March 31st, 2008: Men and Their Sons—Will you come and wrestle with me?

This is where it all begins. Even though the passage from boy to men, from men to conceiving boys and then again from boy to man is a circle, this still is where it all begins, where men dedicate themselves to boys. The idea, no the principle, is as old as humans have populated earth. It is the idea that masculinity needs modeling and guidance. It is the idea that such guidance works best when it is ritually and culturally anchored. It is the idea—and by now solid scientific fact—that, without such guidance, boys and men are greatly more likely to become depressed, to become addicted, to become violent, to fail in school, and later in life, to choose the wrong partner, to choose too many partners. In short, men’s guidance for boys is crucial to keeping boys and men from running amok. However, far more encompassing than ideas of culturally and ritually anchoring boys is the idea of men being emotionally connected with boys.
This emotional connection is a two-way street. It affects boys and men alike. Today, I’d like to take the time to look at this reciprocal affectation. Starting with how men affect boys, then moving into how boys affect men I would like to show that the connection between boys and men can be a life-long one and is full of opportunity of nurturing and learning about each other and ourselves.




EMOTIONAL CONNECTEDNESS WITH BOYS

What I mean quite simply with this currently quite popular term “emotional connectedness” is love. When it comes to their sons, men have the great responsibility of loving them. Being truly loved by a grown man—a father, an uncle or grandfather, or simply a friend—assures in the boy so loved the passage into his own manhood. This love is a crucial factor of boys growing up to be solid, honest and moral men. It is as if the failure to love a son might seem to the son like a denial of his manhood. Such boys nevertheless grow up to be men, but the hurt they experienced from not being loved stays with them. Psychologist James Garbarino talks extensively talks about this in his book “Lost Boys.”
He begins his book by introducing a most unusual concept the psychologically and scientifically minded reader: the concept of the soul.

From what I have seen, the more likely course of development is that, when forced to live in hell, the soul withdraws, perhaps shutting itself off from the world outside in a desperate attempt at preservation. Once hidden away, it covers itself with layers of insulation. As the years pass, this protective shell may harden to the point where eventually the soul seems dormant, so out of touch with the day-to-day self has to become even to the tormented person himself.
There are such individuals in our midst, although most of them seem to end up in prisons or mental institutions. Some are violent boys. In such boys, the soul is buried deep under layers of violence and distorted thoughts and emotions. (34-35)

How does the soul survive? Garbarino asks. Conventional psychology has a three part answer: The soul survives in certain individuals due to temperament, resilience and love.
Temperament is the factor that describes the natural differences in sensitivity between children to stress, chaos and abuse. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. Love “may be the small voice of kindness coming from a relative too weak to change the situation but nevertheless able to fee the child’s soul enough tidbits of love to sustain it during its hibernation, its long winter of discontent.

There is a fourth factor for which, in order to mention it, Garbarino has to take off his psychologist’s hat. This factor is “divine intervention.” “Sometimes” he says, “it seems like an amazing grace that finds the spark in a child’s soul before it dies out entirely.”

So, we can see that there are factors that we cannot control: resilience, temperament and, perhaps, divine intervention. There is the one factor of love. The experience of being loved, at least weakly, but perhaps even unconditionally, will inoculate the boy to the hazards of growing up male in ways that few other things do. If he doesn’t get this love, he will never be able to forget this denial.

In that case, his manhood will either flourish only at night, when nobody else sees it, in angry assertions against nobody and fantastic conquests of people and territories. During the day, such a man will act passively, if not slavishly, to protect himself from the storms and attacks, the crises and catastrophes that he might encounter.

Or he will aggressively demand love and respect and adoration. He will do so during the day and most everyone will fear him. However, when the night falls on him, he will feel lonely, fearful and, yet again, unloved.

A boy who knows himself to be truly loved by a man will not have to steal his manhood like a thief at night or demand it aggressively like a tyrant in broad day-light.

But what is the quality of this “love” of men for their sons, for boys? It is, I believe, a peculiar mix of different aspects of what we might want to call an “intimate relationship.”

Such love is physical.
It might be that this aspect of men’s love for their sons is the most challenging of them all. The cultural and emotional boundaries we have built against such love are endless. To some extent every relationship between two males—whether they’re friends, father and son, grandfather and grandson, uncle and nephew or just business partners—has to contend with these boundaries. What might have still been “allowed” to the 2-6 year old boy, i.e., to race into his favorite adult male’s arms, to hug him passionately, or to look for physical protection from some scare, will, later, gradually but steadily make way for increasingly stunted physical interactions until, in the end, we’re left with a handshake, perhaps, a pat on the shoulder. We call this attitude “hypermasculinity”, machoism or just masculine bluntness. Behind it, though, is nothing but this simple truth of many boys and men: I am afraid to admit to my need of being loved and to show it as physical affection.

Strangely, for me this issue keeps coming back to the same question: Can men love babies? Or, more specifically, can men love baby-boys? How close are they willing to become with that baby-boy in their arms? Are they able to give themselves permission to take in the physical elements of this love? Can they allow themselves to smell their babies, to look into their eyes until their son’s fragile yet strong nature brings them to tears? Can they accept that their hands want to feel their skin, touch every nook and cranny in marvel about vulnerable and yet tough they already are. Can we accept being drawn into this baby-boy’s sphere, a sphere that demands that we make peace with whatever is troubling us in our competitive and bleak male lives, a sphere that only allows love.

Such love is spiritual.
The spiritual love-bond between men and boys is far from being a denial of the physical bond they need to have. Rather, the spiritual bond between them comes from a man’s willingness to be open about that which encompasses him. When a man can talk about the things that truly transcend his comprehension, his power of understanding and of manipulation, when he can express how he feels related to the infinite, then his sons and the boys that are entrusted to him will recognize and begin to trust their own deep rootedness in a spiritual world.

Such love is admiring.
A grown man’s admiration for a younger man or boy is a rare thing. Men are usually and most commonly pre-occupied with not giving other males any advantage. Admiration would clearly violate that principle. And yet, there is so much that men can and really must admire in their sons: alertness, agility, suppleness, speed, depth of convictions, depth of questioning, staying power, power to resist. I truly believe that, if we let them, if we don’t hold them back, our sons can easily out-perform us by the time they’re ten. No, they’re not as strong as grown men are, they haven’t made much money yet, and, of course, they haven’t pursued romantic love yet. But the man who says he can’t see anything admirable in a boy is either afraid of him or so blinded by his own arrogance that he fails to see the boy in his full existence.

I know many men who admire professional athletes. But do they admire their sons? Would they tell their sons “I admire you.”? Why do we have this fear of admiration being the cause of hubris? Why do we believe that showing admiration to our sons would spoil them, make them unuseful in practical life?


Such love is challenging and encouraging
Men can set challenges for boys. Such challenges are not about humiliating the boy, they’re not about putting the boy in his place of being the weaker, less able male. Rather they speak of the belief and faith the man has in the boy that he can do the job, that he will be able to push through what he has been asked to do. Male teachers have an awesome responsibility in this matter. They can learn to communicate their learning goals not just as expectations for their male students but also as belief/having faith that the students will be able to accomplish what is asked of them. This mixing of expectations with faith in the students’ abilities will lend not only optimism to the student but also give him focus and a sense of intent in what he is undertaking.


