As the helplessly smitten father of two
little girls (with a third on the way), I have a soft spot for stories about
manly dads who freely confess to being wrapped around their daughter’s little
finger. So I was touched when Fox News reported that tough guy action star Jeremy Renner recently gushed about his two-year-old
Ava Berlin in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that will air Wednesday.
Ava is the daughter of Renner, 44, and
Canadian model Sonni Pacheco, who married in early 2014 almost a year after
Ava’s birth. Renner was grateful that he married late in life, after some
career success, so he could afford to concentrate on family. Fatherhood “really
kind of changed my perspective on a lot of things,” he told DeGeneres. “It’s kind of screwed my career in a lot of ways, because I
don’t really care about it so much because I care about her so much. She’s, like, number one in my life. And now I get to
do movies on the side.”
To be clear, his career is still very active but
he has a different motivation now. In an interview with Capitol File magazine, Renner said,
The only thing I think about when I’m not
with my baby is, “How do I get to my baby?” I need to get to her, and I’m very
miserable when I don’t see her. I really love being a father. The only thing
that has changed is my perspective on things. I still work, probably even more.
It used to be all for myself, so I’m not old and broke. All these things I
still do, but I do it now for the future of my baby, and if it gets in the way
of her well-being, then I stop.
Balancing his profession and fatherhood is
challenging because of the travel demands, but Renner claims to make every
effort to stay as present in Ava’s life as possible. “I do a lot of flights
back,” he said to DeGeneres. “I did like forty flights back. From London to [L.A.]
pretty much every other week. [I] see her sometimes for eight hours and then
fly back.”
Fatherhood is “the best thing ever,” Renner said in a Today show segment last October. “Now I
know what real love is, what real existence is. Best thing that I've
experienced in my life.” As clichéd as that may sound to someone who doesn’t
yet have children, as it did to me before I
had kids, I can vouch for the truth of it. Fatherhood is a humbling gift that
throws you suddenly out of the center of your universe and puts you in orbit
around your child instead – as it should be. Good on Renner for recognizing
this and embracing it.
Unfortunately, as Hollywood couples often do
– and “ordinary” couples too – he and Sonni broke up last December after less
than a year of marriage. It’s unclear what went wrong, but a source told E! News that Renner “wanted to make sure Ava had a solid family unit and
tried to make it work. It’s really sad because Jeremy loves Ava so much and
hates that she will live her life with her parents split up.”
Pacheco asked that the court grant her full physical custody of their daughter. The E!
News source said at the time that the custody battle “is going to get ugly. His
main priority is the baby and he will fight for full custody if it comes to
that. All he cares about is being a dad. He is an amazing father. He is worried
she is going to go back to Canada and take the baby.” Apparently he won at
least a partial victory; earlier this month it was reported that Renner and Pacheco were awarded joint physical custody of the
little girl, so he gets more than just visitation rights.
“Daddy’s my best role to date, I think,” the
star of The Hurt Locker and Avengers told Ellen DeGeneres to big
applause from her charmed studio audience. But a father actively involved in
his little girl’s life isn’t just adorable and admirable – it’s also essential
but increasingly rare: one out of three American children now live
in homes without the biological father, as compared to 11% in 1960. That is an alarming decline, considering
the devastating impact that fatherlessness has on children and ultimately on
society.
As Dr. Meg Meeker puts it in Strong
Fathers, Strong Daughters,
a father is the most important man in his daughter’s life. Girls (boys too, but
let’s focus on the girls) need their fathers’ guidance, strength, wisdom, and
loving presence in their lives. Children are adrift without that, and they
often grow to become adults adrift as well.
When an action hero like Jeremy Renner gushes
in the media about his daughter and the joys of fatherhood at every
opportunity, his joy and commitment set an excellent example, especially for
the young male fans who themselves will someday be fathers of little girls.
Hopefully his influence will contribute in some small way to the reversal of
that slide toward more fatherless kids.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 4/23/15)
