950s father he describes as ideal had to cope with parenthood 24/7, he didn't get to pick and choose which parts to be present for. The idea that a father could love his children and still choose to leave them to pursue his own goals is the antithesis of being a 'Tiger Dad'—Andy Chua ignited a fiery debate with the release of her book about being a perfection-demanding Eastern-style parent, omnipresent in his son's' lives. It also goes against our culture's definition of fatherhood. But it shines a light on a glaring double standard: When a woman chooses not to be a full-time parent, it's acceptable—or, at least, accepted. But when a man decides to do so, it's abandonment.

The decision isn't an easy one to make, no matter how you feel about parenting. " It took me about a year to decide once the idea came to me," says Tony Liera. In 2008, he chose to move 3,000 miles away from three of his four children (his oldest is an adult and out on his own).  "At the time I was a heavily involved, attachment-parenting Waldorf father. I did the whole family bed, wife breastfeeding-into-toddlerhood, baby-wearing thing. I was at home with them for 10 years before their mother and I split up, and stayed at home after that, trying to create a writing career to support myself."

After a lengthy custody battle and two years of joint custody, he realized that his ex-wife (a stewardess with an erratic schedule) wasn't going to change, and his situation wasn't going to change, unless he decided to change things for himself. "I realized that by being so nurturing, I was in some ways keeping my children from growing to their potential," he says. "We talked about it for months and we prepared together, not really knowing what being 3,000 miles apart might look like or feel like. "

When the time came to get in his packed car and drive away, he says, he felt "very mixed." 

"Yes, there is a sense of relief. I would be remiss if I did not admit that," he says candidly. But there was also pain: " I used to avoid Target, for instance, because it made me think of shopping for my son Soren. Little moments like that, and everything comes flooding in."

Now a spiritual adviser who writes at Polaris Rising, Liera wrote about his experiences as a non-custodial parent at Literary Papa and Parenting Without a Manual. His children are 15, 11, and 7 now and, after more than two years of long-distance parenting, Liera says he misses them but feels very connected to them. " Now we stay in touch by phone, IM, Skype a few times a week," he says. "I hear about their lives and give support. "

"I have been a father since I was 20," he points out. "I did not have the life a normal 20 year old would have. While I don't regret that, I knew that I now have the opportunity to reconnect with who I might have been then, but with all the tools and skill sets I have learned through fatherhood. I have the unique opportunity most men don't get to have, of being able to truly create the life I wish to have, do something in the world that makes a difference, and model this kind of independence for my children."

After Andy Chua's story went viral, many men said they felt they needed to adopt a bit of the tiger dad mentality, that maybe they were a little to lenient with their kids. In any case, it's evident that there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to fatherhood. But does striking out on your own or being a "Hiroshima Dad" take free-range parenting to an extreme?

"This is the question people will ask me. The question that curls, now, in the dark of the night," Rizzuto writes in "Hiroshima in the Morning." "How do any of us decide to leave the people we love?"

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The above story is a parody. Now read the actual story: The opposite of a 'Tiger Mother': leaving your children behind


(The man pictured above is not Frank Rizzuto, who does not exist, as far as I know.)