Before our daughter was born, I tried to convince myself that being a parent would not have to come to dominate my life and personality. I’d seen it happen, we all have, where a person who was once an original thinker, a dynamic conversationalist, a creative spirit with a vibrant mind at work, suddenly is only capable of talking about the trials and tribulations of missed naps and poop consistency. I’m not even saying I was all of those other things, just that I didn’t want to become the latter thing.
And yet I did. Try as you might, but if you aspire to be the best parent you can be, it does require it to be, for some time, all consuming. It is no part time gig to keep track of what size clothes they’re wearing, do sleep training, transition to age appropriate solid food, stay on top of doctor’s appointments, nurse ear infections, figure out how to keep them safe as they become mobile, and keep track of the aforementioned nap schedule and poop consistency. Even if you’re doing it alongside a partner, or you have extended family/friends who are involved, becoming a parent is a process that requires your mind to focus on very little else.
That changes you. It changes the way you see the world. Not just that you go to different places, do different things (I have been to the Prospect Park Zoo so, so many times in past few years, but do not ask me to recommend a bar or restaurant in my neighborhood), but that your brain chemistry is altered and being a parent becomes the prism through which you take in the rest of the world.
Which is my long preamble1 to say, that is the prism through which I took in the news coming out of the recent Puffy2 trial. I didn’t read everything, or look at every sketch; I checked in here and there over the course of the six week trial. It was over more quickly than I thought it would be, but had an unsurprising verdict. He was found not guilty on the most serious charges (sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges) and guilty on the lesser charges (transportation to engage in prostitution). While the lesser charges still carry a potential of up to ten years in prison on each charge, he isn’t likely to receive that much time, given this is his (somehow) first conviction. The more serious charges were always going to be more difficult to prove and would have put him away for life. It’s no wonder he celebrated the verdict.
And so did his family. Which includes his children. He has seven. His eldest is in his his mid-thirties, the youngest will be three in the fall. After Puffy was indicted last fall, the six eldest children issued a collective statement, which read, in part:
"We stand united, supporting you every step of the way. We hold onto the truth, knowing it will prevail, and nothing will break the strength of our family. WE MISS YOU & LOVE YOU DAD. Quincy, Justin, Christian, Chance, Jessie & D'Lila."
They love their father. And I’m not attempting here to dive into the dynamics of Puffy’s relationship to his children. It’s none of my business and I have no personal knowledge of what it has meant to be have Puffy as a father.
What I’m thinking about, and what I don’t have answers for, is what it means to see Puffy now, to have more insight into his character and behavior, and take in the ways in which his children have shown up for their father. They showed up to trial, they heard the sordid details, they read the news reports—they, like the rest of us, saw the video of him brutalizing a defenseless Cassie—and they have been unwavering in their love and support.
Indeed, it was part of the defense strategy: Puffy is/was a jealous man who had a drug problem and, yes, is/was a domestic abuser, but that did not make him guilty of racketeering. And his children stood by him as he was defined, by his own legal defense team, as a domestic abuser. After seeing just what it is he is capable of. Having to know, somewhere inside, that what we saw on that video were not first time actions.
I’m judgmental by nature, but I’m trying my best not to judge here. I can say, simply… couldn’t be me. For a number of reasons, but back to the prism which has become my primary way of seeing the world: I would not want to allow for the idea that a paternal love could be twisted into a defense of his actions. Culturally, fatherhood is shot through with many ideas, some of them contradictory. We romanticize the role a father plays in the life of a child, their utter necessity, though we don’t actually expect them to do any of the care work. These expectations are changing some, or at least among the hyper-educated and upwardly mobile (hence the “Brooklyn Dad” archetype that has emerged in recent years), but that idea intrigues people precisely because it cuts against the norm. I can walk with my child to a doctor’s appointment and receive praise from a handful of people, as though it isn’t a responsibility I’m fulfilling, but rather an act of self-sacrifice.
While the norm is being pushed against, the norm is still in place, and it is defined in no small part by the persistent threat of patriarchal violence. Fathers are expected to be capable of discipline, in the form of physical or emotional violence (or both), which keeps a child in line. This, the norm suggests, is one of the virtues of a good father.
So I ask: what happens when you see a father (at the time of the video in which we see him beating Cassie, Puffy was the father of six) employ that kind of violence we are taught is virtuous on someone who is not his child, and then his children come to his defense?
I’m doing my best not to judge. I’m doing my best not to say outright depraved I think the whole affair is, how much of an absolute menace Puffy is and has been for as long as he has been a public figure, perhaps even before.
I’m trying to stick to the questions: we can say fathers are important, but who do we actually want them to be?
Writing a newsletter without an editor is an interesting exercise, because my excesses and bad habits as a writer can potentially go unchecked. Like here, where I’m clearing my throat a bunch before getting to the thing, then I’m going a little meta, writing about the writing that I probably shouldn’t be doing. An editor would likely cut this all and leave me a note about getting to the point sooner. They’d be right—it’s a thing I used to tell my students all the time. BUT!
I don’t know why, but I have never been on board with calling in Diddy, or any of those other monikers. All of them are pretty dumb, but Diddy feels especially so. Or at least, *I* feel dumb when saying it.