Mariska Hargitay: Redefining The Meaning Of A ‘Real Father’ Through Filmmaking – And What My Mom Jayne Says About The Dated Views On Modern And Traditional Families Of The 1960’s

As of late, we’ve been talking a heck of a lot about old Hollywood legends, as well as the dynamics of co-parenting following a divorce. But there’s also the dynamic of raising someone else’s child as your own. It’s exactly what happened to Mariska Hargitay, the star of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She’s the daughter of Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay. Mansfield passed away in 1967 in a car accident at the age of 34. Mariska was in the car with her, but survived, and she was then raised by Mickey, alongside his second wife, Ellen Siano in the years that followed. Mickey himself passed away in 2006.

Mickey and Mansfield initially divorced in 1963, but when she found out she was pregnant, they decided to stay married because, at the time, being an unwed single mother and having a child out of wedlock was considered to be an unacceptable act, and it would’ve endanger her career as an actress. So he raised Mariska as his own, and he did so until the very end. In more recent years, Mariska revealed that Mickey wasn’t her biological father, and instead, it was Nelson Sardelli. Mansfield and Sardelli had a well-publicized relationship in the 60’s, and the two even planned to marry after her divorce from Mickey was finalized. Mariska herself only found out that Mickey wasn’t her father three decades later, well after Mickey died at the age of 80 in 2006.

In an interview on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Mariska recalled Mickey’s last moments, ‘He used to say, even before he died, ‘Remember when you thought that crazy thing?’ and I go, ‘I know, wasn’t that nuts?’ I went with it, and then I felt like I became the parent in a way, and I was grateful to be that.’ He made a choice, and that was his new truth, and whether it’s true or not emotionally, it was his truth. And I’ll tell you something. I understand it because I have two adopted kids, and they are no different, no different than my biological son, no different, and so to me, I go, ‘I get it.’ It didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’

Mariska didn’t ever know whether or not Mickey knew she was his biological daughter, and it didn’t matter to her because she herself understood his position as an adoptive parent. She’s been married to Younger actor Peter Hermann since 2004, and together they have 3 children, 2 of them adopted. It was only in her documentary about her mother, My Mother Jayne, that Mariska revealed to the world that her biological father was, in fact, Nelson Sardelli. It was a long-standing that Mariska was his biological daughter, but those rumours were never confirmed. Mariska herself only found out 30 years ago, and she’d kept it a secret up until now.

My Mom Jayne, available to stream on HBO Max, was a beautiful tribute from a loving daughter to a mother she didn’t even know. Mariska was only 3 years old at the time of Mansfield’s death. The subject of Mariska’s parents and her finding out the truth was a heavy subject in the documentary. While he had intentions to marry Mansfield, Sardelli and the actress decided to part ways, with Mansfield unable to make up her mind about whether to stay with Sardelli or go back to Mickey, who she also loved. In the documentary, Sardelli told Mariska, ‘I say this with the biggest shame of my life, I was wrong. I can’t imagine what your father felt, but I am grateful to him. Your grandmother Vera wanted me to rock the boat and claim you or something. But by that time, Mickey was the father you knew. And your siblings, they were your siblings. What would I be accomplishing that would be beneficial to you? And as the years went by, I had a chance to talk to Mickey Hargitay one time, and he said to me, ‘Nelson, nobody has to tell me who is the father of my child.’ And I said to him, ‘I will not embarrass you in any way. Never.’’ Mariska’s half-sisters, Giovanna and Pietra Sardelli, also appeared in the documentary and recalled their father telling them of her, ‘This little girl has a father who loves her like I love you. This little girl is safe. And if she’s okay, she has just lost her mother, you cannot take away the only family she knows.’

So it’s safe to say that all this was done out of love, as well as the great intention of Mariska to be well taken care of. Though the intentions were good, the actions of her parents left a lasting impact on Mariska. Of confronting Mickey, Mariska said, ‘I was in so much pain, but I could see his pain was almost worse. So, I decided I wouldn’t talk about it again and I would never bring it up to him again, and I never did. I mean, who was I related to? Who did I belong to? And then, on top of it, I was born out of some affair, like some illegitimate, sinful mistake. I was so angry at my mother for leaving me in this mess, and for hurting my father, and for leaving me feeling so alone and untethered. So, for me to survive, I excised, disowned the part of myself that was my mother’s daughter.’

