frank langdon isn't a bad dad because the whole point is that he's an addict that doesn't "appear" to be an addict. he's functional, he's alert, he is focused and engaged and yes, at times, erratic on account of the drugs in his veins but he is always present and if he's that way in the e.r., it stands to reason that he would be that way at home too. he's probably a bad husband to his wife because they don't want to be with each other. if we're being honest. that tends to make you a bit shit at things, when you have to do them and you don't wanna. but he wants to be a dad. he wears his kid's bracelet on his wrist. he calls them just to hear their little voices. he's locked in on the dad thing and, finally, i think that if you're a person who is analyzing the pitt and the conclusion you come to is that frank is a drug addict ergo frank is a bad dad then i think that speaks more to a subconscious and unjustified association between addiction (an illness) and one's personal value to the tune of addicts have no distinguishable personhood outside of their addiction and non-addicts do which is probably not great but understandable considering how disdainful and hateful the world at large is to addiction as a concept. anyway.
Maybe. Or addicts can love their kids and at the same time be a bad parent in some ways because of their addiction. Sometimes people with a substance abuse problem can turn it on and superficially keep it together in some settings but not in all aspects of their life all of the time.
Honestly, I hate this idea that because he visibly loves his kids that means that his addiction can't possibly be negatively affecting his parenting. You can love your kids a lot and also fail them in some ways. You can love your kids a lot and still choose your substance over them sometimes. It's not always black and white. And I think it's extremely unrealistic to think that someone with a drug dependence serious enough to motivate them to commit crime and endanger their job (that is the culmination of years and $100ks of training) is able to just completely separate the effects of that addiction from other significant parts of their life.
There's love in the sense of the emotions you feel for someone and then there's love in the sense of how you actually show up for someone. Those two things don't always align.
no offense but i don't think that's what OP was saying at all. you're largely speculating here whereas the original post was pointing out that there's no indications in canon that he's a bad father, which is an ambiguous term that we're using in a vague sense here. but everything we've been shown about him as a parent indicates that he's engaged and present and loving, and the assumption that the reveal of his addiction means none of that is true is what the post was discussing. at no point did anyone say that addiction "can't possibly be negatively affecting his parenting." it probably is, in some ways, but we don't know exactly how, so anything beyond that, detail-wise, is always going to be hypothetical. but this was an attempt to point out how the stigma against addiction can creep into your thinking subconsciously even when you're trying not to let it, not an assertion that drugs are a-okay to do with small kids relying on you because as long as you love them then nothing else matters. like can we engage each other in good faith here
Well, I read the OP differently, as suggesting that we should assume he is at home as we see him at work with an emphasis onnhis positive qualities, not the negative effects of his addiction-driven behavior. And also contrasting his presumed parenting (we shouldn't assume he's bad but rather loving and engaged) with his presumed behavior toward his wife (he's probably checked out) - both of which are highly speculative.
I don't know if OP was responding to something I haven't seen but most of the comments I've seen on this show seem to presume that he's either an evil druggie or father of the year and I hate both of those takes because the reality is almost inevitably much more complex. You can be very loving and still be a "bad" parent because of addiction.
Of course my thoughts are speculative - so are OP's. We have seen him have one brief interaction with one of his children of which we only see his side.
You could as easily extrapolate from the canon fact that we have seen him put patients at risk at work through drug diversion and say that he'd likely make similar decisions at home that could affect his children.
