Encore (A Special Report) -- Generations --- Second Chances: How does it feel to watch one's father become a better parent -- in someone else's family?

By Michaele Weissman
2626 words
19 March 2001
The Wall Street Journal
R14
English
(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Late fatherhood is a privilege nature bestows on men. Divorced, widowed or simply late to bloom, older men have always been able to form new families.

Today, though, older men with two sets of children -- from first and later marriages -- straddle two definitions of fatherhood. Thirty and 40 years ago, when many of these men first had sons and daughters, a "good" father typically was defined by how much money he earned and how successful he was at his work. Little else was expected. Now, these men, often in their 50s or 60s, are expected to share with their wives the job of nurturing children.

Many older men describe this new, more equal way of parenting as liberating. Changing times have given them the opportunity to connect with their second families as they never did with their first. But where does a man's second chance leave his first children? How does it feel to watch your father finally get it right -- but not necessarily with you?

Some children, of course, adapt to this role reversal more easily than others. They leave home, start their own careers, raise their own families. Their fathers, meanwhile -- or "refathers," as authors Martin and David Carnoy describe late-life dads in their book on the subject -- in many cases acknowledge the mistakes they made and work hard not to repeat them.

Washington lobbyist and consultant Charles Estes, 54 years old, says he certainly has more time, and makes more time, for his eight-year-old son, Peter, than he did for his now-grown daughters when they were small. One of those daughters, Catherine Estes, 26 years old, agrees.

"When my sister and I were little," she says, "I don't remember my father being around very much. He was a staff director for a Senate committee. His job didn't have a set schedule; he worked round-the-clock. With Peter, my half-brother, it's different. My dad went into business for himself. He's more flexible with his time. He still works a lot, but he can make it to school events, soccer games, that sort of thing."

Some children of first marriages, though, find it more difficult to embrace their "new and improved" fathers. In a sense, these adult children are living lives that are fairy tales turned inside out. In their story it is not young heroes who strike out in search of adventure, waving goodbye to aging parents who stand in the doorway dabbing tears. In their story it is the children who stand in the doorway, watching as their father sets off to start a new family and becomes the parent they never had.

Dennis Aufranc, age 59, finds himself a part of several stories. A second-time husband and father, he owns and manages a New Hampshire inn, which houses guests as well as his new family. With his wife -- an insurance executive who is on the road much of the time -- as the main breadwinner, Mr. Aufranc and his children -- a daughter, age 11, and a son, age four -- are all but inseparable.

"At our house, instead of, `Mom, I'm hurt,' we hear, `Dad, I'm hurt,'" he says with evident satisfaction.

Mr. Aufranc's ties to his children from his first marriage, though, are more complicated. Those children -- Michael, now 39, and Charlie, 30 -- followed different paths after their father's divorce and remarriage. These three men speak for themselves about their lives and their relationships.

Michael Aufranc

Michael Aufranc lives in Granite Bay, Calif., and works in marketing sales for a large printing company. He chooses his words carefully when he talks about his parents' divorce and his father's remarriage.

"My father seems awfully happy, and that makes me happy," he says. Michael, fairer and shorter than his father, shares his father's athleticism. Married to a woman with two sons, 13 and 15, from her first marriage, Michael himself has no biological children and no plans to have any.

"I was 19 years old when my father made a conscious decision" to move across the country, he says. "You can't help being a little bitter, a little angry -- especially when they remarry a woman your own age. He thought he'd done a good job [as a father]. He thought his work was done. That was somewhat true, somewhat false.

"I got a lot that was positive from my dad," Michael adds, "especially the competitive thing. That really shaped my personality. I played a bit of baseball in college, and I play competitive amateur golf today. My dad and I enjoyed a healthy competition. We enjoyed competing against each other."
Still, Michael describes himself today as feeling as if "something is missing."

"If it were my choice," he says, "my father and I would be closer. Instead he's settled there. I'm settled here. He's pushing 60. I'm pushing 40. If we don't spend time together now, I don't know when we will. It's the way the cards have fallen. I feel the gap. When we do play golf and hang out, it's fun, like the old days."

