John Lennon’s son Julian had a complicated relationship with his father. He was a child when his parents separated, and he scarcely saw Lennon after the divorce. As Julian grew older, he began to wonder why his father put such limited effort into maintaining a relationship with him. His mother, Cynthia, recalled Julian asking why Lennon no longer loved him.
John Lennon’s son didn’t feel loved by his father
When Lennon moved to the United States, Cynthia and Julian found out through a news report. For the next several years of Julian’s life, he did not see or hear from his father.
“[T]here was no word from him between 1971 and 1974, apart from birthday and Christmas presents for Julian each year, sent by his London office with no personal note or card,” Cynthia wrote in her book John. “It must have felt to Julian as though his dad had disappeared from the planet. He had been eight when he last saw John. After that, all he had was newspaper cuttings to tell him where his dad was and what he was up to.”
Cynthia explained to Julian that due to Lennon’s immigration status, he couldn’t see his son. While Julian initially accepted this explanation, he began to feel rejected by his father.
“As time passed with no word Julian drew his own conclusions,” she wrote. “‘Dad’s always telling people to love each other,’ he said to me one day, ‘but how come he doesn’t love me?’”
Cynthia said she tried her best to make Julian feel better.
“Privately it was hard not to agree, and I cursed John for making his child suffer,” she wrote, “although I did my best to reassure Julian that, of course, John loved him.”
John Lennon spoke lovingly about his younger son
Lennon’s approach to raising his second son, Sean, was completely different.
“He didn’t come out of my belly but, by God, I made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and to how he sleeps, and to the fact that he swims like a fish,” Lennon said in the book All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview With John Lennon and Yoko Ono. “That’s because I took him to the [YMCA]. I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of those things. He is my biggest pride, you see.”
Lennon took a step back from the public eye to be a “househusband” and raise Sean.
“Also, I had been concentrating on being a househusband and I had sort of half-consciously wanted to spend the first five years of Sean’s life actually giving him all the time I possibly could,” he said, adding, “So I like it to be known that, yes, I look after the baby and I made bread and I was a househusband and I am proud of it. It was an enlightening experience for me because it was a complete reversal of my upbringing. It’s the wave of the future and I’m glad to be in on the forefront of that, too.”
Julian Lennon said he has let go of the anger he felt toward his father
Julian held on to anger towards his father for years. He explained that the death of one of his friends helped him forgive his father.
“With Dad running off and divorcing Mum, I had a lot of bitterness and anger I was living with,” he told CBS News in 2009. “In the past, I had said I had forgiven Dad, but it was only words. It wasn’t until the passing of my friend Lucy and the writing of this song that really helped me forgive my father. I realized if I continued to feel that anger and bitterness towards my dad, I would have a constant cloud hanging over my head my whole life.”
