Fatherhood is about you, not your kids
I’ve been thinking more about being a dad lately and how pitifully unprepared most of us are for the job. Unless you’re one of those rare guys who actually had a dad who taught you how to be a dad, you probably know what I mean. Most of us are just trying to figure it out as we go and trying our best not to mess up.
One of the things I’m realizing more and more is that being a dad is really a lot more about me than about my kids. What I mean is that being thrown into fatherhood and all the responsibilities of being a dad , only serves to highlight the areas where I’m seriously deficient. Another way of putting it is that whatever I am as a person without kids, is exactly what I’ll be as a father. My character, my values, my level of integrity, my relationship with God all go with me into fatherhood.
I think what usually happens, consciously or unconsciously, is that we dads enter fatherhood and start thinking about what we want to pass on to our kids, what kind of legacy we want to leave. And intuitively we know that we, ourselves, aren’t what we want our kids to become, that we need to change.
This is where the whole idea of being a mentor or a role model comes in. Our kids learn a lot more from watching us live life than they do from what we tell them. I’m a father of four teenagers and if there’s one thing I wish I could go back and do differently in the early years of fatherhood, it’s this. I wish I had realized sooner that everything I did in private, every choice I made in business, every thought I entertained, everything I avoided or confronted, were the very things that shaped me as a father and determined what I really had to offer my kids.
It is so true, Doug, that what we get is not what we thought we would get. We can even prepare as well as we can, and still be sideswiped by the day-to-day difficulties.
I just wonder, sometimes, why Dads are as unprepared as they are? Are many pregnancies unplanned? Are couples not in harmony with the decision? Do we have children too early?
But I really like your thoughts about what we are outside of fatherhood is what we will be inside. Pithy. I think we can probably extend that: The way we do one thing is the way we pretty much do anything!
Rory, I think dads are unprepared because of a couple reasons. I am sure there are more but the ones I can think of are:
1) Men are raised to be the provider. They are never taught things outside of studies and sports. For women there is still part of them that get taught more of the domestic stuff.
2) Men just live in denial… It is their way of coping.
Live in denial? No, I don’t think so.
Ha. I don’t think you could be further from the truth.
Denial? Pfft. Naaaah!
I never thought of my down time as also parenting time. You’ve given me something to think about.