What we misunderstand about absent fathers

"What do dads do on Tuesdays?" This wasn't a rhetorical question when I posed it to my wife as our daughter's birth approached.

Before my daughter was born, I had seen my father just once in the past 27 years.

That's more than 1,400 Tuesdays.

In fact, as a kid I hardly saw fathering any day of the week, save for on TV sitcoms; absent dads were prevalent within my family and among my peers. ...