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Fathers today are unprepared

Becoming a father has changed dramatically. We, men, need to start reeducating ourselves on it.

I became a father in 2019. Before the baby was born I was expecting full equality between my partner and I. “Sure”, I thought, “there will be times where one of us will work more and the other takes care of the kids, but overall we’ll have a 50% stake.”

Well, things didn’t naturally turn out that way. And I would attribute much of what has happened since to being unprepared in a rapidly changing culture.

The 20th century was the era of transformation of the place of the woman. It seems like the 21st might be the transformation of that of the man.

We, men, aren’t yet talking about this change enough. In part this might be because whereas women’s emancipation came mostly from women, men’s emancipation is coming from… well, also… women? To a large extent, men spending more time hands-on at home is the simple result of women spending less time doing so.

How could man’s response to this change be characterised? Reactive? Grudging? Are we putting our heads in the sand like ostriches? Few men have been seen marching down the street for more parental leave. But more parental leave for fathers is coming. Subtly, quietly. Except if you’re reading this in the US, of course, then you’re never getting any.

Only one or two generations ago, the division of roles between father and mother was relatively clearly laid out. Today, in times where prime ministers breastfeed during meetings of the UN General Fucking Assembly, many, if not most, women want to have a career after childbirth.

Feminism has not only created the opportunity for the mother to work. It has also created an expectation on the mother to do so, and with that, a burden. And no small one, for that matter.

In this new world where the feminist ideal has come very far, the young, educated, parenting couple has the opportunity to take on different divisions of roles. And, with it, again, is created a burden to figure out exactly what is the division of roles that the couple desires and then go work hard for that division of roles to become a reality.

It’s both related and analogous to the tsunami of burnouts amongst millennials: having the liberty and opportunity to shape your own life’s story is wonderful. But it also burdens you with the responsibility and accountability to do so. For this generation, a mundane, plebeian life is entirely your own fault.

As of 2021, we’re not quite at the point where we see an equal count of fathers on the school playground as mothers, but the trend is headed in this direction. And so we’re thrown into a new parenting situation. The change has been so quick that even the generation before us offers very little example to grasp on to.

So the 20th century has, obscurely, brought about a rewrite of the Constitution of Parenting. And with this new constitution, huge changes have taken place in the tiny world of new-parent life.

These changes are profound and emotional.

And for these, I was unprepared.

And from the societal, we venture to the deeply personal. And with it, hopefully, a few dad’s might be slightly more prepared for Becoming a Dad in 2021.

Here’s what I expected :

0 months: 🙋‍♂️ — — — 👶 — — — 🙋‍♀️

Here’s what happened:

0 months: 🙋‍♂ — — — — — — 👶 🙋‍♀️

3 months: 🤷‍♂️ — — — — — 👶 — 🙋‍♀️

6 months: 🤷‍♂️ — — — — 👶 — — 🙋‍♀️

18 months:🙋‍♂️ — — — 👶 — — — 🙋‍♀️

The baby was born. 2019. The Netherlands. I only had 2 weeks off, which I extended with another week of vacation and then two more weeks of half-time working.

During these kraamweken things felt very equal between us. We had both become parents together. We were both exhausted, full of cuddly hormones and had our complete focus on our new little family. There was a strong sense of us. We were both running around like headless chicken. Keeping the house clean, everyone well fed (except for yourself), warm, comfy, and as well rested as possible.

The only two apparent disequalizers seemed very temporary. Firstly, my wife was recovering physically. Secondly, she was breastfeeding.

But then started situations like these.

We’re having a walk. The baby snug in my coat. Hands held. The sun out. We’re both so high on hormones that, I kid you not, colours never seemed so bright and beautiful.

But then. I walk through a (very bright and beautiful) red light. On a Sunday morning.With abso-fucking-lutely nobody on the street.

My wife erupted. She came eerily close to putting a couple of meters between my head and my torso.

I started defending myself. For some reason wanting to demarquate territory. Saying things like “I’m just as capable as you in making decisions about our child”. “Sometimes you will have to defer to my judgement”. “I’m not going to be a backbencher dad who obliges to his wife whenever”.

Why was I so defensive? Why did I not just say, “sorry to startle you, baby. If it stresses you out, I won’t do it again.”?

And why did she feel so much more strongly than even my already strong feelings of protecting this cute little bundle of lard?

Other things happened. Regardless of what clothes I put on the baby, >90% of the time they were too cold or too warm and this had to be corrected before we went out.

If the child was crying, I felt someone had to comfort her. She felt she had to comfort her.

My defensiveness spread, to my dismay, to many of these topics. “No, she’s dressed just fine”. “No, stay away, I can comfort her just as well as you can.”

Laying under my defensiveness was a fear of becoming the backbencher. In many parenting relationships around us I saw, with, I admit, not a little dose of judgement and distaste, dads whom received instructions from mothers, like mates from captains aboard a ship. This freaked me out in so many ways. It felt like it would be the end to sex, self-respect, happiness and freedom.

I didn’t want to be a dad who relies on the mother like a dog relies on its boss for food. I wanted to be a wolf dad, free to roam with my kids wherever I wanted.

I felt like I would fail the vision of being equal parents if I let her have her way.

Having lived only two generations ago, I imagine, I would naturally defer and oblige to anything she says about the children and feel no offence whatsoever. “You’re hungry? Go ask your mother.”, “You’re cold? Ask mom for a coat.” (surely, that’s how dad’s talked to a one-month old back in the 70’s).

