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Tiger Woods Misses His Daughter's Birthday

By Dr. Boyce Watkins, PhD on Jun 23rd 2010 12:32PM
Filed under: Golf & Tennis

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Tiger Woods Misses His Daughter's Birthday

Radar Online is reporting that Tiger Woods broke a promise to his family that he wouldn't miss another one of his children's birthdays. Tiger's daughter, Sam, turned 3 on June 18, and reportedly Tiger was nowhere to be found. According to the site's primary source, Woods made a promise to fly Sam out to California at the time of her birthday: "It never happened. Instead, Elin had a birthday party for her at the house in Florida."

Tiger spoke back in April about what he missed while in rehab, including the first birthday of his 1-year-old son, Charlie. "Because of the time frame of it, I missed my son's first birthday and that hurts. That hurts a lot, and I vowed I'd never miss another one after that. I can't go back to where I was," he said.

It's hard to agree with or justify why a man would deliberately miss the birthdays of his young children. If it is the case that Tiger simply squelched his responsibility, then that cannot be excused. The years we have with our children simply cannot be replaced, and we all know that.

All the while, we must remember that in every relationship, there are two decision makers. While the public is made fully aware of the fact that Tiger was not in Sam's presence during her birthday, we are not aware of what his wife may have done to contribute to his absence or the fact that Sam wasn't flown to California.

Here's another way to look at it: I recall during my own childhood, birthdays were never celebrated on the day you were actually born. Since I had to wait until my mother got paid, we would only celebrate birthdays on Saturdays. That's when we would receive gifts, have the party or do whatever we planned to do.

I bring up my own childhood because one can honestly argue that specific days don't mean as much as we think when it comes to celebrating life or love. Tiger could just as easily celebrate Sam's birthday later in the month, when they are both free to be together. He may also decide to have two Christmases for the children, so they can celebrate with both of their parents.

We live in a new day and age in which creative parenting might be called for. I don't forgive Tiger if he is neglecting his children, but missing his daughter's birthday doesn't imply that he is at fault. Perhaps the media needs to get off his back on this one.

Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.

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