Such love is boundary-setting.
We, too often, think of boundary-setting as restricting. Especially with boys, we’re concerned with “keeping them from something”. Whatever that “from” might point to. When boys demonstrate “too much” energy, too much aggression, too much of the jokster spirit we tend to react with rigid rules and admonitions. I keep thinking about Robin William’s character of the teacher in Dead Poets’ Society. What are the boundaries that he finds for his students? How does he develop them? He finds them by destroying the rigid system of boundaries that are in place already.

He rips out the introduction of the poetry textbook and encourages his students to do the same.

He stands on his desk rather than behind it and encourages his students to do the same.

He talks to the students about death and the importance of the moment: Carpe diem. Seize the day.

The boundaries for learning are set through activities: shooting a soccer-ball while screaming out favorite lines from poetry

The boundaries of learning are taking out of the class-room into a cave, a womb of learning.

The boundaries are set by the teacher’s absence. He is not part of the cave-meetings.
(this is, of course, a reminder of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra’s insight that the ultimate moment of teaching comes when the teacher leaves the student to his own devices).

Boundaries are set as resistance and self-determination. If you want to be the King in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s dream. Go for it. Seize the day. Don’t let your father’s judgment scare you.

Such love is honest and frank
Directness, openness and honesty are highly valued male interactional characteristics. Not beating around the bush and being clear about things—this includes being open about expectations (I think you can do better), being open about personal experiences, talking openly about “taboo” issues (sexuality, masturbation, drugs, drinking, etc.)

WHAT MEN LEARN FROM BOYS

We should also understand, however, that while much has been written about the significance of men in the lives of boys, very little is known and even less has been written about the significance of boys in the lives of men. This state of affairs is testimony to our preconceived one-directional sense of development. We think of men as that towards which, or better towards who, boys are developing. We consequently think of men as mentors, teachers, educators and guides. We fail to see the immense impact that boys can have on the lives of grown men. This is the topic I would like to explore for the rest of my talk today.

Let me begin with some theoretical assumptions of my own:

While it is said of men that they often behave in immature and boyish ways, most men have a rather ambivalent relationship with their own boyhood.

This ambivalence could be caused by memories of being bullied, of being behind in school, of not making it in a sports competition, of being the last of the boys to grow a beard, of not having a friend—the possibilities of what might have been painful to a particular man during his boyhood are literally endless.


In a backward projection—i.e., literally speaking in a “re—jection”—men often think of boys as weak, as immature, as in need of formation.

The purpose of such backward orientation often is the intense need of the man to reassure himself of his current strength and achievement. In order to continually feel that way he needs to compare himself to the boy he once was. He can do this by remembering himself or by simply looking at other boys. What he sees is a weaker, smaller version of himself now.

If necessary and under pressure, men will repress their own boy-like tendencies and patterns in order to seem mature and “up to the task.”

What are such “boy-like tendencies?” What I have in mind here, are things like creative playfulness, a strong sense of fairness, getting dirty as an acceptable part of the whole experience, finding boisterous pleasure in success, finding perfection not in matching an ideal, but rather in the concrete outcome of a project, production, being uninterested in impressing girls or finding impressing them at best a secondary benefit, realizing that homework simply isn’t as important as are the various games, books other activities he has in mind for the afternoon. Other less theoretical tendencies are, for example, finding the next tree to pee, being extremely unworried about the fact that this is the fifth day of wearing the same underwear, eating potato-chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner, never tying your shoe-laces, being extremely clear that you’re not impressed with someone else’s “natural” authority.

Many men, I’m afraid, have channeled these boy-like tendencies into a narrow range of activities that include drinking, speeding, having affairs and, if they’re lucky, the occasional outdoor adventure (but most men don’t even get that). In their adult lives men are more likely to live the life of robots and automatons: responsible, reliable and really boring.

The Task of Forgetting Our Boyhood

As strange as it may seem, I strongly believe that growing up to be a man comes with the cultural requirement of forgetting that we were boys. In fact, we often are put on that path long before we are men. Think only of the expression “little man” which is so often used in reference even to an infant or toddler. It may seem strange to think about it as a requirement to forget, because we often see and hear about men who behave in boyish ways. But isn’t that only proof for what I’m claiming here. Being “boyish” is seen as an undesirable way for a man to be in the world. His boyish charm should most certainly not come with boyish actions.

This forgetting includes, as far as I can see, not just the painful events of our boyhood, but, even more so, the happy ones. The boisterous experiences of huge surpluses of energy that went towards building tree-houses forever, playing cowboys and Indians, pulling the occasional prank, racing our new bikes into mud-holes to see who would make it through without falling off, and climbing, climbing, climbing.

A former client of mine described his rejection of his own boyhood in this way:

When I was twelve or thirteen, I had this idea of “threading our neighborhood streets.” A friend and I went out after our parents thought we were in bed and began to tie strings on trees and pull them across streets to tie them to a tree on the other side. It was wool, so it would break easily, but give enough resistance to be felt. Boy, did we get in trouble. My friend was caught by his parents and he fessed up. But before someone could take down the strings someone had already called the police about it and before I knew it they were at my door. I have never felt worse in my whole life. I really messed up there. Everyone thought I was so mature. I had disappointed everyone and myself.

I worked hard with this client to learn to be compassionate and sympathetic towards the boy he was and is. He had internalized the standards of what constitutes a masculine code of behavior, a work-ethic and rules against goofing off to such an extent, it was a miracle that he could tie those strings at all. Another remarkable thing about him was his love for climbing trees.

I love to climb trees, by myself and with others. It’s really the quintessential experience of friendship and a shared experience for me to be able to say to someone, “hey, how about finding a good tree on campus and climbing it. There is something about feeling those tree-limbs, pulling yourself up on them, judging and trusting their strength to hold you . . . it just makes me feel incredibly happy. Really powerful. Connected.

However, this love does not come without ambivalence for him:

I usually don’t tell people about this until I really feel I can trust them. Most think it’s weird for someone who is 23 to want to climb trees. It looks infantile and childish to them. I think it is, really. There are days when I hope that I will grow out of it. Certainly, I wouldn’t want my parents to know that, instead of studying for my exams, I’m actually climbing the Oak tree on Wright Street.

Often men feel pressure to grow up when they find out they’re expecting. Clients have described this period of feeling the need to give up a “vagrant life-style”, needing to “provide”, “quitting the playing and becoming serious,” and—my sad favorite—“telling the boy inside he has to leave now, because there is another boy, a real one, on the way.”
The repression of boy-like qualities in men is a serious problem. It is something that men are exposed to culturally and it is something that men do to themselves and other men as they work on fitting in with the cultural expectations that surround them. Is it even necessary to point out that such repression will always end up failing, only making it more likely that the energy will come out sideways, perhaps in maladaptive and risky ways?

Being with boys—having sons—then, is a chance for men to recover their own boy-hood. This is, in my opinion, a necessary chance. It is a gateway for men to come in touch again with the pains and joys of their experiences as boys. Being with boys is our opportunity to look at what we had repressed for so long. Here are three vignettes of experiences with my sons that demonstrate what I mean.

Climbing Trees and Other Adventure Invitations

Recently, my son Jacob and I were outside shooting hoops. We had played for a while and I was ready to head back inside when he asked me to climb the Lindentree in front of our house with him. My first response was “no.” I felt a bit out of breath, I had some work to do in the house, I simply didn’t feel right—being an adult—climbing into that tree. Also, I felt a bit rusty. The idea of swinging my legs up on those branches, possibly hanging upside down for a while before I could manage to swing upwards into a safe sitting position on a branch, this idea seemed absurd and somewhat disconcerting to me. Yet, I was also intrigued. I had loved climbing trees for much of my boyhood period. I sensed that Jacob’s invitation was more than a simple request by a son to have his father join him (although it certainly also was that). This was also an invitation to re-experience a long-forgotten feeling of power and accomplishment as I was climbing higher and higher into that tree.

