Although Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden, and Forgiving My Father, by Lucille Clifton, have opposite plots, the overlapping theme between the two pieces is emotional distance between the narrator and their fathers. Both fathers create emotional distance with their children. In Forgiving My Father, the father does not provide for the family financially creating resentment from the daughter towards her father; where as, the father in Those Winter Sundays is physically unavailable in order to make money and provide a stable lifestyle for his children. By comparing Those Winter Sundays and Forgiving My Father, it is clear that being a father requires more than physical presence and providing for a family.  

Throughout the poem, it never becomes apparent whether the speaker in the poem is male or female, which makes this piece reach to a larger audience. By not clearly indicating the sex of the speaker, the poem becomes more relatable to children whose fathers work hard to provide for their families and do not see him as often as they should. In the first line, Hayden writes, "Sundays too my father got up early," indicating that his father woke up early almost, if not all, days of the week (327). Sundays are generally treated as a day of rest but for the speaker's father, he must wake up early, during a time of year in which people usually work less, in order to provide a standard lifestyle for his family. Hayden uses powerful and descriptive imagery throughout the poem, starting when he describes the temperature as a "blueblack cold," such as the color of a dead body that has gone cold (327). Hayden's most powerful and relatable words in the poem are "then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him" (327). Most people have experienced that cold dry air that winter brings that makes physical aches more prevalent. Hayden describes the fire as banked meaning it is a low burning fire without any large flames. This low burning fire is small but is sufficient in producing heat similar to how the father is not providing a luxurious lifestyle but one that is good enough. The speaker then admits that the father is under appreciated for his hard work because he is not physically available. The speaker is too young to realize that the father's most grand gesture of love towards his family is getting up early and working hard everyday to provide for the family and literally providing warmth.  

Hayden describes his mornings in the second stanza, "I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. And slowly I would rise and dress, Fearing the chronic angers of that house" (327). Hayden describes the rooms with sounds of "splintering" and "breaking" which happens when objects warm up and expand. Although the father literally provides warmth in the house, the splintering and breaking is also occurring between the father and child as he still feels cold due to the lack of time able to be spent with the father. In the last stanza the father continues to show his child love with labor, which is clearly not what the child wants but certainly needs. The child speaks "indifferently" towards his father further expressing the lack of appreciation (327). The speaker indicates that he no longer feels this way and regrets not appreciating his father when he says "What did I know, what did I know" (327). When the speaker looks back, he understands that the reason the father worked was out of love for him. The changing of the temperature is important to the piece because the father is working in the cold to keep the family warm, ironically, making the father-son relationship cold. If the title is any indication, this was an ongoing issue in the household, otherwise it would be titled "That Winter Sunday." 

In Forgiving My Father, the speaker is almost forced to forgive her father because her parents have passed.. The speaker begins addressing her father about paying the bills from that week. She says "it is friday. we have come to the paying of the bills" (Clifton, 330). The daughter goes on to say "all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man" (330). The daughter is haunted by the memory of her father asking for more time because he doesn't have money to pay the bills. She also describes her father as an "old man," "old lecher," "old liar," "needy," "old pauper," and an "old dead man" these disrespectful terms she uses to describe her father show how emotionally detached and emotionally distant she is with her father. The daughter continues to call her father a liar and says "I wish you were rich so I could take it all and give the lady what she was due" (330). She wants her father to pay her mother the money that she was due in order to have a decent lifestyle and blames his failures on her grandfather when he describes him as the "son of a needy father" (330). Clifton writes "you gave her all you had which was nothing, you have already given her all you had. you are the pocket that was going to open and come up empty any friday" (330). In the eyes of the daughter, the father giving all that he had was not good enough for her mother nor her. In the last few lines, the daughter shares some of the blame about their financial struggles saying "you were each other's bad bargain, not mine" (330). The daughter felt that it was unfair that her parents having problems should affect her. The daughter stops and asks herself "what am I doing here collecting" (330). The daughter explains that it is pointless for her to think back and wish that her father gave more. She goes on to say " you lie side by side in debtors' boxes and no accounting will open them up" (330). The daughter is saying that her parents have passed and even if they're financial debts were clear it would not help them.  

It is clear that neither father was emotionally close to their child. In the case of Those Winter Sundays, the father who worked her hard and provided for his family was taken for granted and unappreciated. No amount of money would make the child happier than having a relationship with his father. Contrarily, the daughter from Forgiving My Father, wanted both a relationship and financial support form her father, although in the poem she mainly refers to their troubles as financial. Many studies have been conducted which have concluded that simply having a father or father-figure present in a child's life makes them more likely to be higher functioning, both academically and socio-emotionally. 

In a study examining father involvement with 134 children of adolescent mothers over the first 10 years of life, researchers found that father-child contact was associated with better socio-emotional and academic functioning. The results indicated that children with more involved fathers experienced fewer behavioral problems and scored higher on reading achievement. This study showed the significance of the role of fathers in the lives of at-risk children, even in case of nonresident fathers (Howard). 

Socio-emotion and academics are not the only areas that presence of a father impact. According to a study conducted by Cynthia Harper, those who were raised without fathers or were abandoned early are more likely to be incarcerated. A similar study conducted by Connee Bush concluded that delinquency could be predicted by "family structure."  

There are many other studies which can show that fathers have a huge impact on the development of children, however in the cases of the children from each poem, they were much better off with the fathers that they had than without one. In Those Winter Sundays, the father tried his hardest in order to provide for his family and in Forgiving My Father, the father was present but the children wanted more. They wanted an emotionally connected relationship. Although presence alone has a positive impact on children, being a father takes more than presence and financial support.