In the meantime the two communicate by e-mail. They talk on the phone, and visit every year or so. In addition, Michael describes himself as "fairly close" with his younger brother, Charlie, who decided to move to New Hampshire with his father after the divorce.

"I've tried to help him," Michael says. "He was a 10- or 11-year-old kid, living far away from his mother. He was thrust into a rough go. It's true, he chose to live back East, but how much does a kid that age know about what he is getting into?"

Dennis Aufranc

Dennis Aufranc, tall, athletic and dark, is one of those rare individuals who can do almost anything and do it well: hunt, camp, fish, create a spreadsheet, renovate a 150-year-old inn and care for farm animals. On this particular morning, he is nursing an ailing sheep, as well as cooking and serving breakfast to 20 hungry guests at Maple Hill Farm, his three-story bed-and-breakfast in New London, N.H.

Though he appears impervious to aging, the subject is often on his mind -- particularly when the conversation turns to his new family. "I'll be 74 years old when Willie graduates from high school," he notes.

Dennis met the woman who would become his second wife 20 years ago in California. He was 38, separated from his first wife, and contemplating leaving Pacific Bell, where he had been climbing the corporate ladder for two decades. Roberta was 23. They fell in love and got married. After a long search, Dennis bought the inn in New Hampshire. Michael, his oldest son, was in college in California and chose to remain out West. Dennis's younger son, Charlie, then 11, opted to live in New Hampshire with his dad.

When he talks about fathering, Dennis likes to use the word "connectivity," meaning the intense ties between parent and child. Connectivity is also a mathematical term, one that refers to the number of cuts that can be made in a surface before the surface is rent. Both definitions apply to fatherhood, both to Dennis Aufranc's own family.

"The connectivity was there with Michael," Dennis says. "It's still there. I was 19 when Michael was born. We were like brothers. We grew up together. We competed in everything. We played baseball, basketball, golf, we had these wild games of cribbage. We were two kids 19 years apart."

With Charlie, the same close ties began to form -- "until I jumped on the corporate treadmill," Dennis says. Ambitious and smart, Dennis was hungry to make something of himself. He seized the opportunities that came his way. Promotion followed promotion. More and more his job took him away from home. "I was gone and gone and gone," he recalls. "I didn't see Charlie anymore. I guess we became disconnected. With hindsight, it would have been better if I hadn't worked weekends and all those long 10-12 hour days."

"I wanted to prove I was good enough," Dennis says. "I wanted to earn...bigger dollars. My territory was large. The marriage had gone sour. It was easy to stay away."

After remarrying and moving to New Hampshire, Dennis sought custody of his younger son. Charlie willingly moved east, but he didn't adjust well. Dennis says he tried to please Charlie, but nothing -- not even a family trip to Hawaii -- made his son happy. Hard at work renovating the inn and building a business, Dennis soon found himself grappling with an angry teenager. He responded to his son's defiance by retreating himself. "I admit I didn't pay much attention in the same way I do now," he says.

"I could tell by his grades Charlie was in trouble in high school, but I kind of wrote him off," Dennis says. "He was so bitter, so jealous. I couldn't handle it."

And yet, Dennis says he was aware of his son's vulnerability and his needs. "What Charlie wanted was my time," Dennis says simply. "I didn't give it. He wanted to go fishing with me. I didn't make the time."

When Charlie left home, Dennis and Roberta decided to have a baby. "I had a vasectomy after Charlie was born, and I thought all that was behind me," Dennis says. It was Roberta who yearned for children. "I had to search my soul before I made that commitment," Dennis adds. Eventually he decided to have his vasectomy reversed.

Eleven years ago the couple's first child, Helene, was born. Dennis was 48. Ideas about fatherhood had changed drastically since Charlie's birth. Dennis was with Roberta as she labored. "I caught Helene when she was born," he says. "That was amazing." Dennis is clearly enraptured by Helene, who he describes as his "spitting image" -- enraptured and amused by her ability to wrap him around her finger. Willie, meanwhile, is a budding athlete. "Willie plays baseball with his sister and cousins. He throws a football, and he swims like a fish," Dennis says. "Just like with Michael, the connectivity is there 100%."

