I have a theory that use of the phrase “emotionally unavailable” hits a peak every third Sunday in June, as people experiencing complicated relationships with their dads pour their hearts out to friends, colleagues, and unsuspecting baristas who innocently ask “how are you doing this morning?” Father’s Day can be a tricky one for many, a day to grapple with the positive—and negative—experiences we’ve had with our pops.
The stories we chose for you today feature people raised by exceptionally impactful patriarchs, an oft-thorny affair. Consider, for example, Johnson & Johnson scion J. Seward Johnson Sr., whose estate battle revealed—as Barbara Goldsmith put it for VF in 1986, “a dynastic psychodrama of pain and rejection, isolation and incest.” Or David Rockerfeller, who at age 87 was still working out what it meant to be the grandson of one of the country’s most famous robber barons.
Then there’s Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, two women whose lives will forever be defined by their dad—and who appear to have no interest in changing that. An interesting contrast are the cases of Anjelica Huston, who dug deep to explore her relationship with father John Huston, and James G. Niven, who has been bracingly honest about the “demanding-famous-father syndrome” he experienced as David Niven’s son.
We’re hopeful that in these pages, you’ll glean some insights that will make this Father’s Day a little bit sweeter. And even if you don’t, you’re still in for a set of great and nostalgic yarns.
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Profiling Ivanka and Tiffany Trump, Sarah Ellison explores the perks and perils of being Donald Trump’s daughter.
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Mining hundreds of little-known Kennedy-family letters, Cari Beauchamp reveals the complicated dynamic among the young JFK, his formidable brother, and their tycoon father as it played out in the arenas of women, politics, and World War II.
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Hers was, in many ways, a fairy-tale upbringing: the swashbuckling father, larger-than-life director John Huston; the beautiful danseuse mother; the rambling Irish estate that was home. Then came her parents’ separation and a move to Swinging ’60s London.
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David Rockefeller recalls a childhood in the shadow of his grandfather’s legacy, the saga of his father’s most precarious undertaking—Rockefeller Center, built in the midst of the Depression—and his own campaign to revive Wall Street by promoting that cruelly obliterated symbol of financial power, the original World Trade Center.
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David Niven provided the classic example of the demanding-famous-father syndrome. James G. Niven tells what it’s like to live under the star’s roof.
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What is the price of a father’s love? $500 million, said the Johnson & Johnson heirs. As the bitterest will contest ever raged through the newspapers, Barbara Goldsmith found a different, deeper story.
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