The (biological) father-daughter duo met 30 years ago when Mariska went to see Sardelli perform in Atlantic City and introduced herself. It wasn’t a fairy-tale scene for Hargitay, though. Mariska never told Mickey of this in an act to honour him as her father, the father she’d always known. She told Vanity Fair, ‘I went full Olivia Benson on him. I was like, ‘I don’t want anything, I don’t need anything from you.… I have a dad.’ There was something about loyalty. I wanted to be loyal to Mickey. I grew up where I was supposed to, and I do know that everyone made the best choice for me. I’m Mickey Hargitay’s daughter—that is not a lie. This documentary (My Mom Jayne) is kind of a love letter to him, because there’s no one that I was closer to on this planet.’

In a twist of fate, Mariska’s life mirrored that of her mother’s. When she was 3 years old, like Mariska after her, Mansfield was in a car with her father when he died of a heart attack. Before she was even 20 years old, the actress had gotten married, had a baby, and begun to study acting in college. She moved to Los Angeles with her first child, Mariska’s sister Jayne Marie, in 1954, and soon left her husband. The divorce was messy, to say the least. Her husband had even attempted to take their daughter away from her. Mansfield always wanted to work, particularly as an actress, and marriage and children weren’t about to slow her down.

Vying for more serious roles, one suggested Mansfield try bleaching her hair and wearing tighter dresses. She took that advice and added a breathy, Marilyn Monroe–style voice to the mix. Her hope was that once she got her foot in the door, she’d break out of pinup prison. She was never taken seriously. She’d struggled to get anyone to see past her breasts in her career, despite desperate measures and many attempts. By the time she died in 1967, she had become the floating signifier for a 1950s bombshell—mostly famous for being photographed.

This image of her mother, a blonde bimbo, the butt of everyone’s joke, left Mariska mortified. She said, ‘It all started with the voice. When I would hear that fake voice, it used to just flip me out. I’d think, Why is she talking like that? That’s not real. My dad would always say, ‘She wasn’t like that at all. She was like you. She was funny and irreverent and fearless and real. I just wanted my mom to be like the other moms! Like, Why are you always in a bathing suit? Why so much breast? I just wanted a maternal mother image. I was embarrassed by the choices that she made.’ And when the journalist interviewing Mariska for her Vanity Fair cover story showed her that infamous photo of her mother with Sophia Loren, she said, ‘That was a rough one. To see another woman look at your mom like that was excruciating for me as a little girl.’

Despite Mariska going through what people might call ‘mommy issues’ throughout her life, she never had ‘daddy issues. Her father, Mickey, was beyond reproach. She said, ‘He was my everything, my idol. He loved me so much, and I knew it. I also knew something else—I just didn’t know what I knew.’ We now know that that something that Mariska was talking about was the fact that Mickey wasn’t her biological father. I’m personally against writing such words as ‘real father’, because he WAS her real father. It was only science that said otherwise. A ‘real father’ is generally understood to be more than just the biological or legal father. It encompasses the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of raising a child, involving love, support, guidance, and active participation in the child’s life. It’s about being a constant presence, a source of strength, and a mentor, not just a provider. To break things down more thoroughly:

• Biological vs. Real Father: While a biological father is the male who provides the sperm, a real father is the one who actively raises the child. 

• Emotional Connection: A real father fosters a strong emotional bond with his child, characterized by love, support, and acceptance. 

• Guidance and Mentorship: He provides guidance, advice, and helps the child navigate life’s challenges. 

• Active Involvement: A real father is actively involved in the child’s daily life, participating in activities, providing support, and offering encouragement. 

• Unconditional Love: He offers unconditional love and acceptance, regardless of the child’s choices or circumstances. 

• Beyond the Basics: A real father isn’t just about providing basic needs like food and shelter; he also nurtures the child’s emotional and social well-being. 

Throughout this blog’s life span, as recent as the latest few posts, I’ve heavily spoken about my father-law’s biggest failure – fatherhood. If there’s anything that he’s ever good at is business. He’s great at sales; great at public speaking; great at being…fake. He’s intellectually smart. He reads a lot of books. But he’s a big failure as a father and as a family man. I personally, and I’m only assuming as I never had a single conversation weigh the man in the years that I saw him around when my husband and I had to, I think he only liked the mere idea of family throughout his life. He wasn’t a real father to my husband. The only thing he provided for him is shelter. When my husband worked at my father-in-law’s firm, my husband was treated as employee, both at work and at home, and he’d consistently abuse his power over my husband, both on him as an individual and on us as a couple. The list of things that makes a man a ‘real father’ isn’t anything that my father-in-law ever was to my husband. There was no emotional connection between them, ever. There was no guidance or mentorship that he ever provided to my husband. There was no active involvement from him in my husband’s life. My father-in-law’s love was ALWAYS conditional and pricy.

