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David Makow 1923-2021 -- On Father's Day, I Mourn

Saturday, June 14, 2025 22:25

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(Dr. David Makow, 1923-2021)

Today is Father’s Day

After my father wouldn’t

let my mother feed me

as a baby, except at meal times,

the die was cast.

We could never be friends

because my crying had made

me his adversary for life.

Only after he died did I realize

I still loved him. But it was too late.

( DISCLAIMER – This is not so much a eulogy

to my father as an epitaph to our relationship.

It’s more about me than him.)

Everyone is focused on the slugfeat in the Middle East, but June 12 is Father’s Day. Let’s not forget to honor our fathers.

by Henry Makow PhD

(Updated from 2020)

I am not the world’s greatest father and I didn’t expect my father to be perfect either.

A Polish Jew, he overcame many obstacles. His parents were murdered by the Nazis when he was 19. He survived the war by pretending to be a Gentile, did four years of high school in one, entered the MIT of Europe at the top of the entrance exam, became a physicist, and built a new life in Canada.

FATHER OR FRIEND?

He was always a father. We could never be friends.

”It is the job of parents to see that the [societal] barriers hold,” W. Cleon Skousen writes in “So You Want to Raise a Boy?” (1958, p.232)

Like Skousen, my father saw his role as keeping me “on track.” Since his success was based on higher education, “on track” meant keeping me in school.

I was not allowed to get off the treadmill. Despite the fact I had written a syndicated newspaper column at age 11, which he helped me with, he never believed in me or my good intentions. He always treated me like a loose cannon.

He would not meet me half-way. I still remember the ruckus I caused at age 8, when he wouldn’t let me watch I Love Lucy because it was past my bed time.

After high school graduation, I wanted to work in a mine. Then, I planned to go to an out-of-town university known for its radical leftist professors. (I was a Lefty back then.)

My father exerted great pressure, including the inducement of the old family car, to make me enroll at the local university at once. I fell into a depression. I only completed three of five courses with poor grades.

He wouldn’t let me follow my heart and learn from experience. My spirit broken, I ended up staying at university, as a kind of hospice, and finally got a PhD.

On another occasion, I wanted to use the family cottage as a spiritual retreat like Thoreau’s Walden Pond. Again, no deal. Get your thesis done.

Ironically, the only time my father gave me my way turned out badly. He let me subscribe to PLAYBOY. As a result I became a sex addict and could not relate to women as human beings. I don’t blame him. The sexual revolution was all the rage in the 1960′s.

FEEDING FRENZY

Our relationship was doomed when my father wouldn’t let my mother feed me as a baby.

A doctor’s book recommended babies be “trained” to eat at mealtimes. I cried my lungs out and was then too exhausted to eat. It wasn’t Dr. Spock’s book. I think it was Dr. Mengele’s.

After the non-stop stress of war and study, dad wasn’t ready to assume the burdens of family. He didn’t have a chance to decompress and sow his wild oats. He had lost everyone and didn’t want to lose my mother.

He tried to train me the second I came out of the womb.

The landlord complained. My crying caused my father to regard me as some kind of adversary or “loose cannon.”

As a result, I had an “unloved feeling” until I was age 50, not knowing why.

My father paid dearly for his mistake. Until the age of eleven, I was a terror. I consciously made trouble to “get love.” I had a gang called the “Bubble Gang” because it rhymed with trouble. I was in trouble with the police for mischief twice: pushing logs off mountains in Switzerland and breaking into boarding schools.

Once, dad chased me around the neighborhood waving a stick. He dragged me home for a beating. But instead, he just broke down in tears.

FRESH START

After returning from a year in Switzerland (where my father completed his PhD,) I felt that people had forgotten my lies (such as, I spoke Polish), and I could make a new start.

To be loved, I changed strategy and became an overachiever. I began an advice-to-parents column, “Ask Henry” for 40 newspapers and appeared on The Jack Paar Show and in Life Magazine.

I know “feeling unloved” is small potatoes in this age of satanic ritual abuse, pedophilia and child trafficking. No, I wasn’t told to experiment with homosexuality or raised as a girl. These were the 1950′s. Nonetheless, this seemingly trivial issue shaped my life.

What kind of parent lets his baby cry with hunger because it’s not meal time?

I’m not imagining this. In his self-published autobiography, he writes that he let my mother feed my younger brother. As a result, he says, my brother’s personality was “more balanced” and he was “easier to love.” (His words.)

And not a word of apology or regret. He assumed I wasn’t scarred. Amazing how infant experience can scar a person for life.

My wife says, “Get over it. Did your father complain, ‘I was in a Nazi slave labor camp and they didn’t feed me enough?’”

I’m not complaining or seeking sympathy, just speaking my truth. I stopped feeling unloved 20 years ago. I don’t hold grudges. We all make mistakes. I make plenty.

Generally, he was a great father and did his best. I admired him, but I tend to love people who believe in me (give me the benefit of the doubt, meet me half-way) rather than keep me “on track” which began practically at birth.

WISH HE HAD BEEN A FRIEND

“I admired him, but I tend to love people who believe in me rather than keep me ‘on track.’”

I wrote this line last year.

During his last years, I would call every week on FaceTime and tell him how much I loved him even though I wasn’t sure I did. He didn’t say anything and I would search his face to see if he understood.

Two weeks before he died, his soul seemed to reach out to me.

He was frightened.

I felt a real spiritual connection for the first time.

I called again the next day hoping to renew this connection but his facial expression had turned to anger.

They had given him the vaccine a month earlier. I think he knew it was killing him.

He wasn’t ready to die. He was pretty comfortable in the nursing home. His private Filipina caregiver was devoted to him.

If only I had been mature enough to overcome our lifelong feud when we were younger. I could have had that spiritual connection. Now it’s too late, forever.

The lesson is, don’t let differences prevent you from loving the people closest to you. The opportunity ends.

As a child, we’d go for long walks. I would hold his thumb and ask him questions about life. This memory still brings tears to my eyes. He was my father.

Life-long antagonists, I didn’t think I loved him.

I didn’t think I’d cry.

But I did. And still do.

—-

Makow – Feminism Deprives Girls of Father’s Love
——– “Sensible Son”

David Makow - A Promise to Live

———————— Dangerous Luck

Source: https://henrymakow.com/should_a_father_be_his_sons_fr.html

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