Op-Ed: Don’t let rich absentee dads off the hook

Although he was fired as President Trump’s communications director before he was ever sworn in, Anthony Scaramucci, in his not-quite-week on the not-quite-job, established himself as many men. He was the hardballer who forced out chief of staff “Reincey” Priebus. He was “The Mooch,” as he called himself. He was the man who described Steve Bannon as a grandmaster of the darkest arts of self-pleasuring.

But to me, he will always be a bad dad.

Scaramucci is not the worst father in the world. Truth is, I don’t know much about the parenting style that he brings to his five children by his two wives and one girlfriend (the girlfriend, after giving birth to child #4, became wife #2). I don’t know if he beats them, belittles them or only lets them eat the organic peanut butter with a skein of oil on top.

What we do know is that after missing the birth of his fifth child, a son, Scaramucci waited four days before visiting. First he had to hang with President Trump at the Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia, dine with Sean Hannity and make his now-infamous phone call to the New Yorker.

Most of us would acknowledge that this kind of parenting failure doesn’t make Scaramucci look good. We tut-tut about it, roll our eyes, chalk it up to the fact that the very rich and very powerful are different from the rest of us. It’s not as if Scaramucci is unusual for Washington — his former boss seems not to have any sort of relationship with his youngest son, Barron, or with his daughter Tiffany.

But we are missing an appropriate sense of outrage. Liberals and conservatives alike worry about absent fathers in the lives of poor children, especially poor, nonwhite children. But our country is governed by substandard fathers (and mothers). Our companies are run, our sports are played and our movies are made by people who don’t see their children as much as they could. We overlook this choice, and forgive it, because absentee parenting is often the price of success.

And yet the evidence is quite clear that good parenting is hands-on parenting. So our cultural norms should be that parents are in their children’s lives on a daily basis.

A “60-hour work week is the maximal ideal for a father or mother,” says W. Bradford Wilcox, who directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. And extensive travel is no good. “There’s no question that the research would indicate — including research on military families, military fathers in particular — that spending long periods away from your children is harmful.”

Not all parents can live up to this ideal. Poor parents often can’t see their children as much as they’d like — they are working too many jobs, or jobs too far away. Deployed soldiers rely on Skype.

But if you have Scaramucci’s hedge-fund millions, there is no excuse for not being in your children’s lives. Same goes for a president, who after all lives where he works. President Obama reportedly appreciated that as president he saw his daughters far more than when he was a senator, spending half his time far from Chicago. Is Trump taking advantage of having living quarters walking distance from the Oval Office? It seems unlikely.

“Trump’s apparent infrequent contact with his youngest son poses a threat to the boy’s development,” says Paul Raeburn, author of “Do Fathers Matter: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked.” “Fathers are very important to children Barron’s age, a scientific fact that is often overlooked. For example, children whose fathers play with them, read to them, take them on outings and help care for them have fewer behavioral problems in the early school years.”

Does this mean that our congressmen and –women, who don’t see their children four days a week when Congress is in session, are inadequate parents? Well, they’re certainly worse parents than they would be if they were around more. Same goes for the many wealthy men and women who work ridiculous hours at law firms, on Wall Street and in hospitals.

I recently had a high-powered lawyer — a man worth millions — brag to me that, even though he was on the road all week, he sees the kids “every weekend.”

Most children of weekend parents will turn out fine. So will children of couples who live in separate cities because of divorces or job opportunities. But we should not pretend that absentee parenting comes at no cost. And it’s hypocritical to encourage hands-on parenting by poor and nonwhite people, or to judge any father or mother who goes back to work soon after having a baby, while giving a pass to people like Scaramucci — who could, if they toned down their career ambitions, see their children more.

Someday, better social policies, including parental leave, will give the non-rich more opportunity to parent as they wish; meanwhile, when rich people forgo the opportunity, we should take note of their choices, naming them for what they are: choices. They’re choices with consequences.

Mark Oppenheimer, a contributing writer to Opinion, is the host of the podcast Unorthodox.

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