All those things, my husband had gotten from my dad since he became part of our family. So much so that my husband now refers to him as his dad, which is absolutely lovely. My husband always tells me that he never got a sense of belonging until he became a part of my family. He never even knew what that word meant to begin with. Knowing exactly what experience was growing up with someone like my father-in-law and having someone like him in his life control him in the ways that he did made me appreciate my own family more than ever. My husband always reminds me how fortunate I am to have the family that I do, and by no means do I ever take that for granted.

The fact of the matter is, my father-in-law is incapable of being a ‘real father’. He’s lonely, and he wants to have people in his life. He wants to have a family, but when he does have that everything is on his terms. This might work in his head, but in real life, it just doesn’t work that way. That incapability became an integral component of my husband’s own parenting style. He wants to be a ‘real father’ to our son that he never had in his life. He wants to be everything to our son that my father-in-law wasn’t to him. And I can wholeheartedly say that he’s doing an amazing job at it. He’s the father that I always knew he could be, and he really doesn’t give himself enough credit. He’s too hard on himself because he so afraid of f*cking up. He’s petrified that his son will think of him what he thinks of my father-in-law.

You’re probably wondering why I’m discussing this in length and what it has to do with the main subject matter. I’m here to tell that it has EVERYTHING to do with it. I’m putting such an emphasis on my father-in-law for one simple reason: here we have my father-in-law, a man who’s biologically a father but isn’t a real father never was, never has been, and never will be. And then we have a man like Mickey Hargitay, a man who was a real father to a daughter that science said wasn’t his. He did everything for her that a father, a ‘real father’, should. He gave her love. He gave her nurture. He gave her guidance. He gave her attention. He gave her the world. And, in turn, even though she knew that he wasn’t biologically his, still saw him as her ‘real father’. She still considers him to be her everything; her idol, even now, as she has maintained a relationship with her biological father.

It takes a certain type of man, I think, to knowingly raise another person’s child. I know several men who’ve done so. I know of these situations in the case of them being stepfathers to their partners’ children, and they stepped up to raise the children and become the children’s father figures as their children’s biological fathers weren’t present. It wasn’t that the mothers didn’t allow them to be present in their children’s lives, but rather that the fathers CHOSE not to be present in their children’s lives. Seeing how not having their biological fathers in lives has affected the children with my own eyes has truly been heartbreaking. Seeing them asking for their fathers and the mothers making up excuses for their fathers not being there for them because they know the fathers don’t want anything to do with them…

Jayne Mansfield made a choice for herself and for her daughter – to be with Mickey Hargitay and have him raise Mariska as his own. She knew he could provide her everything she needed; everything Mariska needed – the love, stability and nurturing. To some, it might’ve seemed like the wrong choice. But it was the right choice for her. And who are we, the public, to judge her for making that choice? It was also a different time. It was in the 60’s the entire saga unfolded. The definition of family was different than it is today. At the time, the average happy-go-lucky family usually consistent with a mom, a dad, and two to four children. Mansfield already was living the non-traditional lifestyle of a modern family. She was divorced, set to get divorced from her second husband when she found out she was pregnant, and still in love with the man that could provide the life that she wanted for herself and her unborn child.

That very conscious, very difficult decision that Mansfield made turned out to be the best thing for Mariska, which, in retrospect was the most important part of it all. And she, by all means, wasn’t the only person in Hollywood who made that type decision. Remember Gavin Rossdale’s paternity scandal? In 2004, DNA testing revealed that he was the biological father of Daisy Lowe, daughter of Pearl Lowe. Daisy, now a model in her own right, was raised by Pearl’s first husband, Bronner Handwerger. Rossdale was still in Daisy’s life in her early years, but as her godfather. He and Pearl remained friends through Daisy’s early years. There are even pictures of the two of them posing alongside their respective partners – Rossdale with his then-wife, Gwen Stefani, and Pearl with her current husband,  Danny Goffey. Pearl and Rossdale previously dated for 5 years in the 80’s while she was married to Handwerger, a fertility specialist.

When paternity revealed that Rossdale was, in fact, Daisy’s father, Pearl revealed she’d kept it a secret from him due to his strong reaction when she initially suspected it. Following the paternity test’s conclusion, Rossdale cut off all contact with Pearl, but did develop a father-daughter relationship with Daisy. In 2012, while speaking with Easy Living magazine, Pearl, a former Indie singer, said, ‘While Daisy and I are close, things haven’t always been easy. It was a bit hairy for six months when I told her I suspected her father was the musician Gavin Rossdale. Gavin told me if Daisy, then 14, had a DNA test, he’d never speak to me again and he’s kept his word. I lost him as a friend, but Daisy has a relationship with him, which is great.’

