I like to believe that the belief that the woman is the one who should be in charge of children is beginning to die down in some places. In addition to alleviating some of the burden — real and symbolic — on mothers, it opens the door for men to be more responsible — to fulfill our role as fathers, let's say.
Navigating the demands of early parenthood
Lorenzo, our oldest son (five years old), is doing well at the moment. Even so, he still drives me crazy sometimes, like when he kicked a ball in the kitchen and broke a glass, which filled the floor with tiny little shards of glass and made me angry: “Didn't I tell you not to play soccer inside the house?”
On top of that, I've been limping for several days: I left in a hurry (mistake!) to take Lorenzo to soccer and stepped on a nail, which went through my shoe and the sole of my foot. Hospital, two injections and home. I'm fine now but it still hurts a bit.
On top of that, both kids are sleeping badly, so are we. I don't know if it was because of the moon, the various ailments, the change of routine due to having traveled or, as I guess, because of all that together and several other things that we will never know.
The Tunnel: the place every parent remains whilst their kids are four and under.
Parenthood is marked by transitions and periods. Well, this is one of those demanding phases, of descent into the basement of exhaustion, when you don’t know how long you’ve been there or if you’ll ever be able to get out (it is not rational, friends, it is a feeling that at times clouds any reasoning).
Maybe tomorrow, as it has happened many times before, the kids will go back to sleeping early and all night long. I know it will be sooner rather than later, but in the meantime, we're in the tunnel, as Kevin Maguire wrote in The New Fatherhood: “The Tunnel: the place every parent remains whilst their kids are four and under; when keeping a small child alive and under control takes all that you have. Parents in The Tunnel can cycle through bliss and despair on a turnaround that would give non-parents whiplash.”
Maguire, who is fresh out of The Tunnel, also gives some tips to his past self. These are the ones that resonated most (they apply to parenthood, and life in general):
1. Remember, "This too shall pass”.
2. Your children will grow up. You think you won't miss these moments. I promise you that you will.
3. Double the time you think you need to do something. Most of my stress comes from my kids not doing things on my schedule.
4. Pick your battles.
I know I'm going to miss that silent pleasure I experience when León, resting his head onto my shoulder, peacefully surrenders to the world of dreams; or the gesture he makes when he wants to eat, saying "ammm, ammm" and instead of bringing his hand to his mouth, he pinches the tip of his nose with three fingers.
I'm also going to miss the innocent and tender mini-dialogues with Lorenzo. The other day, after asking him 30 times to brush his teeth, I told him that for now he has to follow the rules at home, and that when he grows up he can do what he wants. “When I grow up I'm going to want to live with you, how about you?” he asked. It is a very loving comment but I have no doubt that it will be quite the opposite, he will want independence as soon as he can.
This is all very nice but they are mere beams of light that fill us with energy for the duration of the stormy season. There are no regrets and no doubts: knowing all that parenting entails, Irene and I would have children again in the next thousand lifetimes. But right now we are in The Tunnel, tired of being tired. It's a rough transition.
Father reading a book with his baby.
Picsea/UNSPLASH
A response to literature
In the program I'm doing at CUNY, someone shared a link to an article by Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic. The headline alone irritated me: “The One Big Thing You Can Do for Your Kids". But the subhead annoyed me even more: “The research shows that you probably have less effect on your kids than you think—with one major exception: Your love will make them happy.”
I thought: “There you go, yet another provocative guy, maybe even pretending to be funny to wash his hands.” But I didn't let myself be carried away by my primal impulses or my prejudices. I read the article. It was worse.
We know that the conversations parents have with kids about racism, sexism, sex, consent, and bullying make a difference.
I thought I could dedicate this newsletter to dialoguing with Brooks’ text and trying to understand why it bothered me so much. Then I received the newsletter by Melinda Wenner Moyer, a U.S. journalist specialized in science-based parenting: Does Parenting Really Not Matter? As at other times before, she wrote something I would have liked to write myself.“A huge amount of personality is biological and inherited,” writes Brooks, a Harvard scientist, columnist for The Atlantic, former president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of 13 books, including one co-written with Oprah Winfrey.
He quotes some studies.Werner replies: “I think he’s overreaching here — and also overlooking other important considerations.” She then patiently rebuts Brooks' essay with solid arguments.
She asks: “Will my son treat girls and women with the respect they deserve? Will my kids be anti-racist? Will they stand up for — or at least show support and compassion for — peers who are being bullied?”
Supported by various studies, she explains that research suggests that what we do as parents absolutely shapes children's values and behavior toward others: “We know that the conversations parents have with kids about racism, sexism, sex, consent, and bullying make a difference in terms of what values kids hold and how they behave towards others.”
It is only at the end that Wenner Moyer mentions something that seems central to me and that was the first thing I thought of when I saw Brooks' essay: “I find it interesting that most of the recent essays I’ve come across that argue that parents don’t matter have been written by men, who are often less involved in parenting.” She also mentions that research suggests that children learn more values from their mothers and grandmothers than from their fathers and grandfathers. Why could this be? And rightly so, she adds:
“These essays rub me the wrong way and not just because they overgeneralize and cherry-pick the science. They feel like yet another way to undermine the hard, important work that women typically do. (Brooks also wrote an essay on marriage last year that argued that couples shouldn’t attempt to split domestic duties equally because doing so “militates against one of the most important elements of love: generosity—a willingness to give more than your share in a spirit of abundance, because giving to someone you care for is pleasurable in itself." Okay, dude.)”