I had almost disappeared into the house when I changed my mind. Just the lowest two or three branches I promised myself. I felt uneasy at first. Would I slip and fall? I didn’t really know my body enough anymore to know how to shift my weight best to get to the next highest branch. Once I even lost my foothold and was sure I’d fall. But then I got higher and higher and didn’t stop until I had cleared the top of our house and could look west towards Woodlawn Cemetery and Busey Woods. And as I was up there leaning against the trunk of the tree, feeling the texture of the bark, smelling it, I remembered. I remembered climbing as a boy, I remembered the fear and exhilaration. I remembered how I could barely resist the temptation to climb as high as possible. I realized that this was certainly worth infinitely more than whatever it was I thought I had to do inside the house. It wasn’t only that Jacob had gotten me into a neat small adventure. He had, knowingly or not, gotten me in touch with “Martin, the boy.” Nothing was new in this experience, just almost forgotten. We stayed in the tree for a while, just enjoying the view, not talking much. When we came down again, we agreed that we wouldn’t tell his mother, my wife, about this as she finds the thought of him climbing trees too scary. Knowing I had joined him would probably make her doubtful as to my inclination to parent responsibly.

Here is the point: I know many men who like to be physically active. They work out, go to the gym, play a sport, swim, cycle, etc. These are all, of course, wonderful ways to keep in shape. Fortunately, more and more men realize how important that aspect of their life really is. But, I hazard to say, that most of those men would never in their lives think of climbing a tree. Why not? Well, partially because it’s not “manly”, it’s silly, and, perhaps, dangerous. But, even more insidiously, because they don’t think of it! We forget about that urge to climb. We need boys to remember. We need them to tempt us to do it again.

Snowball Fight

My son Noah loves the snow. Even when he was a toddler, I can remember watching him from inside our warm living room, while he was jumping around in snowdrifts during a major snow-storm. He was fine then going out by himself and he still is now, although the frequency of it has certainly decreased. This winter, though, he has been on me to go outside with him for a snow-ball fight.

I can’t tell you how much I dislike snow-ball fights. They bring back some of the worst memories of my childhood. Being hit in the face by an ice-ball or taking an ice-ball against the ear, no thank you, I thought. This is not what I want to experience again. But he kept asking and finally, in a wave of feeling that I’d really be a bad father, if I kept denying his wish, I agreed.

Of course, all the old bad feelings came back right away. I was afraid of getting hit. Noah is a strong thrower. But there was something else too. This something I had missed out on as a boy: joy. There was pure joy in being out in the snow, picking up this white stuff and throwing it at each other. Noah ducked many of my balls successfully, but you wouldn’t believe my joy when I avoided some of his throws and—yes, I admit it—when some of my balls hit him. This is the experience I had never had as a boy. Then it seemed that no matter how strong or weak the throw, I was the one who got hit by it.

You can tell, this is definitely something I was afraid of reenacting. Doing it in the most playful way possible, with my own son, was probably the only way I could do it. Had this come up in my men’s group, I might have exempted myself from the activity altogether. There were so many things I was afraid of, Noah helped me to be afraid of one less.


Saying “No” and Meaning It

My youngest son, Gabriel, is only 2 years and four months old. How much could a grown man like myself really learn from him? But there is plenty. Gabriel is usually a very agreeable child. One of his newest expressions when he is told not do something, or to stay away from the hot oven, etc. is a simple “Ah”. Clearly an expression of insight and responsibility, favorably looked upon by every well-meaning adult. “Gabriel, could you please put away that scissors, it is sharp. “Ah”, he says and puts it away. No, we can’t go outside right now, it’s raining. “Ah.” And so on. Does it come as a surprise that his insightful and agreeable nature is balanced by an equally pronounced clarity of when he does not want to do something? Gabriel’s “no’s” are decisive. If he doesn’t want to read a particular book, he will say no. If we give it to him, he will take it and either immediately put it back on the shelf, or, if he is mad about it, simply toss it. If we still don’t let go of the issue, he might even put the item in question into the garbage .

I find this sense of balance he exhibits hugely refreshing. This is a balance between “yes, I accept your reasoning” and “no, I reject your reasoning.” He doesn’t care that we are the adults who should know better. He goes with his own sense of judgment. Yet, at other times, he is clearly willing to let my judgment guide him. In and through this, I am learning how important it is to say “no.” Saying “no” is an adventure of sorts for me. It is something I’m not used to. This little guy is teaching me about a balance I never had as a boy and have struggled to find as an adult. He doesn’t hesitate to say “this idea is garbage, let’s put it where it belongs.” Well, I’m not there yet. But I am getting closer.


Come, wrestle with me

Just a few days ago I had the opportunity to mentor a group of six-grade boys. This is part of a program that runs for ten weeks. It is geared towards boys at risk. These boys wanted to wrestle. They were leaning on each other, they were pushing each other, lifting each other up and there excitement knew no end when the activity of the day—Electric Fence (an activity in which the group has to figure out a way to get every group member safely across the fence—was introduced. The pleasure of physical contact that resonated in these boys and that surrounded them and held them together like an invisible bond was palpable. It reminded me of the many times when my sons want to wrestle with me rather than having me read to them. Every time I have to overcome something in me to let it happen. With the mentoring group, I kept wanting to stop them. With my sons I keep wanting to say “no”. And yet I know how having such a strong physical exchange can create a kind of intimacy with others and self that is life-giving. The boys I know require such intense intimacy. They whither without it and, often in an attempt to make it happen anyway, become aggressive and physically violent.
Conclusion
So, the relationship between boys and men is indeed a two-way relationship of teaching, nurturing and guiding. For boys to have adult men in their lives, men who care about them and nurture their souls, is almost a guarantee that they will grow up to be strong and reliable men, compassionate and with a sense of care for others. For men to have boys in their lives is a way of breaking through the glass walls and ceilings of adult male existence. This existence prioritizes work over play, income over intimacy, and stoicism over emotional expressiveness. In this existence men die early, unhappy and saddened by a life that seems to have ended decades earlier, when they entered the sphere of adulthood for the first time. Men do well to take seriously boys’ invitation to play. Not just because it makes them better fathers, but because it will make them happy and exuberant beyond any imagined happiness that might come from a raise or promotion.
Deeply happy men are men who will see the absurdity of fighting wars, they will understand the value of time spent in conversation rather than pursuit. Happy men will live mindful lives, lives that are an invitation to others to join.

Men And Their Daughters--Utterly Useless . . . Utterly Indispensable

Father and Daughter (Paul Simon)If you leap awake in the mirror of a bad dream and for a fraction of a second you can’t remember where you are, just open your window and follow your memory upstream. To the meadow in the mountain where we counted every falling star. I believe the light that shines on you will shine on you forever (forever). And though I can’t guarantee there’s nothing scary hiding under your bed, I’m gonna stand guard like a postcard of a Golden Retriever. And never leave ‘til I leave you with a sweet dream in your head.
I’m gonna watch you shine, gonna watch you grow. Gonna paint a sign so you always know. As long as one and one is two.
There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I loved you. Trust your intuition. It’s just like goin’ fishin’. You cast your line and hope you get a bite.
But you don’t need to waste your time worrying about the marketplace, try to help the human race. Struggling to survive its harshest night.
I’m gonna watch you shine, gonna watch you grow. Gonna paint a sign so you always know. As long as one and one is two.
There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you.
I’m gonna watch you shine, gonna watch you grow. Gonna paint a sign so you always know. As lone as one and one is two.
There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I loved you.

