Bringing Dads Back Into the Fold

Reuniting fathers with the children they long ago abandoned has become a daytime talk show cliche. An emotionally wounded yet hopeful child, now old enough to be a parent, holds hands with Oprah, Sally, Ricki or Jenny as a frightened and embarrassed man emerges from backstage. Father and child embrace. No one knows what to say, and sobs alternate with awkward giggles. The host brushes away a tear. Audience members in the studio and across the country reach for their handkerchiefs.

For each specific father and child, however, the situation is more than a real-life soap opera that brings good ratings. It can be the resolution of years of anger and confusion, or the beginning of a new struggle to understand the past and move forward.

Mark Bryan has lived every act of the drama. The 46-year-old author was a father and husband at 17. Divorced after three years, he lost contact with his son for the next 14 years. During most of that time, the constants in Bryan’s life were drugs and alcohol. Attempts at getting his life together alternated with downward spirals, self-destructive episodes he attributes to the shame, denial and helplessness he felt.

After he got clean and sober, his son visited him briefly 11 years ago--then they were estranged for the next four years. They have been part of each other’s lives since 1992, gradually forging a strong relationship.

From his personal experience alone, Bryan is an expert in the tender territory of teenage parenthood, young divorce, family separations and resolutions. It is also his life’s work, his crusade, his obsession. He earned a master’s degree in human development from the Harvard School of Education while in his 40s and moved to West Los Angeles from Cambridge, Mass., nearly two years ago. He has written two books on family reconciliation--”The Prodigal Father: Reuniting Fathers With Their Children” (Three Rivers Press, 1996) and the just-published “Codes of Behavior: How to Rethink Your Family and Remake Your Life” (Pocket Books, 1999).

So it was only fitting that he shared the stage last year with Oprah Winfrey and the 49-year-old Northridge man who was stopped by a 29-year-old L.A. police officer who looked like his mirror image. Before a ticket was written, the driver established that the cop was the son he hadn’t seen since just after the boy’s birth. The media spotlight shone on Paul and his son Kelly Benitez for their requisite 15 minutes, the serendipitous reunion story charming all who heard it.

“It looked like it was this touching reunion,” Bryan said. “But I’m interested in not just that moment, but the messy stuff that comes next. Oprah got that. She wanted to talk about these situations as real life. What it’s really about is discovering what the problems are and seeing what happens a month later or six months later.”

In 1998, Bryan participated in five Oprah shows that focused on what he calls “the father stuff. Paul and Kelly are still in contact, but Paul, the father, wanted acceptance, and Kelly, the son, wanted his father to change in ways that he wasn’t willing to do. We’re all waiting for some ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ kind of experience, but that’s usually not what happens.”

Those initial television appearances were so well received that Bryan was chosen to be one of five experts Winfrey enlisted as regulars for a series of “Change Your Life TV” programs. Not surprisingly, three of the five, John Gray, Iyanla Vanzant and financial guru Suze Ormond, show up consistently on bestseller lists. Bryan wouldn’t mind if “Codes of Love” was as successful as the other authors’ books, but he sounds more like a preacher than a salesman.

In fact, he receives no money for a lot of the work he does with what he calls “prodigal fathers, overwhelmed mothers and troubled kids.” Thousands of letters are e-mailed to the Oprah Web site and Bryan’s Web sites, especially Fatherproject.com.

Bryan said, “I get letters and calls from a lot of people who say, ‘I’m in pain. Can you help me?’ ”

*

He wants to help, is a patient listener and has systematized solutions. “The Prodigal Father” is both a personal story and a workbook for absent fathers (with a special section for mothers). Many suggestions are common sense.

“A therapist once told me to go see myself at the age I was when I became a father, and I recommend that to men and women who became parents as teenagers,” Bryan said. “Go to a high school, and look at what 15 or 16 looks like. That helps you have a little compassion for yourself. You can see why you were overwhelmed.”

Bryan was the keynote speaker at the North American Conference of Separated and Divorced Catholics’ annual meeting in June. Irene Varley, executive director of the organization, which educates clergy as well as laypeople, said, “More men came to the conference when Mark was announced as a speaker. He’s someone who knows more about absent fathers than they know about themselves. He’s able to explain to them why their situation is so painful. He challenges them and offers them hope. He encourages them and coaches them. His own experience wasn’t smooth. It took years for him to rebuild his relationship with his son. His story is heavy, but it’s realistic, and he tells it with humor.”

Bryan’s first experience in the self-help field was as co-founder of “The Artist’s Way” workshops, which he taught for 10 years with Julia Cameron, to whom he was married until 1993. Word-of-mouth helped a self-published book, detailing the course in creativity that Cameron and Bryan had developed, sell 1 million copies. Bryan then co-wrote “The Artist’s Way at Work” (William Morrow, 1998) and has consulted and taught for a number of corporations.

The thesis of “Codes of Love” is that it’s possible to enhance self-understanding by viewing family dynamics from a mature, forgiving perspective.

“My theme,” Bryan said, “is it’s never too late to change your life. Everybody makes mistakes. There’s no family without tragedy, there’s no family without strengths. You have to find what those positive things are.”

“Codes of Behavior” offers exercises, checklists and emotional road maps to follow.

Bryan, junior class president at his West Virginia high school and headed to an Ivy League college, began working at 17 to support his young family. He eventually finished college and came close to earning a master’s degree in advertising from Northwestern University. His marketing experience shows in his books. In fact, he seems incapable of expressing a thought without attaching a catchy phrase to it.

“I don’t like to talk about deadbeat dads,” he said. “They’re brokenhearted dads. If they aren’t paying child support, it isn’t about the money. It’s about the emotions they feel. They’re resenting and blaming because they’re sad and ashamed and angry about what happened. Money’s an important component because men are angry that they have no say over where the money goes.”

For a country that supposedly cares about its children, the statistics are chilling: About 17 million children in America grow up in homes in which their biological fathers are absent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than half of those children see their fathers only once a year.

“I’m not against divorce,” Bryan said, “but I’m against the emotional disengagement of either parent from their children, because one or both of them are going to be haunted by that. It’s also a political issue, because single parents, especially women, often get plunged into poverty.”

*

Bryan speaks frequently to groups of clergy and social workers and is a member of the National Practitioner’s Network for Fathers and Families, an organization Vice President Al Gore founded four years ago.

“What we want to accomplish is not just to take a teenage father’s paycheck for child support, but to give them some job training, parenting classes, teach them how to find peer support,” he said. “The important thing is to give them access to some resources. I’m a pragmatist. The climate in this country is very punitive. If we punish and humiliate absent parents, will that work? No. They’ll just leave the state. It’s a messy, emotional problem. . . . Of course there are some deadbeat losers out there. But who are we helping by putting them in jail? I think the vast majority of them are redeemable. I’ve worked with many who went from living in the back of their truck to getting their lives together again.”

*

Mimi Avins can be reached by e-mail at mimi.avins@latimes.com.