“Do you think my son and his father can get along?” the mother asked me from across the banquet table. “What prompts the question?” I asked.  She said her son was getting ready to graduate from college and was planning to come home and join his dad in the family business. “Let me ask two questions,” I said.  “Is your son like his father or his mother?” And before you answer that question, let me ask you the second question. “If he is like most boys, then he is more like his mother – so, is his father still in love with his mother?”  Upon the latter comment she began to cry and soon excused herself from the table…

I don’t know the end of this situation, but I suspect I touched a tender nerve. It is my observation that the personality makeup of most boys is definitely more like their mothers than their fathers. I have discovered while sitting around literally hundreds of tables, kitchen, conference and banquet, that it is rather unusual for most boys to want to join their fathers in business. It has been said that fathers offer sons the one thing that best defines who they are – the business. It is also said that sons go in business to – in some way – become their fathers. But I think the truth is that sons – more often than not – go into business to please their mothers. I have never found any studies to substantiate this, but I believe it to be true.

I think that is why Henry Ford was so successful in getting his assembly line process so well accepted. Ford was one of first to recognize that most boys did not have as their goal to walk in the footsteps of their fathers in a career choice. Happily there are many exceptions. Regardless of whom the son is trying to please, a father can get no higher compliment than having a son want to be in business with him!

Am I an expert on fathers and sons? -  I have a father, I am a son, I have three sons and I have worked with hundreds of dozens of fathers and sons.  I am not saying I know all the answers.  However, I do know most of the questions.  It is up to each individual to determine his own answers.  Not knowing the questions to ask is sometimes where people get lost – (Maybe because they didn’t want to know or acknowledge the answer!)

I have run in to several extremes of fathers. There are those fathers who talk of the younger generation as if they had nothing to do with them, and then there is at least one father saying, “The greatest gift I could have ever received is to have a son like mine in business with me.” 

Howard Helprin, a child psychiatrist, was right on target when he said “In every father, there is a wish that his son would grow up to be strong, independent and effective; and in every father there is a wish that his son remain, weak, dependent and ineffective!”  There is such a great need for the present generation of fathers to be appreciated, to be needed and wanted, to be loved. It’s a natural craving.

One begins to understand the life actor Burt Reynolds has chosen after he says, “No man is a man until his daddy says he is!” During his “talk tour”, he spoke of his relationship with his father from whom he failed to get “the blessing.”

Charles Watson Jr., who took his father’s idea, IBM, to its heights, wrote a thick book which can be summarized in one line, “No man can totally please his father!”
 
Few fathers of my generation ever received “the blessing” from their fathers, largely because they had never received it from their fathers.  So how could we expect this bequest to happen?  “The blessing” should be encouraged, especially when we see the evidence of the positive results that occur when fathers have blessed their sons. This is not only a great blessing for the son, but also for the father. Peace comes to the father, and the son has the precedent to pass it on to his son(s).

It is normal that every generation revolts against his father, but makes friends with his grandfather. My friend John Gugle shared, “The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy!” 

It is not a new discovery that one of the most difficult relationships in business is between fathers and sons.  Robert Frost wrote long ago, “Every father is a Republican towards his son, his mother a Democrat”.  I guess he meant “moms” are more liberal towards their sons. I’ve observed exceptions, of course, including some rightfully tough moms who vote for Democrats! 

I have long been known as “the dreamer”.  My father, in my teenage years, would call up the stairway, “Hey dreamer, the best way to make your dreams come is to get up and go to work!”  Growing up on a farm, there was plenty to do and it was my “Field of Dreams” to take over the family farm. It didn’t happen. Though it was my goal, it wasn’t my father’s…

I had willfully gone into business with my father after college.  I didn’t dare to give him a choice.  And looking back on it, I wasn’t trying to please my mom. More or less, I already had her blessing.  It was my fathers blessing I sought. I wasn’t wise enough to accept that I was never going to get his full blessing, because he had never received it from his father.

