Like Father LIKE SON

A number of popular culture's leading men are also exemplary father figures outside the domain of their chosen arenas. Here, we unravel the lessons from their parenting styles, and how they're steering their sons towards gentlemanly betterment even in today's trying times.

- INDRAN PARAMASIVAM

Before the slap, Will Smith could frustrate the boundary between artifice and reality with supreme ease. 2006’s The Pursuit of Happyness, which also marked the big screen debut of Jaden Smith, is a glimmering case in point. For all its shortcomings as a credible cinematic experience, it’s a soaring ode to fatherhood, a rousing paean to the men who not merely brought life into the world, but also guide those lives with a transformative power that radiates outward in the best ways. For all its re-treading of well-trod triumph-of-the-human-spirit narrative ground, it fantastically affirms the obvious ways in which love and sacrifice are the two most potent and perennial aspects of good parenthood.

Sharing the torch

Our ‘formative’ years are as much biological as they are existential. As the cerebral cortex forms, it’s natural for children to look to their parents (or their immediate caregivers and providers) for direction. Behavioural mirroring is one of the most defining aspects of early childhood that has monumental reverberations as a child matures into adulthood. In this regard, how one is parented will have a foundational impact on one’s holistic growth, and, crucially, what one makes of oneself. A most revealing indicator of this is when a child embraces the same, or, at least, similar, vocation as their parents. And for one of the best all-around testaments to this, is the father-son combination of Denzel and John David Washington.