And so of 99% of animals in the mammalian world, and 99% of human beings throughout cultures, times, and places, females have been vindictively, selfishly gate keeping? Absurd. My point is that while we live in an artifical culture that grants a certain status and position to the married man, the husband, of children born to his wife, the presumed biological sire, and while we claim that it's equality (under the law), that does not change the reality that women and men do not feel siilarly about their children, that small children are rarely as attached to their fathers as to their mothers, that parents are seldom equivalent caregivers, and that the natural bond is between mother and child. There are exceptions here and there, unusual persons, unusual situations, but by and large it's sheer delusion to pretend that it's the same or should be the same.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/018.htm
Maternal gatekeeping? First off, the word "control" is invariably used by men as the supposition of the emotion or motivation mothers are feeling vis a vis their children. But it's rarely used by the mothers I hear from. I think that in the absence of men's understanding that what women are feeling toward and about their children is so very, very different from what men are feeling that they project their own motives, thoughts, and behaviors (i.e. "If I behaved like that what would be my reason for it") onto the mothers.
Only someone who has actually given birth to a child and also really and truly believed that they loved other children they may have reared earlier can truly understand maternal feelings and how they are so vastly stronger and different from even the love that a "mother" for an adopted child or stepchild, even one reared from birth. There just is no comparison.
Why shouldn't a mother have a special and the highest position in a child's life? She is the child's mother. More importantly, why would she come to feel that as being threatened? Whatever you may think, it's absolutely not about the child's also loving anyone else. Children can be quite attached to others, e.g. grandparents, and this isn't an issue. Love isn't something in limited supply (more for you, less for me.) Moreover, no child is going to feel the same about anyone other than the mother, or, assuming the mother is not abusive, ever be more attached to anyone else.
Some men engender their own problems because (articulated in their own minds or not) they are in fact engaged in competing and countermanding. I
don't know where this belief that children "should" love them equally or more than the children love the mother, or the desire that children do so, comes from, but it's highly misguided. Children "should" do no such thing, and true parental love is not a two-way street. Parental love isn't like relationship love with a spouse. There is no tit-for-tat. As it turns out, children likely tend to be even more attached to both of their parents than vice versa in some ways (because they are dependent and
because parents define their world when young), but parental love isn't cultivated by the parent's conscious behaviors. This is something many fathers simply don't understand. You can't try to be loved, because the more time a parent spends trying to be loved, to get love, the less that parent is in fact focusing selflessly and outwardly doing for the child.
It will feel wrong and it will be wrong. See, e.g. this:
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/farrell-holiday.html