need to begin to redefine fathering in a way that makes sense at this point in our history so that it can provide the kind of reassuring comfort and strength for our children that it should. We need to search for ways around the seemingly impossible binds we find ourselves in, so that when we work, it is for a deeper purpose that can be achieved, and when we are home with our children, it is as the fathers we want to be. In order to be able to do all this, we need to look a little closer at the more personal factors that keep us separated from our children.
Chapter 3
Outside from the Beginning
I thought I knew what I was getting into. I really did. I grew up in the sixties, and most of my friends were in no hurry to have children. But almost for as long as I can remember, I had loved kids and couldn't wait to have my own. When my wife got pregnant, I read everything about parenting I could get my hands on. I'm probably the only person in America to have actually read Dr. Spock cover to cover.
We were among the first wave of parents insisting on natural childbirth back when only a handful of hospitals allowed fathers into the delivery room. We even briefly considered something called the “LeBoyer method,” which involved everyone speaking in whispers in a delivery room heated to body temperature and then immediately submerging the new child in a tub of 98.6° water. The idea was to make her transition from the relatively quiet and very warm, wet world into the noisy, cold atmosphere of a standard delivery room that much less traumatic.
I was totally into being a father and thought I was prepared—until moments after my daughter's messy arrival, when the nurse put this tiny little girl into my hands. I was so overwhelmed by the flood of feelings that I damn near dropped her. At that moment, the only clear thought I had was sheer disbelief at how I could ever have been stupid enough to think I was ready for this.
I was scared. I was scared I would drop her, I was scared something might happen to her, I was scared I wouldn't be able to provide everything she deserved, I was scared I would look scared when now more than ever it seemed I had to be strong and in control, and I was scared to death of how quickly and how deeply I loved this squirming little girl.
Fathers are different from mothers. It's so obvious that we don't even stop to think about what the difference really means. The relationship of a mother and her child develops quite literally from the inside out. For nine months, the mother and her child are together in a physical symbiosis that defies comprehension. On the most elemental level, they share in the miracle of creation, and the day of birth is but the first important milestone in their already established connection.
Fathers, on the other hand, come to their children from the outside from the very beginning. We can participate in the progress of our wife's pregnancy, we can place our hands in strategic spots to feel the kicks and jabs, we can listen to the swooshing heartbeat through a stethoscope, and now, thanks to the marvels of technology, we can watch videos of our child floating gently within her embryonic world. But our experience is always filtered; no matter how we participate, fundamentally we remain on the outside. Our first real contact with our child is when we pick up our newborn and cradle her in our arms.
In some profound way, our biological placement in the process of birth mirrors the challenges we will face throughout our children's lives. For most mothers, the primary struggle of parenthood is stepping back far enough to allow the child the room to grow and develop. The challenge for most men, on the other hand, is coming in close enough so that we can build a strong and lasting bond.
As surprising as it might seem, the most crucial time to dramatically impact your future relationship with your children is in the first few years of their lives. This is a time when love and commitment are communicated on the most basic level. A child's infancy is a time of tremendous leverage. The foundation we establish—or fail to establish—will either allow us to build and maintain a close emotional connection with relative ease, or will instill a distance that will make our later efforts more difficult.
The birth of his first child is a pivotal moment in a father's life. It is a time when he must choose—whether he wants to or not—the emotional orbit from which he will do his fathering. The newborn offers a father an opportunity, a doorway back to the emotional world. This is an extraordinary, and tragically, often overlooked possibility. If we choose to open ourselves as widely as possible, to meet our child in the frighteningly vulnerable place from where they begin, it can reunite us with a time and place when we, too, felt completely defenseless, completely exposed, and completely vulnerable. In this manner, it can broaden us and make us wiser.
Pulled together at the moment of birth, father and child will either forge an unbreakable connection or begin drifting apart. This opportunity is fragile and fleeting, existing for only a brief moment before the mundaneness of daily life returns in full force. Once this time has passed, crossing the distance becomes more and more difficult. It can be done—distance can always be erased where the love and desire is strong enough—but it becomes more and more difficult as time passes.
Because of this, becoming a father is a precious and sacred time in a man's life but, unfortunately, it is rarely acknowledged as such. We arrive at this moment almost completely unprepared—no wise, elderly male relative takes us aside and impresses upon us the importance of seizing the chance for deep bonding. Too often, the moment passes without our even understanding the opportunity that is already slipping away.
When I think about it, I realize that I really didn't think a lot about what it would be like to actually be a father. Saying that now sounds absolutely idiotic, but I was really focused on my wife. Her pregnancy had been rough—nonstop morning sickness, daily afternoon headaches, and constant back pain and nausea the last two months. I was just trying alternately to comfort her, get some work done, and stay the hell out of her way.
When my son was born and the nurse asked me if I wanted to hold him, I realized that I didn't even know how. I couldn't figure out where to put the head or how to fit those tiny body parts into my very large and awkward-feeling hands. I also couldn't figure out how I ended up standing there so completely unprepared.
Fathering is one of men's most important and certainly most difficult undertakings, yet most of us enter into fatherhood with only the most rudimentary concept of what is expected of us. From any rational perspective, fatherhood is a great mystery. We live in a society that prizes preparation, training, and expertise for almost everything, but leaves us woefully unprepared for the single most challenging task of all. The more information we have, the more clear it becomes how vitally important the father/child relationship is, yet the patterns of our society appear to simply assume that men have but a ceremonial role in the shaping of their children's lives. We become fathers with stunning ignorance, and unfortunately the period of greatest nescience is the one we are smack in the middle of before we ever realize how ill-prepared we are: our child's infancy.
How come nobody warned us? Although in most cases our initiation into the bewildering world of fatherhood was not something done to us intentionally, at the time it certainly seems like a peculiarly cruel joke.
One day shortly after my daughter was born, my wife was dead asleep and I was trying real hard to do my part. After ruining two diapers and finally managing to get the third to sort of hang around my baby's hips, I just started laughing. I couldn't believe I could be so inept. I don't remember even having seen a baby being diapered. Babies were always fully diapered; when they needed changing, they were whisked away only to reappear in full plastic armor. I came up with the theory that all the women in the world got together and agreed to not let little boys in on any of the secret stuff about babies.
For the most part, as boys we were rarely included in any infant-care activities and were