If there is a parent-child relationship that has been stereotyped beyond our imagination and to the point of utter silliness and unbelievableness, it is the father-daughter relationship. The myth of “daddy’s little girl” continues to pervade the literature with very little objective assessments of the obstacles and difficulties this particular parent-child relationship presents to both parties. Father’s are supposed to be “heroes”, “first loves”, “teachers of humility”, “teachers of pragmatism and grit”, “conveyors of religion and god.” Their function is to bring responsibility, patriotism, friendship and persistence to their daughters’ lives. And, of course, they’re supposed to protect them fiercely and let go of them just at the right time.

None of these in and of themselves would be offensive or raise concern, if, alongside them, we would also make attempts to understand what the factors are that allow or disallow men to provide some of these things. In the current mood of still believing that fathers can “choose” to leave, the general tone of the literature seems to be “get it together and do this, for your daughters.”

In other words, I do believe that men/fathers have indeed far-reaching functions in their daughters’ lives. However, we will not understand these functions well, nor will we be able to promote them sensibly, if we continue to stubbornly insist that a daughter should simply be seen by her father as daddy’s little girl or princess. Who a daughter is to a man, how he will treat her and how he will be able to respect her decisions (her loves, preferences, values, etc.) depends to a large extent on his experiences with women and men in his life. In this context, the gender difference between man and daughter can be both an obstacle and an opportunity. And it will be important to see how it always has potential to be both.

I mentioned during an earlier talk that the subtitle to today’s talk was not my idea, but that of my friend and colleague Michael Trout. I took this line from him, because it intrigued me and seemed to be intuitively right. Somehow men, fathers that is, are indispensable to daughters while, at the same time, completely useless. This paradoxical need and non-need for men must have something to do with gender and sex-roles. It is echoed, for example, in this short essay which I found on the internet:

Men need the contribution of women to nurture our daughters and connect with them. I have curled my daughter's hair and bought her feminine hygiene products, but I am still a man. My daughter needs a woman to show her how to be a woman.
The first female in your daughter's life is still her biological mother. Support their relationship through your words and actions. Don't play custody games or speak in anger.
If your daughter's mom isn't available, find someone — or several someones — who can become your daughter's surrogate mom(s). In addition, let your daughter choose a person to confide in and who will share with you appropriate information of her development. Confidentiality must guard this relationship or it will not function. Besides, the topics they discuss are not as important as their friendship, the key to developing that woman in your home.

But men are not unimportant at all. Compare this quote from the same essay:

Dreaming together opens a panorama of new horizons. Dreaming gives our daughters a kind of blessing. In The Blessing (Pocket Books), Gary Smalley and John Trent describe the five parts to a Jewish blessing: physical touch, spoken words, expression of value, a commitment to the person and a picture of a special future. Have you ever blessed your daughter in this way?
Men Blessing Their Daughters
The idea that fathers can bless their daughters by dreaming with them is intriguing to me. Perhaps it is the absence of strong gender-specific suggestions that make this one different. This is not about appreciation of her femininity, it is not to model for her what a good man should look like. Rather, it is about the activity of envisioning, building a mental landscape of dreams and hopes that, perhaps, can create a kind of closeness between a father and his daughter that few other things can.
The idea of a blessing coming from the father is intriguing to me, too, because blessings are a kind of missive. A blessing is a gesture of “sending out”. When a father blesses his daughter he is sending her out, into the world, perhaps, into her new job, into her marriage and in so doing he is ritually freeing her to go and establish herself.
Does this mean she was his property up to this point? you may ask. That idea would certainly raise some people’s hairs regarding the usefulness or outdatedness of old stereotypes. I don’t think that a blessing implies previous ownership. Rather, I believe, that such a blessing only points to this notion of uselessness captured in today’s title. The blessing says,
“You’re different from me, you always have been. All I can do is wish you well and let you go. This is what I as your father have always felt and what has caused me pain and hurt, long before it was time to utter this blessing. I knew, that at some point, you would leave, would have to leave.”
Fathers, I believe, have to learn to set their daughters free, but not to neglect them. This is, perhaps, the crucial juncture, different from the one a father encounters with his sons. While the latter, by way of gender identity, still provides a kind of indelible connection, the former is dependent a different set of bonds, if it is to survive.


The Daughter’s Perspective
Yet, many daughters not only feel not blessed by their fathers, but they resent their fathers for having controlled them, put them down, treated them with disrespect and condescension. In my practice I see too many women who end up feeling their fathers did not even trust that they could manage their lives, that they could be in control of their lives, be successful and make things work.
It is rarely the case that I meet women who speak of their fathers with great affection. Let me give you one of those rare examples. A woman in her mid-thirties came to me for therapy regarding health-problems and, what she felt are missed relational opportunities in her life so far. She had been engaged to a man who treated her quite badly, however, she had felt unable to leave him. Yet, she didn’t know why she could not leave. A conversation with her father finally made the difference.
“Do you know the story of the little boy who played between piles of poop, he asked her during a particularly hard phone-conversation. No, she answered. Well, he said this boy was playing and playing. He looked so happy, even though he was playing between piles of poop. Someone came by and asked him about it. Well, the boy responded, this is horse-poop. And the other asked, why is that important? Well, the boy said, where there is horse-poop, there is a pony. My client described how her father went on to ask her “Where is your pony?” What are you hoping for?
This is not an affectionate moment that would be easy to understand. There is no gentle violin music in the back-ground that suggests that she is still daddy’s little girl. Fathers talking to their adult daughters about excrement, be that a horse’s or someone else’s, will not make it into the halls of fame of little girls’ daddies. It’s a tough moment, but this father is able to tell his daughter “you love too much.” “You hope too much.” “ You’re forgetting about respecting yourself.” “Save yourself, because I cannot do it.” “Get out, before it’s too late.”
What this father did, viz. act as a respectful mentor to his daughter, is overshadowed by the things that I often hear of other fathers of adult daughters. “It’s your own fault,” “you should have listened to me in the first place,” “I’m sure you’re making it worse,” “Talk to your mother about it,” or “you’ve always been difficult,” “Just put up with it.”
What is most palpable about such reactions to their daughters’ misfortune is the fathers’ anger. Through those words of abandonment and blame speaks a form of disenchantment and grief that can be missed easily. This grief, I believe, is the fruit of too much felt uselessness of the father in the life of his daughter. In effect it seems, the father feels abandoned by his daughter. And, as it turns out, this is an abandonment that started simply by her being a girl, i.e., someone who would not really resonate with him in deep, meaningful ways. For many men, becoming the father of a daughter sets the stage for a re-run of an already familiar drama: Being rejected by a woman. This drama was often enacted for the first time, when his mother didn’t feel comfortable having him really close anymore, it might have continued as a rejection by a girl in middle-or high-school and it begins again (if first only as an assumption) when such a man has a daughter.