In sharp contrast with his first stint as a parent, Dennis says he now enjoys playing "Mr. Mom" and being on the front lines with his children. "I have gotten to do stuff that I never got to do" with Michael and Charlie, he says. "It's not that I never changed a diaper or wasn't there for bath time. But with Helene and Willie, I have been there every day. It's different."

He says his relationship with Roberta changed him -- changed his parenting style and made "refathering" a different experience. "I credit my wife with a lot of the positive in our family," he says. In particular, any distance that Dennis once placed between himself and his first children has given way to talk and tenderness -- as well as to what Dennis calls "anger management."

"I have learned to communicate and share my feelings," he says. "That's very important. I never knew how to do that. I am a different person than I was."
Periodically, Dennis reaches out to Charlie, making an effort to mend the fabric of their relationship. This past November, for example, with snow already on the ground, Dennis invited Charlie to go camping and hunting for partridge.

"The guilt is unbelievable," Dennis says, referring to his troubles with Charlie. "You try to use your money to make it better, but it never goes away." He smiles, though, when he talks about Charlie's success as a skilled machinist. "I'm very proud of him," Dennis says. "He does a great job at his work. He's a good citizen."

Charlie Aufranc

"I chose the fun parent to live with," says Charlie Aufranc, who lives in Concord, N.H. Like his father, Charlie is tall and dark, if more wiry.

"My dad lured me out [to New Hampshire], saying we were going to buy a guest house. `You'll help me get started. We'll have horses, go hunting and fishing,'" Charlie recalls his father saying. "Looking back, I wish my mother never would have let me go."

Now a foreman in a machine shop, Charlie is intelligent and good with his hands. Although he has a talent for engineering, he never went to college. In conversation he returns, again and again, to his regrets about his lack of education.

"When I got here, I got depressed," Charlie says, remembering his early teenage years. "After my dad bought the inn. . . I felt I was the black sheep. My grades faltered. I was messing up a lot. I barely made it through high school. I take the blame and responsibility. But still it can't be my fault entirely, because I was a kid."

Looking back, Charlie says he wishes his father had forced him to clean up his act. "I would have rather he punched me in the head and said, `You're off the right road.' I would be more than I am now. I would have gone to college.
"I felt as if I was intruding on my dad's life. I still feel that way. He's got this other deal going on. This other family. It's kind of hard to deal with."

Asked why he didn't return to California to live with his mother, Charlie says, "I always wanted my father more than my mother." But with his father, he adds, "you feel very alone. Even as a 25-year-old man, I cried because of my father.

"Even today I try not to go to my dad's house, because I know I'm going to feel bad. Just to see how he feels about the other kids -- I can't ever redeem myself.

"Still, the relationship has gotten a little better," Charlie says. The overnight hunting trip he and his father went on shortly before Thanksgiving was a success, he reports. "I shot my first rabbit, even though we were looking for partridge. It was cool."

On Christmas Eve, Charlie, his girlfriend, Karen, and Karen's daughter, Jasmine, celebrated at the inn with Dennis, Roberta and their children. "It was pretty nice," Charlie says. "Things are going good right now." Karen, with whom Charlie has been living for a year and a half, and four-year-old Jasmine have made a big difference in Charlie's life.

Charlie says he is working hard at being a steady parent. "I'm strict," he says. "The worst mistake parents make is that they go easy on kids in broken families because they feel sorry for them. I get her to use proper vocabulary, to act right."

It's not just Jasmine who has added to Charlie's life. It's Karen, too. "It's important having someone to share your experiences with," he says. "And it's important to help the next generation to grow up.

"I can see a little girl grow up to be a decent person because of me. That makes me feel good.

"I'm supposed to be the bad guy, so why I am the one who feels compassion? Why did no one have compassion for me?"