With some power of hindsight, I still cannot say that all of my fears of becoming a backbencher dad were groundless. Yes, if I could open a communication channel to myself two years ago I would whisper “ friend, you’re a good dad, you know how to take care of your child, and she knows that, too, but she is jacked up to the tits with hormones, so just humor her for now and your place as a coparent will come in time.

I cannot do it over again, this first year of fatherhood (nor do I have that many regrets, for that matter). Yet I impress on you, dear reader, this general idea for year one if you do still have it ahead of you:

This all changed for good, by the way, when this happened:

🙋‍♂️ — 👶 — — — — 👶 🙋‍♀️

Here’s by far the biggest equality terminator. It’s so disequalizing there’s even an emoji for it:🤱.

Like all things becoming a parent, each individual experience is different. But here are a couple of lines that you’ll read easily, but experience intensely:

Breastfeeding from a dad’s perspective:

Here’s a golden tip (it was totally worthless for us but that’s why I call it Golden, to make it at least sound good, for it’s the best I’ve got): before birth, find a lactation specialist. We had an amazing one. And ask them about bottle training in the first weeks. Babies are much easier to bottle train in the first ten weeks due to a suckle reflex they have. But the mother needs to want it and it sucks if it interferes with breastfeeding if that’s already an issue.

If you decide to both work and both parent, it means you’re going to be two captains on one ship: the USS Household, a vessel of the Shit Sweeper class.

And there’s a reason ships have only one captain.

Sometimes, it’s pure heaven to have a co-captain. Having another person you know you can rely on and relate to is very liberating. “I’ll be in the hut while you navigate this bay?” or “that was a very scary storm, wasn’t it?”.

And when pirates are sighted and it’s all hands on deck, it’s also fantastic, especially when you both naturally, quietly, find a specific area of command.

But with another captain onboard, we will find ourself talking about the ship’s management a lot. It becomes a chore in itself. Disembarking the metaphor here, I presently find the vast majority of our communication is about managing our calendar and how the kids are doing.

So while it’s very warming and endearing to be able to relate so much to another person about an experience, you will have to work and, ugh, again, plan, extra hard to keep some time and energy free for your love life. Because that is, after all, the foundation of your relationship and thereby of the family.

I still don’t have the answer to this. But knowing what’s coming might help you prepare. Having a longer term fixed calendar helps. Having fixed “dates” during the week for just the two of you helps. Having a relationship coach or therapist is also great and not to be postponed till the turd has already entered the fan.

Though I know many countries allow for newborn dads to employ their parental leave somewhere during the first year or two after childbirth, I know of precisely zero dads who actually did so.

Here’s why I think it’s a fantastic idea to take part of your leave of absence later on and why you might want to consider it.

During the first two, three weeks, I was full of hormones, adjusting to life without sleep (though you won’t ever come to like life without sleep, you’ll blisfully forget what life with sleep was like) and, of course, enjoying every minute with this little squishy bundle of wonder. I had time to cry of joy. And, importantly, to support my wife’s recovery, even though she had had a nearly scathe-free party. I had wanted to put the word partum here but the computer’s autocorrect insists on party, and who am I to object to a computer. Anyhow, taking those first weeks is definitely recommended.

However, quoting myself earlier in this story, or at least repeating a bunch of characters and emojis, there eventually arrives this moment: “6 months: 🤷‍♂️ — — — — 👶 — — 🙋‍♀️”. My wife had this around 10 months with both kids. We refer to it, with a mixture of fondness and weariness, as her “egoistic” phase, or her mini puberty.

Like an adolescent is finding her identity outside of the family definition, my wife -and I reckon many women- also went through a phase of re-finding her identity outside the family definition. And that included me, the man. Or rather, excluded.

We call it the adolescent phase because I seriously often found myself talking to a face glued to a phone with Instagram on. And when I would ask her kindly “hey, the kids are sleeping, wanna chat a bit during the thirty minute drive?” I would get a response that was completely inaudible yet extremely clear: “leave me alone”.

This meant bad news for me only partly. Once recognised and no longer taken personally -which did take us both a couple of weeks-, I was really happy to give her all that time and space. And, more importantly, while she was out finding her identity, it meant that my kids and I could party 💃 (this time it was really me typing party, no autocorrect involved).

So if you have the ability to take, say, a month off somewhere around T+10Months, it’s worth considering. The ten months will really differ per mom, dad, child, I realise. I know some moms who ran back to the office at T+8days, and I know others who had that moment much later.

For me it is a very special time where the kid is transitioning from baby to toddler, where the child’s singular attention naturally widens to include others, and where I feel I become more important. It’s an opportunity to really bond with your kid without the mom being present. I shifted to present tense here, because I’m currently on a four-month sabattical to do just that. Party.

As men and fathers, we need to become more conscious of the change that is taking place in society. For many of us, living a good life still entails mostly being good at a profession, being useful to society and having financial success.

But while our eyes were focused on women in boardrooms, voting booths and pay checks, we lapsed to see a shift just as big was taking place at our homes.

Whereas feminism has brought together millions of cries for rights, we, men, are leaving ourselves out alone in defining what we want for ourselves. Keeping our identity of the strong and attractive man based on professional success will cause stress with many fathers who struggle to reconcile a desire for pride with an immensely grown sense of responsibility. I struggle with it more than a bit, I must admit, as my time for work has gone down ~50%.

So here we are in 2021. With the question: what do we want manhood and fatherhood to look like in, say, 2041?

Helping each other understand what it is that happens when we become hands-on, caretaking fathers today might be a useful step in answering that question.

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