Many girls and women repeat the trite and quite formulaic version of “I know my father loves me, but I rarely really felt it.” The women and girls I meet (in my practice and privately) mostly talk about t heir fathers as distant and judgmental, unable really to perceive and feel their way into the daughter’s world. It is odd but also telling that many of the women I have spoken to about their fathers have very little sense that their fathers thought of them as their princess. Sometimes there is a memory of having been daddy’s little girl, but that is old and faded. Growing up got in the way and that put any sense of affection that might have been their between father and daughter to rest. No woman I have spoken to has expressed having received a blessing (in the above sense) from her father. Many remember criticism, teasing and general awkwardness, however. Some even felt that they had moved from daddy’s little girl to daddy’s slave, i.e., controlled by what daddy wants them to do.

Case Study:
The young female is sitting in front of me. Her name is Melanie. She is at that age when I don’t feel sure anymore, if I should call her “girl” or “young woman”. Both sound oddly condescending, to my ears. She is restless, grabs her long blond hair and pulls it through her hands in an attempt to make it as straight as possible. She is almost pulling it down like a curtain. Does she want to hide her face? She is 12 years old, tall and skinny. She plays basketball for her school. Her legs are moving constantly, she often reaches up with both arms, stretching, perhaps in hopes of calming down a bit.
Her mother is sitting next to her. She is looking away from her daughter. I keep remembering a line from my first phone-conversation with her. She said about Melanie: “I wouldn’t want to be her.” I was taken aback by this statement because it showed so much distance. Almost as if her daughter was a character on television, someone whose life she could choose to experience vicariously.

Melanie’s mother and father divorced when she was 3. Her father remarried, her mother is living with a boy-friend. Melanie goes back and forth between their houses.
Melanie is having trouble in school. Her grades have been dropping and it is clear that she is controlling it. She speaks well and with nuance. I don’t have single doubt in my mind that she could be a stellar student, even in math (the subject in which she received 5 Fs last week for missed assignments, sloppy work, etc.
So, I say, how does your dad feel about your problems in school?
Oh, he doesn’t care, Melanie says. He really isn’t home most of the time.
(As it turns out, her dad has two jobs one of which is being the janitor at the very school Melanie is going.)
My step-mother is making fun of me, Melanie confides. When I told them about the math-grades, she said, to everyone else, look at her, there is the stupid one. She won’t make it.
What did your father say, I asked.
He laughed, she said. He made fun of me too, he said when I have kids they’ll be the dumbest kids in town. But, Melanie hastens to explain, he’s only joking. I understand what he means.
What does he mean, I ask.
Melanie is silent, she doesn’t know. He really doesn’t want to hurt me, she whispers.
I turn to her mother and ask “what can you do about this?”
She throws up her hands. “Nothing,” she says, “this is why I got divorced from him. You just can’t talk to him. Besides, Melanie has told me she doesn’t want me to talk to him about this. So, there is nothing I can do. She has to figure it out on her own.”

As I was listening to Melanie describe this situation, it became clear to me that she was protecting her father from the obvious conclusion one had to draw from her descriptions: He is weak, he is clueless, he treats women with less power badly and women with more power with servility. Melanie knows this, but she won’t stop protecting him. Her eyes were asking me, pleading with me, as if she was saying “I’m telling you this only, because I am hoping you won’t think badly of him. I need my dad, even though he is so utterly useless to me right now. Even though he is hurting me right now.
It has taken me a while to understand this point. But I think Melanie is right. She knows intuitively what I and others might only know empirically and cognitively: for a girl to really give up her father is equal to throwing herself to the wolves. Even in the weakened and condescending role that her father has assumed, his mere presence is more likely to ensure that Melanie will be relatively successful in her life than if he were not present at all. Relatively successful means that she will not get involved in romantic relationships too early, that she will not get pregnant as a teen, that she will have some confidence about her potential, will be able to make solid moral decisions and that she will feel a sense of confidence about her future.
Melanie’s father is not outright rejecting her or not caring for her. This is what Melanie is holding on to almost desperately. He doesn’t want to hurt me” she said. And what she means is, it could be worse. And if it were worse, than I would not have any hope whatsoever. So, Martin, don’t be overly critical and take him away from me.
Melanie, in other words, is in the very peculiar position of wanting to avoid identifying the pain her father is causing her for fear of losing the anchor function he has for her, teasing and condescension not withstanding. And yet, it is clear that Melanie will not progress easily without identifying the ways in which her father is failing her.


The Father’s Perspective
It is often said that having a son is difficult for a man because he sees in the son not only an heir to his name, but also a competitor in the making. The assumption, therefore, is that it is easier for a man to have a daughter, because issues of competition simply fall by the wayside. I question this based mainly on my experiences with men who have daughters. While competition is not the first point on the list of difficulties men have with their daughters, the list is certainly quite comprehensive. Here are some things men say about having daughters:
When they’re babies
I don’t want to change her diapers or give her bath or dress her/undress her. What if I touch her in inappropriate ways? What if I get aroused?
I don’t like holding her, I feel too rough for her.
Her mother knows better how to handle her.
When they’re toddlers
I don’t know what to play with her. She wouldn’t like the games I know.
She is avoiding me.
There is nothing she can learn from me.
I hate girl-stuff.
When they’re school-aged to middle-school
She is too girly.
Other mothers look at me weird when I show up with her.
Her friends are more important than I.
My wife tells me I don’t know the first thing about girls.
I worry about turning her into a Tom-boy.

When they’re teenagers
She is too old now for us to hang out.
She is too critical of me.
She believes I’m not cool.
I worry that I’d be attracted to her.
Her values are so different.

Men, so it seems, often have a sizable crisis of confidence when it comes to having daughters. This causes them to give up on their daughters, surrender their care to their mothers and literally give up their own voice when it comes to deciding how their daughters should be raised.
Unfortunately, the literature about fathers and daughters is very unclear and possibly unaware of this issue. While there are many books that describe how fathers should be and act, there is hardly anything that tries to understand or even just describe how it is that fathers have difficulties with the imperative to love their daughters. I would like to propose a few possible perspectives for how to understand men’s difficulties with raising daughters:

a) Men who have such difficulties have themselves experienced a crisis in self-formation stemming from a lack of either maternal or paternal affection or a combination of both. Men who know how to take care of their daughters will either have had a nurturing and loving bond with their mother and/or they will have had a bond with their father that stressed respect and love for females (mothers, sisters, etc.) When neither is the case, men struggle and, often, repeat the crisis of their own upbringing in the relationship with their daughters. Such crisis could result in:
b) Loss of confidence in his own power/skill to nurture
Such loss of confidence in men often looks like anger, but it could also be a strong sense of passivity on the man’s part. He might still play some with his son and engage in some rough-housing and horsing around with him.
c) Lack of affection for females and resulting misogyny.
An example of an experience of missing maternal affection in childhood and its results in a man’s adult relationship with his daughter will be given below. I would like to add here, that, often, such anger and misogyny is actually part of the “daddy’s little girl” syndrome. The little girl is the only stage of female development that some men can relate to without fear. They cling to it desperately and react with strong feelings of anger as their powers to hold their “girl” there are waning.
d) Sense of not being loved by his daughter.
Many men are hoping to be loved by their daughters in ways they weren’t loved or didn’t feel loved by their mothers or sisters or wives. This expectation of being loved can take quite childlike forms: intense jealousy at boy-friends and fiancées the daughter might bring home, discouraging her from taking risks and trying out new things, etc. The male childhood trauma of maternal abandonment can result in strong narcissistic tendencies when such a man is faced with raising daughters.
e) Fear of loving the daughter too much and become sexually abusive/attracted to her.
Having learned that it was not “okay” to be close to his mother, meant that the young male learned his first lessons of fear of incest. This is a particularly strong and resilient issue, because so many men have learned this and fear closeness with their daughters in the same way that their parents feared that being close to his mother would pamper him and make him soft. The distance that is thus created between fathers and daughters can hurt this relationship when it needs comfortable emotional and physical closeness.
f) Men with such difficulties cannot identify sufficiently with this female that is, supposedly, a part of them.
For many men troubles with their relationship to their daughter boil down to incomprehension: How could I, a male, partake in the making of a female? Men struggle with identity issues, in other words. This is not, of course, only a question of x/y chromosomes. Rather, it is an often insurmountable seeming difficulty to understand his own feminine side.
g) Men with such difficulties are embattled by a gate-keeping spouse who won’t let them near their daughter.
This is what all the insecurities and questions that men might have about having a daughter finally bump into: a mother who says You have no idea how to do this right. She is a girl. Let me handle this. Far too few men fight this and end up being far removed from their daughters’ lives.

