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# Father doesn’t always know best
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/father-doesnt-always-know-best/
- Published: 2008-06-10T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:14:28.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

DADS ARE PRETTY COOL. WELL THEY CAN be, they can also be destructive losers who fail to nurture their kids. They can be hard working, or lazy, comical or stiff. They can be the kind of dad who teaches fishing, or the type that regularly ends up in jail on domestic violence charges.

Fathers come in all different stripes and what your father is like, is pretty much a random event over which you have no control. Personally, my dad was not a great dad when I was young.

He and my mom had a very tumultuous relationship and eventually they divorced when I was 12.

I don’t have many great memories of him. He suffered a heart attack when I was 19 and died. No great surprise there really since he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, drank coffee like it was air, and lived on donuts and fried foods. He was 65.

We were just getting over my being a teenager, and I was becoming a human again when he died. Luckily for me, we had resolved many of the conflicts that teens and parents have prior to his death. I had a great conversation with him the week before he passed.

Pop was a charming guy when he wanted to be. He was a salesman, and charm is pretty much a requirement. He was a lot like Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman.” He never really achieved great success, it always eluded him. He was always living in “not next month, but the month after next ….”

I guess you could say my dad was a dreamer in many ways. I don’t know if he had dreams for his kids, we never really talked about it. We never really talked about a lot of things.

He wasn’t a sports fan, he had no real hobbies, so we never got to connect in the ways that fathers and sons usually do.

You don’t get to pick your parents. That’s probably a good thing for most parents. But whether or not you have good or bad parents, that doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to be a good child.

People tend to re-create their childhood in their adult lives. The lessons we learn as kids are the guideposts that we will rely on as adults. Sometimes those are good lessons and sometimes those are bad ones.

My parents were both very intelligent. They chose to fight with each other in many ways, one of which was verbally. My mother could filet someone with a smile on her lips, a gleam in her eye and a few well chosen words.

She could do this in a nanosecond. It was a skill that I learned, so that I could defend myself against her.

It is a skill that serves me well as a lawyer. A quick turn of a phrase, and a well pointed barb and my opponent can be put off balance enough for me to win in court, or in a deposition. But, that same skill in a personal relationship, could keep me single for a very long time.

I had to learn to fight in my personal relationships in a very different manner. I could easily not change, and just blame it all on my parents. But that would just be repeating the dynamics of my parents, and we know how their relationship ended.

In order for me to grow, I had to take the lessons of my father, and expand on them. I had to be open to seeing things other ways than I had been taught.

All of this comes in time. Maybe it is because I am getting older and wiser, that I can see why my father didn’t teach me many things.

It was not out of malice, but out of ignorance; as the 11th of 13th children, his father didn’t teach him, so he couldn’t teach me.

It is only now, that I can see that my father lacked the skills that we have classes for today.

Being a father today is so very different from 40 years ago. There are parenting classes, and it’s hip for dads to be ‘stay at home’ dads. The nature of the relationship has changed from Ward Cleaver’s role as aloof disciplinarian, to today’s diaper changing, nurturing, in touch with their emotional lives, loving dads.

Times change — thankfully. This Sunday is Father’s Day. Whether you had psycho dad from hell, or Mr. Cool, you should be a good kid and thank your dad for whatever lessons he taught you.

DAVID PISARRA is a family law attorney focusing on father’s rights and men’s Issues in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He or (310) 664- 9969.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 10, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061008.pdf?ref=smdp.com)