Of that time in her life, Daisy previously said, ‘[It was] a very interesting time. That age is when you’re at your most malleable; you’re developing frontal lobes. But I’m very proud of those times, ‘cos at those moments when the s*** hits the fan I could either go out and get really f***** up or I could go home, cry myself to sleep and wake up in the morning and give my mum a big cuddle, and feel better. And face it head on.’ This story has a happy ending, though. When Daisy got married just recently, she was showered with love and had all her parents by her side. She was walked down the aisle by both Rossdale and Goffey, and Rossdale and Pearl even posed for photos together with their daughter. Daisy now has a daughter of her own, Ivy Love.

Pearl Lowe and Gavin Rossdale’s paternity story greatly reminded me of a particular storyline on Nashville, a TV series which starred Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere and ran between 2012 and 2018. In it, Britton’s character, Rayna, is introduced as a married mother of two young daughters who’s also working hard on her music career as an aging 40 year old woman. We then come to understand that her older daughter, Maddie is the biological daughter of Deacon Claybourne, played by Charles Esten. Though never as a father figure, Deacon was always in Maddie’s life as a family friend, and she loved him as an uncle-figure.

We, as viewers, come to understand that Rayna made the decision to not tell Deacon of her pregnancy when she first found out due to his drinking. She decided to instead marry her husband, Teddy, have him raise Maddie as his own. Maddie was 13 years old when she accidentally found out of the paternity after she found documents stating Deacon’s paternity. The news devastated Deacon, and he was triggered to start drinking again, which almost cost his life, as well as Rayna’s, when he caused Rayna to lose control of her car while driving due to his drunken state.

Though it was hard, and a real adjustment, at first, Maddie and Deacon develop a loving father-daughter relationship, and she eventually starts calling him ‘Dad’. Unlike Rossdale and Pearl Lowe, Rayna and Deacon get together after years apart and build themselves a family of their own. Teddy, on his part, couldn’t handle the blossoming relationship Maddie had built with Deacon as father-and-daughter and distanced himself from her and his biological daughter, who eventually also started calling Deacon ‘Dad’.

Rayna, of course, had her reasons for deciding to have another man raise her daughter as his own and not tell the biological father until years later. She wanted stability for her daughter, something she knew Deacon was incapable of providing at the time. And so did Jayne Mansfield, as did Pearl Lowe. Did this make these 3 women people? No. It means that they were doing their best for their children. Whether it was the right choice isn’t up to us to decide as an outside perspective. No matter the case, no matter what you think about the situation at hand, one thing remains true: a man stepping up to raise another man’s child is commendable; admirable; and even brave. As an amazing father as my husband is to our son, I don’t think he’d ever be able or willing to raise another man’s child as his own. It’s also admirable, particularly in Mariska Hargitay’s and Daisy Lowe’s cases, for the child involved to still consider their stepfather their ‘real father’, and still want to continue to honour them as that while also developing a relationship with their biological fathers following the devastation of finding out the truth; the real truth.

Life is messy. Life is complicated. Life is complex. It’s filled with ups and downs. As a mother, you constantly try to do what’s right by your children. I don’t know if I would’ve ever been able to do what Jayne Mansfield did; or Perl Lowe did; or the fictional Rayna Jayne did. But I can also empathize with their decision as mothers to do right by their children. And so to leave this blog entry on a more positive note, here are a few Jayne Mansfield quotes:

• If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.
• If you want the best things in life you have to earn them for yourself.
• Sex appeal is a wonderful, warm, womanly healthy feeling . . . it comes only from inside, it’s from nothing that’s manufactured. It has nothing to do with measurements or lipstick color. To me, it’s cleanliness, and youth, an effervescent desire to enjoy life.
• It is the most wonderful feeling in the world, knowing you are loved and wanted.
• I will never be satisfied. Life is one constant search for the betterment for me.
• A lot of happiness can be brought to the mentally distraught by a little understanding.
• I want to earn my own way, I like having nice things but I’ve never accepted anything I haven’t earned.
• You know which title I like best? I like to be called mother.
  

Being a mother is the toughest job in the world. No matter what a woman does in her life, motherhood will always be the toughest, most rewarding job in the world, should she choose to become a mother. Everything we as mothers, and every decision we make for our children until they turn 18, will greatly affect them for the rest of their lives. We make mistakes, but nonetheless, we try our best to do right by our offsprings. For Jayne Mansfield, choosing for her daughter to be raised by another man wasn’t a mistake. She did what she thought was right; was the best decision for her family. Mariska herself admitted that even though it was a hard pill to swallow that Mickey wasn’t her biological father, no science would ever tell her that he wasn’t her ‘real father’, and what her mother did and the decision she made was the best thing for her.

The end…