Harry chapin - cat's in the cradle... can anyone tell me what this song is about?

Question

hey what is the change meant to be about in the song? thx. or what is the song just meant to be about? thx

Answer 1

The story is about how a father that avoided quality time to spend with his son as he was growing up, by finding excuses not to play with him or help him grow..  As the son grew up, married, and had a child, the father now wanted to be apart of his son's life, but the son avoided the father, like the father did to him, by finding excuses to keep his dad away.  The moral is that if you ignore your kids as they are growing up they will ignore you when you seek their company, and as a result, they will turn out just like you..  Irony at its best, in a song.

Answer 2

i have not idea.

i just know that song made alot of money over the years....rich.

i just think it is about the cycle of life

a young man chasing money in a career

when ur young u are selfish.

then u grow old and need attention, but

ur child is a young man now and has grown selfish too

or just learned it from watching u when he was little

Answer 3

The song starts off with the son asking his father if he can play catch or something, but the father keeps blowing him off saying "I need to do work or something" and the son says "I wanna be just like him" so at the start its about a son and a dad, although the dad cares only about work.

Somewhere in the middle it says the son graduated and the dad said "can i talk to you" but the son said "sorry im too busy" so he's turning into what his dad was like. At the end parts the dad is old and the son has a family of his own "the dad asked if they could hang out" but the son said "dad i'd love too if i could find the time" so eventually the son did grow up to be just like his father.

Notice at the start the dad tells his son "cat in the cradle with the silver spoon.....when we get together SON i dont know when, we'll get together then"

at the end the son says "cat in the cradle....... when we get together DAD I dont know when we'll get together then, son.

Then the dad realizes the son grew up just like him.

Answer 4

The verses start out with a natural harmony and depict the tale of a father with his newborn son. Although dad gets the necessities of child rearing accomplished, he doesn't allow himself to put in quality time with his son because of his career. Initially, this seems like no big deal because of his hectic and oblivious life working and paying bills. The recurring verse has the son saying, "I'm gonna be like you Dad, you know I'm gonna be like you..." Over time, both father and son grow into a switching of life roles. The father realizes his son's ambitions and goals of college, grades, and driving and wants to spend more time with him, yet slowly grasps the reality that now his son has no time for such things. In the last verse, Chapin illustrates that the "son" is all grown up with a fast paced job and kids of his own. In a glaring twist of roles, we see that the son now has no time to spend with his father. Sadly, dad realizes that his boy has become just like him.