Gender disparity
On Sunday, we took Lorenzo to a friend's birthday party. There were ten couples with their children, eight mothers by themselves with their children and only one father alone with his children (I always watch out for the gender ratio at these events, and the data is infallible).
No one congratulated the mothers who were alone with their children, but the father who came without his partner did draw attention. He made a self-pitying joke: "Are there any babysitters available who want to earn some extra cash?" But the important thing is that he did tirelessly look after his two children.
Andrew Bomback is a nephrologist, professor of medicine at Columbia University and father of three children (11, 8 and 5 years old). He wrote "Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting". I discovered him in this interview in Early Childhood Matters magazine.
“Moms feel anger too, of course. But I think there’s a specific fear that some fathers have about where they might end up if their anger boils over, and they don’t have enough spaces to talk about it. Unlike for my parents’ generation, spanking children is out of the equation. When I rage as a parent, I know that if I were to spank my child, I’d feel extremely awful and guilty. I don’t think people in my parents’ generation always did this kind of post hoc analysis. We’re much more critical of ourselves now.”
After the birthday, on Sunday, we went to the beach. All of a sudden, I saw a brawl at the bar. It turns out that a father had grabbed his son by the hair and beaten him up, so an indignant guy intervened and almost ended up beating up the violent father: violence + violence.
The outraged guy called the police, who arrived when the violent father had already left (along with a large group he was with).
I was left with questions: why didn't the outraged guy call the police first, before intervening? Why didn't the group of ten people who were with the violent father do anything? What did the ten or so children who were around get from all of this?
Boy holding blue and white balloons at a birthday party.
Adrian Lumi/UNSPLASH
Low standards
This week, like others, I questioned my performance as a father (it happens whenever I get angry and do not react as I would like) and as a partner (it happens whenever Irene and I don’t see eye to eye on certain matters).
At one point, I confess, I came up with that formula that we men tend to have as a mantra: “At least I'm not like that son of a bitch who beats his son.”
Lazy, isn't it?
Lazy, isn't it? I'm setting myself up against a very low standard to make myself feel better. Besides, I am judging the violent father without knowing anything about his story, which would never justify the beating but would give it context and, perhaps, would be the initial step to redress a situation in which many people must be suffering (mainly the violent boy and the violent father).
And so I remember another newsletter that I saw landing in my inbox but haven’t gotten around to opening yet. I find it: At Least I'm Not as Bad as THAT Dad! Again it's Melinda Wenner Moyer (as with so many newsletters, sometimes months go by that I don't read them and suddenly I read five together in a few days). I read it in one sitting.
Wenner Moyer asks if we ever notice that men love to hear and tell stories about deadbeat dads: “The husband who cheats on his wife; the father who doesn’t know how to use a washing machine; the guy who gets mad at his wife if the house isn’t spotless. Their reaction is rarely horror or disgust or ‘God, what a dick!’ — but rather, something along the lines of: ‘See, I’m not so bad, right?’ ‘Look! I’m an angel in comparison.’ ‘Aren’t you glad you married me?’”
While women feel bad seeing how far their reality is from influencers who mother in an idyllic, fantasy world, we men compare ourselves to a floor rag to make ourselves feel better (and not to change, ha). Wenner Moyer interviews a sociologist who studies gender inequality within families to explain this phenomenon.
But back to the unhappy phrase we men use. What happens when a father compares himself to a fictional terrible father, asks the U.S. journalist: “He feels pretty good about himself and his contributions to the family. He certainly doesn't feel like he's not doing enough. There's no incentive to change his ways, to do more.”
She cites studies to say that men don't compare what they do with what their wives do. In other words, they don't say, “My wife cleans a lot more than I do; maybe I should do more to make it fairer.” To a large extent, she explains, men don't see the work imbalance within their own household because they don't see their wives as a relevant point of comparison.
Redefining fatherhood
To the men reading this, please note: this is not a personal attack, we are all in this together. I don't mean to lash out at us for how awkward we may be or what limitations we may have because of how we were socialized as males (and I'm sure there are plenty of great men who do none of these things).
Men have to immerse ourselves not only in the tunnel of fatherhood but also in the tunnel of masculinity.
As research shows, Wenner Moyer continues, men have long compared themselves to below-average men, perhaps because we saw our parents or heard a friend do it.
“Instead of feeling guilty or defensive, consider this a call to action. Now that you are aware that this is a problem, you can try to change your perspectives and comparisons,” she proposes.
We men have to immerse ourselves fully not only in the tunnel of fatherhood but also in the tunnel of masculinity to question ourselves and ask ourselves what it is to be a man. And open ourselves sincerely to criticism by asking: is there something I could do better?
If we get fully involved in these processes, we will understand women — and ourselves — better. We will see things we would not otherwise see. We are also going to suffer and make mistakes. There is a lot to learn. The benefits will not only be personal but also relational (with our partners, children, friends, loved ones).
By getting involved we have a better chance of not aiming at the low standards of other terrible guys. We will be able to feel better by comparing ourselves to ourselves and discovering that we are better than we were yesterday. But for that we have to roll up our sleeves.
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