The following is an excerpt from Fatherhood: The Complete Guide to Birth, Financial Planning, Finding Flow, and Happy ParenthoodFather’s first parenting book from Harper Horizon, a Harper-Collins publication.
Your father knew nothing. Well, nothing – at least, nothing when it comes to the impact they might have on you or your life. In particular, when you were born, he had knowledge of what his presence and his participation could give you. He earned that from the same ink. He considers you now, a mysterious mass like an uncut diamond. Your idea is that you can do something valuable with it, but even the first cut requires a decision you may not be ready for. After all, you don’t know the first thing about diamond cuts.
Maybe your father loved you, maybe he didn’t. Whether he was there or not, understanding or harsh, “good” or “bad” in your estimation, he probably didn’t know what he was up to – because there was no one to teach him how to shape it.
Like others before him, he developed the experience of fatherhood, trying to refine the raw white stone and trying to make it shine. Someone just needed to help him get the right angles.
Since 1950, the US government has spent about $600 billion on NASA programs, about $10 billion collecting information on mothers, and the change of $15 million you found between sofa cushions went to research related to fatherhood. But most of that research has been done in the last decade. It just means that humanity knows more about Alpha Centauri than we do about whether your old man fired you.
Regardless of how it may sound, those dirty diapers are starting to turn into a medicine of care. You will want more. But only if you keep doing it.
Do you want to know what will happen to you when your baby is born? Not much. As the birth sends a flood of oxytocin into your wife’s brain, flooding her with deep feelings of love until she sobs into the low-fiber hospital sheets, you might be tempted to check the Browns’ score (spoiler: they’re lost). You may feel that this contradicts the popular emotional and celebrity story — “When I first saw that face, my whole world changed!” – but birth experiences are as unique and varied as men have them. Instant love may be the case but it is not the norm.
So, when does Mom give Dad oxytocin? If he passes a child. Men only reap the biological benefits of fatherhood when they first take care of their children. Regardless of how it may sound, those dirty diapers are starting to become the gateway drug to care. You will want more. But only if you keep doing it. And so it goes on forever; the child and the father passing pleasantries back and forth as a member until, if all goes well, the first delivers this from the heart. But the father has to start, because a child’s hands are too small to roll one and because that’s one thing we know for sure, peer review and all: whatever good vibration there is going to be, it has to start with you.
Although your father may have been ignorant, he was mostly in the dark about what he did know – which was actually quite a lot. He was always a good parent. And surprise, surprise, most of the time, he probably did it right. Roughhouse was a parent; watching television and you were a parent; talking to your mother at the dinner table became a parent. Being a father is a state of being who you are. Because the truth is that the person you are before having a child will not be much different than the person you are after having a child. And that person is the model your child will use to learn how to live in the world. Therefore, being a good father means knowing yourself, and using all that is good in you to raise someone who knows you better than you. That is love.
But love isn’t always easy, and loving as a parent can be even harder. It’s easy in bad times (and there will be bad times) to be overshadowed by the miracle that grows someone else. It doesn’t help that some fathers go out to get a pack of cigarettes and decide not to come back. Some men let hard times lie to them. Some men fall into the trap of thinking that parenthood will always be strong and it won’t be.
Don’t sweat something you don’t know because if you know yourself, you know fatherhood.
You get maybe 18 good years to lean on from being an active and active father. If you’re lucky, your relationship with your child will continue to blossom into his and your old age. If you’re really lucky, you get to see how they went.
Well, that’s 18 years. They left quickly. And when you get lost in difficult times you miss the deep beauty of your child becoming a person. You will look up one day and there will be a man or woman standing in front of you and you will think, “What the hell just happened?”
That inkling that you have? What does your father mean? There is no great secret to changing the father’s knowledge. All you have to do is be there. All you have to do is stop sometimes and watch the so-called ordinary moment. Because none of them are really common – each contains a changed look, moment of communication, or physical touch that lays the foundation for your child’s personality.
This book is about helping you create, recognize, and appreciate those moments. And the fact that you are holding it in your hands is a very good sign that you are on the right path. Don’t sweat something you don’t know because if you know yourself, you know fatherhood.
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