Absent fatherhood: The tragedy of flawed fathers who are available but not accessible!

Fatherhood is often limited to being a pillar of strength and providing financial support and there's no room for emotional availability and being present. These characters are proof of how that void can leave a lasting impact.

Fatherhood is probably one of the most complex roles in human relationships not just because of the responsibilities it entails, but because it intersects so deeply with how masculinity is understood and performed. To be a man in this world is to be conditioned into silence, endure pain and have immense physical strength. These expectations don’t dissolve when one becomes a father. Instead, they often become worse. And that’s where the paradox of the “absent-present” father begins in this quiet architecture built around masculine care. In comparison to motherhood, fatherhood often lingers in the background in pop culture. This isn’t because fathers don’t care or don’t deserve it. Rather, their care is often more on the silently functional and less emotional side. They are providers not participaters; they solve, they don't feel.

While fathers are often physically present - working, driving, managing, disciplining, they're emotionally inaccessible. They're around but they're not present. This absence is not always rooted in neglect; it is generational and deeply gendered. From a young age, men are taught to suppress vulnerability. When they become fathers, that suppression becomes a barrier between them and their children. What follows is a legacy of sons and daughters raised with skills to rule the world but little to no emotional anchoring. Films have recently caught on to giving voice to this archetype rather than just reducing them to either villains of the story who separate lovers or distant fathers who couldn’t care less. Their emotional abandonment, despite being physically present, is being recognized and showcased onscreen.

Also Read: Parenting tips to learn and unlearn from onscreen fathers!

These characters reveal how even well-intentioned love, when not expressed with emotional presence, can still do damage.

Balbir Singh - Animal

Balbir Singh is a textbook case of the emotionally unavailable patriarch. As a father, he is omnipresent in his son Ranvijay’s life but in the most suffocating ways possible. Balbir equates masculinity with silence and strength, mistaking detachment for discipline just like most fathers of sons do. Not realizing that his son craves acknowledgment, affection, vulnerability. Hence this relationship between father and son explores the deeper emotional violence of a father’s silence. Ranvijay grows up furious, broken and, more than anything, with a mistaken identity of masculinity that avenges blood. This is shaped not by the absence of his father but by his emotional neglect. Balbir may never hit his son, but his refusal to express love becomes a defining trauma - a portrait of how a parent’s emotional absence can be more damaging than physical abandonment.

Mahavir Singh Phogat - Dangal

Mahavir Phogat, in many ways, is a progressive figure. He is probably the man we need because despite societal norms he trains his daughters, Geeta and Babita, in wrestling. But this belief comes wrapped in control and sort of militancy. He loves them but that love comes with conditions on performance, obedience, and success which subtly captures the emotional toll of being molded by a parent who confuses ambition for affection. Mahavir is present - every day coaching, disciplining, guiding but never quite asking his daughters what they want or how they feel. The intimacy of emotional connection is replaced by the rigor of training. His evolution later in the film underlines how long it took for him to see his daughters as individuals, not just vessels of his dream.

Bhaskor Banerjee - Piku

Bhaskor is the progressive man that every woman hopes to have in her life no matter in what capacity. So as a father he is aspirational in many ways, especially for a woman. But he is also a hyper-verbal, highly dependent man, equally demanding, controlling, and emotionally intrusive. He doesn't fit the silent father stereotype but his emotional availability is also selfish. He criticises his daughter’s choices, hijacks her routine, and demands her attention without offering any emotional understanding or support in return. His version of presence is self-centered, leaving little room for anyone else. This doesn’t make him a bad father, just a real one where your maturity comes from realizing that he needs Piku more than she needs him. Even though he understands his behaviour, he will never pause to consider her emotional landscape. 

Shiv Mehta - The Mehta Boys

Shiv Mehta has provided for everything - education, stability, material comfort but withheld the one thing his son needed most i.e. emotional intimacy. His relationship with his children, especially with his son, echoes what is missing, where he acts as a ghost of the father he might have been. Their relationship is defined by a silence so thick that a black and white movie about two men constructing a house fills it instead of conversations. The film unpacks how a caring father’s inability to be emotionally transparent and trust his son creates an inheritance of distance and guardedness in his son. Shiv isn’t a bad father, he’s simply a product of a world that never taught him how to talk to his children openly about how he feels or accept help.

Arjun - I Want to Talk

In this quietly devastating film, Arjun is a divorced father who, while suffering from a terminal illness, is trying to maintain a bond with his teenage daughter. He’s doing the right things - buying a house to provide for his daughter, giving her space and trying to connect through shared interests. But what hurts most isn’t what Arjun does but what he doesn’t know how to do - speak from the heart, share his pain, and sit with his uncomfortable emotions. In that sense he becomes unreachable, distant and hence is misunderstood as not caring. The film becomes a study in how emotional inarticulacy can lead to misunderstandings for a child who misunderstood their father all throughout their life just because they didn’t share their emotions. 

These characters taught us that standing tall and being a provider isn't enough. We don't need fathers who define strength without softness and presence without presence of mind. These complicated portrayals do not villainize fathers, they make space for a messier and more human vision of fatherhood. We don't need fathers to be perfect, we need them to be reachable and emotionally available. 

Are there any fictional fathers that come to your mind who made you feel similarly? Tell us in the comments below! 

For more such stories, follow us on @socialketchupbinge.