To sum up this point:
The developmental crises that precede father-daughter difficulties can be traced back to the father’s early childhood and upbringing. These crises often take place in the form of some kind of early childhood abandonment or break with mother and can be reinforced by an absent or uncaring father. While these factors also contribute to men’s inability or unwillingness to care for their sons, they seem to be significant in particular as men get ready to care for their daughters. Maternal abandonment of a son without a strong father who actively counteracts such abandonment with care and nurturing and positive messages about women can result in disastrous results for the son as he is becoming a man and, possibly, the father of daughters.

Case Study II:
Burt a man in his sixties was one of two children; his two years younger brother remains the person he feels closest to. Burt describes his upbringing as cold and without care. His father was frequently on business trips, though sometimes, Burt says, he made breakfasts for him and his brother. His mother, a concert pianist, had hardly any time for her children and got the information she needed about raising her sons from a book on child-care which was prominently displayed on the mantel in the living room. Burt has become increasingly aware of his anger, hurt and pain about his loneliness as a boy. Burt has been through three marriages. He has two children a son and a daughter, from his first marriage. Ten years ago the daughter committed suicide. Here is what Burt said about her:

I don’t care. That bitch, she was a burden on me the whole time. I gave her a quarter million. Burned every single dime I gave her, just wanted to get her drugs and hang out with boys. She didn’t care about me, so I don’t care about her. I’m glad she’s dead. (Turning directly to me to look at me in defiance) I feel better she’s gone. She was nothing but a careless, fucking bitch. She is just like my mom. She didn’t care about me either, just wanted to play that fucking piano and be with Jesus all the time. When she was dying she was lying on her bed, just yelling “I’m coming Jesus, I’m coming.” She didn’t care I was sitting right next to her. I hate them, I just hate them.

Yes, this is an extreme case. But, perhaps, its extremeness does not so much lie in what happened to Burt but rather in the raw and sometimes volatile need to express his anger about his mother and his daughter (and, of course, the other women in his life).
As we listen to Burt, we get a good sense, I believe, of the “uselessness” he is confronted with. He was of no use to his mother. His sense of being important to a female was broken very early. Later he was of no use to his daughter (though he would say he had no use for her), he couldn’t even save her. Neither could the money he gave her. Burt is also obsessed with helping people with money, especially women.

Conclusion:
I have no daughter. I only have sons. In my family that makes me an outsider.
My grandparents have two daughters and one son, my parents, have myself and my sister, my mother’s brother has a son and a daughter. My cousin, son of my mother’s sister has a daughter and a son, the daughter of my mother’s brother also has a son and a daughter.

I never imagined I would not have a daughter. Imagine my surprise. Whoever determines those things must have had the idea that I need to figure out something about boys before I can move on. I am not disappointed. But I wish I knew. Some people tell me I should be glad I didn’t have daughters. Daughters, they say, are simple only until they reach puberty. Then they get complicated in ways that make a father feel rejected and dejected. Perhaps. I have always thought that developmental rejection of parents by their children is more about the children’s attempts to reach out for freedom and independence. It is not, I believe, about the rejection itself.

But it wouldn’t surprise me, if research could show that daughters have to struggle harder for freedom than do sons. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that parents, especially fathers, still have quite strong (not to say conservative) ideas about how daughters should behave, what could happen to them, and how to protect them.


If I had a daughter here is what I would like for her to know:

I’d like her to know the world in as much detail as possible.

I’d like for her to love nature and be comfortable in it.

I like for her to be strong both emotionally and physically.

I’d like for her to understand men.

I’d like for her to value especially those men who can be in touch with both their masculine and feminine sides.

I would like for her to be compassionate towards others.

I’d like for her to be honest.

I’d like for her to be courageous.

I’d like for her to know that her good looks come from within.

I’d like for her to be passionate about something.

I’d like for her to feel respected and respect others.

I’d like for her to be confident.

I’d like for her to love being a woman.

January 28th, 2008: Men and Babies—What Does Primary Caregiver Mean?

Of course, time-lines matter. A father who doesn’t get involved during the first nine months of his child’s existence, an existence albeit in utero, is likely going to experience a strong sense of lagging behind in his relationship with his child later in life, i.e., after birth and for the rest of their lives/relationship. On the other hand, given that already and still we continue to deal with a strong prevalence of paternal secondariness, it should be stated clearly, rather than fretting about the fact that many fathers are coming late to their children: let’s welcome them when they do come.

Moving from Helper to Primary Caregiver

When my wife was pregnant with our first son, Noah, I was still very much approaching the entire issue of pregnancy, babies and being a father from the perspective of being a helper to her. This meant that, in my mind, my job was to make her comfortable, to make sure she had enough and the right things to eat. It meant that I would trail along as she was going through things like buying baby-clothes, thinking of things the baby would need (such as diapers, some toys, bottles, etc.). With awe and a great amount of incomprehension, but also smart enough not to voice too much of that incomprehension to her, I followed her, watched her change and . . . felt somehow prepared, albeit not ready, for the arrival of our first child.

Like many other couples we also took part in a child-birthing class. We decided to go not with Lamaze, but a natural child-birth class also known as “husband-coached childbirth.” Here I learned how to “coach” my wife, how to count her contractions, distinguish between different kinds of breathing and to guide her into and through different kinds of birthing positions. On a certain level this class was satisfying to me. It gave me lots of information and put me in charge. After all, for most of this experience I had not been in charge and didn’t imagine myself to be in charge again soon.

New research seems to suggest that it is this kind of experience, i.e., exposure to baby things, to the things people do during pregnancy to prepare for birth and infancy, that readies men to be fathers. It seems that even hormonal changes take place during this time, enhancing the father’s emotional ability to care for the baby and the mother. Perhaps this is indeed the case. The thought that a kind of immersion experience in baby stuff might turn men on to fathering is not that strange. However, I can say with some certainty that it wasn’t this immersion that began my journey towards fatherhood and being a primary caregiver. In fact, I felt and still feel I could very well do without 80% of the stuff we were told we had to get in order to prepare for the birth. This includes the birthing class. For while it prepared me for my wife’s birthing experience and how to support her through it, it didn’t really prepare me for my experience, of how I would be affected by the pregnancy and by this baby as it entered the world. It didn’t do anything for my sense of how to connect with this baby that was on the way. The pre-and postnatal connection with this child seemed to be the manifest domain of the mother. Nobody even thought that fathers would have anything of their own, their very own, to add to how a baby is received into this world.

