Catholic Dads

My brother-in-law says you can tell which fathers are involved in their infants’ lives by referring to a “5-wipe diaper,” and seeing who says, “What’s that?”

I recently read a blog post on Catholic Dads that showed advice (IMHO) to the uninvolved set. In particular, let your wife make all the decisions about child care, as it’s her show; babies need nurturing, not discipline, so your expertise won’t be needed until he’s old enough to throw a tantrum and have you “play the heavy.”

With all respect to the author, who is trying to comfort a female friend whose husband is perhaps essentially absent from both baby and mother: what a sad, sad view, I thought — that my primary relationship to my son should be as a disciplinarian! that I’m a fifth wheel until it’s time to make him toe the line! What a starved, barren view of how fathers can relate to children.  Supporting Mom is great — better than not supporting her! — but I think we should challenge the absent husband and father further.

I recall a time when I asked my own father, “Why weren’t you more involved with me, when I was young?” His reply was, “Well, you seemed wise enough, I didn’t think you needed me to tell you what to do.”

I take it from this that this was the old way of fathering: the primary, and almost only, thing a father can do, is to give orders.

It would make me kind of useless to someone too young to understand orders. (I’m also possibly too laissez-faire. We have a helper who was telling him, no, you can’t have milk unless you’re willing to touch the sippy-cup. This is as a prelude to getting him to hold his own cup. We’re going to follow her lead — but I wouldn’t have thought of it.)

No way would I limit myself so. I will change, feed, hold, rock, comfort, play with, giggle with, be played on, support, challenge (to do his PT), show off, and protect from overeager admirers who forgot to wash their hands after wiping their noses. (That last one’s mostly at church.) I don’t think this is remarkable or even unusual, although it may once have been.

I do understand two barriers to this.

One is worry of doing something wrong. I felt like this holding our fragile bundle-of-joy on Day #1. I was over it on Day #2.

Another is having women dismiss you as genetically incapable. But my wife isn’t dismissive, and no one else matters.

I recently encountered another, probably unusual, issue: someone who backed me into a corner and put her hands on me uninvited, while I was holding him.* In that case, it would have been better if Marisa’d been holding Liam, so I could defend the family; I can hardly expect Marisa to do that kind of defending!

But usually people go after him, not me (something about the cuteness, I’d suppose), and in those cases I prefer to be holding him, because I can play the heavy with them more than she would: pulling him back, twisting so they can’t put touch his hands, which of course go straight into his mouth. (This is no longer so much of an issue, since he’s older now and has a stronger immune system.)

So in that case, I’m not sure which is best: traditional, or otherwise.

But my hope for uninvolved fathers is: don’t support your wife in being the sole adult in your babies’ lives. Instead, support her — and them — by making her no longer alone in that role. They need your attention. Give it to them.

(This post also appears at my blog, Letters to Liam.)

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*Georgia Vinton, a nurse at the hospital where Liam had his ear-tube surgery. She either thought I needed to be handled, or thought I was cute. Whatever her reasons, it was creepy.