Too many sons work at figuring out where their fathers tie up their goats and then learn how to get to them. I was in my 40’s before I took time to find out who my father really was. Fortunately, he had older brothers who were willing to tell me the how’s and why’s of how dad became who he was and is. He was the self-starter. “He was the yearling colt his dad couldn’t break,” one uncle said. “Your father challenged our dad as to why we couldn’t do things differently and more often than not your father was right!” I am a “twin” (much like him) to my father. Maybe if I had been more like my mom… It isn’t until a man becomes a father that he discovers what changes there are between being a son and then a father.  Felix Mendlssohn, who was born in 1809 and died in 1847, said it well, “First I was the son of a father, then I became the father of a son…”  I hope it wasn’t this experience that shortened his life...

In nature we seldom find small oak trees growing in the shade of a big one.  Sadly this is also true with fathers and sons.  There aren’t enough big and powerful men who take the time to encourage sons and teach them what they know. Judge Steven Hayes said lovingly when talking about his mother, Anne, after her passing, “Dad was always busy.  It was mother who taught me how to shoot a basket, and throw a baseball and a football.”  His father, none other than the late OSU coach Woody Hayes, was too busy working with the sons of others. In the end I think we are measured by how well we “coach” our own offspring.

Baseball’s Micky Mantle, near his death, said, “I never told my sons I loved them, but they know I do.”  Baloney!  A son without a father is like a house without a roof.

Yet many find a way to survive and succeed.  If a Pete Rose has to be your hero - make it Petey.  Pete Rose Jr., reported “The night dad broke the record was the first time he ever hugged me.”  Petey also had the compassion to say, “So what if he failed me, that is not enough to keep me from loving him.”  I doubt if his dad deserves such.  But I am happy for him that he has a son who believes this to be true.  Too many fathers expect their son to do things and take risks that they were never men enough to do when they were young.  As Abraham Lincoln said so well, “There is just one way to bring up a son and that is to travel that way yourself.”

 “Honor thy Father…” the Bible clearly commands. Colossians 3:20-21 adds. “Children obey your parents in all things…” and for balance “Parents, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged.” “The Glory of Children” Proverbs 17:6 clearly says “are their fathers.”  A father can lift his family no higher than his own faith. It is high time we have more men with a stronger faith in themselves, their opportunities, and in God.

Too many fathers have rules that they have either adapted or adopted which I call DAD’S LAWS.  Law #1 -  I am always right.  Law #2 – If you ever think I am wrong, re-read Law #1.  That fits a lot of men I have met. Such rules do not guarantee strength. Many sons become victims who then react to their parents - if they didn’t think of it, it couldn’t be good!  Maybe they learned that from their fathers. Maybe from their peers. Financial guru Peter Lynch said so well, “I don’t know of anyone who on their death bed wished they had spent more time in a business and less with their children!” 

It is also high time that we understand the message of Fran Tarkenton, the great pro football quarterback when he says, “It is the real men who can cry.”  When we as fathers allow ourselves to show more of our humanness, we can then become more caring, loving and effective as fathers. We fathers do have a very definite role. As Father Theodore Hesburgh, the former head of Notre Dame University said, “The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” 

Fathers should be fathers – not buddies. The two are seldom a good mix.  For it is true, sons who don’t sometimes regard their fathers as an embarrassment do not have a proper father! 
 
Some have more opportunity than others… James Roosevelt, son of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The worse thing that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father.”  What a jumpstart he had? – What a copout, particularly after the jumpstart he had! 

A university professor gave good foundation as to why he is as he is when he shared, “My dad was proud of me.  I know it is true because his sister told me so at his funeral.”  But how we would like to have more fathers like that of Harmon Killabrew the Baseball Hall of Famer.  “My father”, Harmon said, “used to play with my brother and me in the yard.  Mother would come out and say, ‘You are tearing up the grass’ We are not raising grass” dad would reply “We are raising boys.”   What a legacy that is!  For a father is someone to look up to, or he should be.  No matter how tall you grow!

One of the things that young dreamers who plan to join the family business need to analyze and realize is that it is almost impossible to please a father who was not able to please his father… More often than not if the father is still working to please his father, and his father is dead… and maybe has been dead for a long time… that difficulty in any father-son relationship is as certain as the moon rising in the Heavens.