I didn’t question this. I was there to support her. And so I would simply learn how to empathize, understand her feelings, eat apples dipped in caramel syrup, and blueberry and raspberry fruit-bars. I did not have a good experience with this. Sure, I was doing what was expected of me and supposedly this brought me closer to my wife. But certainly it didn’t bring me any closer to my baby. Rather, it made me feel like I would never have a good connection with him, if it meant eating apples dipped in caramel syrup. But again, I didn’t think about it or question it. To me this was what it was. Apparently becoming a father went along with doing things that seemed strange and inauthentic. It seemed unfathomable that fathering could be something that might come from the very bottom of my soul, something that I was meant to do, something that could be as essential to me as is mothering to a woman.

THE ESSENTIAL FATHER

Modern fathering is often seen as a consequence of socio-cultural changes in the Northern hemisphere, the industrialized part of the world. In this view fathering is not so much a consequence of a man’s psychic or psychological propensity for fathering, but rather the direct outcome of things like upbringing, exposure to information about and models of fathering. Men are made into fathers, in other words, they are not simply developing into being fathers.

This view, of course, means that we believe that men have a choice about being fathers. This choice would not only be a biological choice (it is indeed true, men don’t get pregnant and have babies) but it would also be a psychological choice (viz. that men get to make a rational decision: do I want to be the father of this child or not?) Culturally speaking a man’s biological inability to have children combined with his ability to take it or leave it, have led to the concept of fathers as secondary caregivers. Primary care-givers are those who have no choice and who have the biological means to have children, mothers in other words. In this conceptual framework fathering is seen as an act of will not an act of essential determination.

To me this seems like a bad deal. In order to claim some kind of primariness with my children it will be necessary for me to find something regarding my children over which I have no control. Primariness is the reward, in other words, for not having a choice in the matter of having babies. This kind of thinking, of course, prevails throughout the literature, classes and workshops on parenting education. It results in an odd and annoying contradiction: fathers are really quite unimportant as far as the health and well-being of their babies is concerned, but they should welcome and accept their unimportance and move into secondariness. So we’re saying you don’t matter, but don’t you dare leave.

We should also not forget that most of what is asked of fathers in this secondary position has little to do with the baby herself and more with the mother’s need to have a convenient way to access a sitter when she needs a break. In other words, fathers are most important, secondarily, when they succumb to the position of helper to the mother, not as fathers in their own right.

If we want to understand the psychic/psychological potential in men to be and act as fathers we need to understand fathering as something that is inherent in their essence. This means that men don’t need to be trained to be fathers, they don’t need a manual to help them understand how a baby is handled. Rather, fathering is a combined phenomenon of a father’s love and attachment to his baby, his creativity and curiosity, when it comes to finding solutions (what is wrong with using duct-tape to secure a diaper?) and his willingness to persist in the care of his baby (i.e., to not allow tiredness, etc. to affect his wish to care for his baby). In what follows I will attempt to give an account of what might account for the development of such attachment between a man and his newborn.

Observations of fathers during pregnancy: From Outside to Inside

Becoming a father is normally treated as something that happens post birth, for it is only then that fathers are deemed capable of having access to their babies. I question this approach because I am convinced that it puts fathers and fathering at a disadvantage, which, once it has taken place, will engage the father in a continual catch-up game with his children. Can fathers have access to their children before they’re born? What would such access look like? Since such access cannot be established directly, we need to think about what indirect connections a father could focus on with his unborn child.

Successful fathering is dependent on a combination of the father’s ability to be in touch with his baby and being in touch with himself during the pregnancy. This means that fathers need to be “in touch” with their unborn children (sight, sound, touch). It also means that fathers have to feel and understand the simultaneous emptiness they might feel inside themselves as their partners are becoming fuller. Fathers can learn to think of this emptiness as their pregnancy. Or better, since the term pregnancy really should be reserved for the woman, fathers can think of this emptiness as their expectancy.

What follows is a narrative of twelve stages of the becoming awareness of a man’s move into fatherhood. It is really a combination of several men’s comments on how they perceived themselves and their babies during this process. Every stage is divided into two parts: what we say about fathers and what they say about themselves.


Not understanding, disbelief

Often, fathers at this stage are said to have trouble believing that what they’re seeing or hearing about the pregnancy of their partner is real. Pregnancy tests, the doctor’s announcement, even the partner herself informing him, seem not to have the power to change the man’s sense that something new and earth shaking has happened. Men who have just been told that they will be fathers, we are told, act nonchalantly and seemingly unimpressed by this information.



What fathers are experiencing:
I am on the outside. I don’t see, I don’t feel, I don’t hear. What, then, do I know? I am disconnected from what she alleges to be the fruit of our love-making. I am disconnected from the woman herself. It feels awfully scary to be disconnected in that double way? Emptiness is growing in my inside. But something of mine is there. When did it begin? What was that moment of conception like? Was there something different about that moment? Where we different with each other? Did I feel differently? These questions are growing on my inside. And as I feel those questions emerge from within me, I begin to feel attached to something that still seems to be a nothing.

Fear and Loss

We are told that, often, men then move into a phase of disconnection out of which they may or may not emerge before the baby is born. They are acting as if the pregnancy is not really happening. They go out as they used to, work as they used to, want attention from their partners as they used to. And they are seen as quite unwilling to “accept” the pregnancy as fact. In one word, men act as if all they are concerned about is the loss of their freedom.

I am, still, on the outside. Hollowness grows inside me while, I suspect, fullness grows inside her, your mother. This is scary. I am not in control. I am losing control of a question that seems to take me backwards, towards infinity.
Again, my fear of being abandoned on the outside takes me inside. It takes me inside to “it” (for I hesitate to call you “you”). It takes me, once again, inside to my own hollow womb. Who are you? Who are you whose absence and presence I feel so simultaneously and so conflictually? Also, I’m feeling nauseated a lot. I am panicking. The worst is I can’t talk about this to anyone.

Ignoring

While in the previous stage men were seen as acting in ego-centric ways concerned only with their freedom, this stage is characterized by a strange sense of settling into the fact. However, in a silent way men seem to continue to pretend that nothing has happened. They are often unwilling to plan, to think about names, or even tell other people about the pregnancy.

I am on the outside. What else is new, right? Naming? How can I name something that is nothing? How can I talk to others about “it”?
And yet, something else is beginning to rise from within me. I know. I know I can’t deny or ignore “it”. Not just because she says it’s real, but also because I know it is. I know you are. I know this, not only because I know something about your beginning. No, I also know something because of how real my hollowness feels. It, this hollowness, is preparation as well.

Anger

If it hasn’t already been observed and happened, it is happening now. During the early stages of pregnancy men often seem consumed by anger, distrust and aggressiveness towards their partners. They complain that their spouses are becoming less and less available and focused on them. She is often distracted, will keep coming back to the baby topic, perhaps (but not in all cases), be less interested in sex.

I am still on the outside. I feel lonely often now. I get angry, because she doesn’t seem to think of anything but you. Of course, I, too, think about you. But my way of thinking about you is so different from hers, it seems. Doesn’t she understand how difficult it is to talk about something that is both so completely unknown, yet so damn real at the same time? Going to the doctor does not help at all. She never asks me anything about this pregnancy and that makes me feel worse, because I wonder, if what I feel really is “normal.” I wish I could be more connected with your mother, so I would know more about you. Yes, I want to have sex with her more than we currently do. It’s because I know, but can’t tell, that being inside of her, has changed its meaning. It now means that I am closer to you too.

Protecting and Envy

As soon as palpable signs of the pregnancy are present (i.e., heart-beats, the woman reports feeling the baby kick, her belly begins to swell, etc.) there is a palpable change in men’s attitudes toward their partner, the pregnancy and their baby. The empirical realness of these changes finally makes it possible to engage the man in the pregnancy with his senses. They now can see, feel and touch the baby, if only indirectly. Fathers often feel a simultaneous urge to protect the baby and mother and to have the baby in their belly. Some fathers feel impatient about their partner’s apparent struggles with being pregnant and fantasize about how easily they would handle the stress of it.

I am on the outside. No changes there. But I have felt you now. Oh boy! What a feeling that was. I have even seen you move, through her belly. The other day I was even singing to you. Some of those songs from long ago come floating back through my mind. It’s amazing! Something strange is happening, though. While in the beginning I thought that I wanted more signs of your true existence, I am no longer sure I care so much about that. And you know what else? I feel suddenly as if I want you to be in my hollow womb. I almost feel as if I could do a better job with you than your mother.

Working hard

Fathers begin to feel more strongly about needing to provide. They will work longer hours than usual, perhaps even take on new project in order to get that bonus at work. They might start to think about building a room, a bed or a toy for the baby. Often this phase falls together with more pronounced activity between the parents to get ready for the child (nursery, clothes, crib, etc.). Men at this stage often feel quite enthusiastic about their relationship and the impending change in their status as men.

I am still on the outside. But that’s okay. Something is growing. Many things are growing. There is something growing between your mother and me, there is something growing in me, believe it or not!. You’re growing, of course. This is a wonderful time.

Parallel Symptoms of Pregnancy

As men are more comfortable with the factualness of the pregnancy they themselves may begin to show symptoms of being pregnant. This still little understood, but widely misunderstood, phenomenon in men is referred to as “couvade”. Couvade or male child-bed, means that a man can exhibit symptoms like weight-gain, swelling of feet, nausea, cravings, depression, anxiety, variety of baby dreams. Men often report a quite strong sense of understanding and sharing their partner’s nesting impulses.

I am still on the outside. Here’s what’s going on. I am anxious for you to be here. But I feel so tired too. Can’t exercise the way I used to anymore. I feel exhausted all the time. I am sure I’m gaining weight. Coming to think of it, that nausea I spoke of earlier, that’s still there too. I feel like her. That’s right, I feel just like your mother. And yet, I don’t.
Something in me feels older (really not in a bad way) but older and perhaps more settled.

Connections with Own Father

Often, it is at this stage when the pregnancy becomes a perceptible thing, that becoming fathers begin to look to their own fathers. How did they father? How did they feel during the pregnancy? Interestingly, fathers don’t seem to look for that connection during earlier stages (not with their fathers and mostly not with friends either).

Still on the outside. Yep. I wonder what my father was thinking about at this time during my mother’s pregnancy with me. Somehow he seems to act as if that never happened. Or is that just my perception? Did he feel any of the things I am thinking about and feeling these days?

Frustration about not being pregnant

Up to this point, many fathers can make up for the emptiness they feel inside of themselves through work, care, sharing, etc. But as the woman’s body is more
and more conspicuously pregnant fathers often struggle with conflicting feelings of envy, rejection, impatience, protection and providing. This can lead to aggravated depression and anger.

Still on the outside. This thing is taking longer than I thought. Your mother is having trouble sleeping and doing other things. Her belly is always in the way. I secretly wish (but really have trouble saying it) I could experience this too. I admit it’s not just about a nice and politically correct way of saying I know what you’re going through, honey. It’s also a competitive thing: I can do this too. There was a time when we loved to make love, but now that’s mainly a thing of the past. It’s too energy-consuming for her. And, frankly, I’m not sure, if it might not hurt you. I feel a little lonely and resentful at times.

Becoming involved/Leaving it

The third trimester is a true juncture for many fathers as it is at this point that many set the stage for how involved they will be for the rest of the pregnancy, the delivery, and the life of their children. Curiously, some men leave at this stage. After some seven to eight months of getting ready and pheriods when it seemed they had gotten used and warmed up to the fact of their impending fatherhood, some men choose to leave their partners and babies at this stage. Men who do so, often complain of the thorough lack of male support. They would like to speak to their father, or at least a father or older man. They miss their friends or would like to have friends who can understand the emotional roller-coaster they’re on.

I am still on the outside and scared a lot, feeling a lot, feeling soft a lot. This is not normal. The other day I was listening to an old song I used to like and I found myself starting to tear up about something I couldn’t really understand. The other part is, though, I’m gearing up. Your mother and I have talked about your birth so many times, we could probably go through it sleeping, if it weren’t for the pain and the general excitement we will encounter in the delivery room. I have to admit, sometimes I feel like running away, though. Everything seems like such a momentous and scary decision these days. I wish there were some other guys to talk to about this. It almost feels as if the other guys are avoiding me now.

Delivery

This is the stage that, nowadays, most men do not want to miss. Whereas just a generation before us, fathers did often simply opt out of this opportunity, fathers now are gearing up for this moment. Interestingly, new research is questioning whether fathers really should be invited into the birthing room. Behind this research is the hypothesized idea that fathers who are present at their children’s birth might not really be able to focus on their own process as becoming fathers, but be preoccupied, if not scared, by what is happening to their partner.

My days in my outside prison are numbered. It’ll be only hours, I think, before you will be here. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms, to see what you look like, feel like, smell like, whether you’re a boy or a girl. Then what? We’ll take you home, I guess. It’ll be strange to suddenly share our place with you. No, I am welcoming you, don’t worry about it. I love you already more than I can say. It’s just . . . how can we take something as precious as you to our home? It’s dirty there, sometimes loud. Shouldn’t we have some kind of care facility at our house, to make sure that nothing will happen to you. I guess we will be this care facility. I guess that’s what I have been getting ready for all this time. But I’m not sure I can do it.

Birth

For many fathers this is a moment of extreme conflict. They are overwhelmed by joy, tenderness, and awe. Overwhelmed also means that they feel fragile, exhausted and weak. But who can they tell about that? It is at this stage, at the latest, that it becomes clear that men should not be thought of as “coaches” for their partner’s birthing experience. If anything, they themselves need some kind of coach or doula to help through the experience.

There you are! I can see your head. I can’t believe you’re really coming out that way. It seemed unbelievable to me right until now. And, you know what, I think I’ll forget it again very soon, too. I am so excited, but I feel bad too. She has done all the work and I feel weak and exhausted right now. It’s not just my tears. I’m used to those by now. It’s my wobbly knees and this urge to just lie down with you and your mother and sleep that scare me.


What then is the essence of fathering? The men who have contributed to this narrative of male feelings and thinking during their partners’ pregnancies have one thing in common, they all fretted about, sang to, got afraid of or even angry at something they couldn’t comprehend with their senses. Focusing on “nothing” that will soon be “something” is a task of the highest spiritual order. It is a quasi-religious experience, one might say, through which men might have access to their own essential skills and feelings about fatherhood. My sense is that much of this essence can be understood through the awareness of emptiness as it grows in a man’s life throughout his partner’s pregnancy. It is almost as if it is this space, this hollowness, into which the baby is born and in which it will live and which it will eventually fill. This means that the more becoming fathers are able to process their own emptiness, talk about it with others and feel understood in their impatience, fear, anticipation, anger and sadness about their impending fatherhood the more prepared they are to be connected with their babies once they’re born.

Conclusion

The idea, I think, cannot be to leave fathers out of the birth experience. Rather, what this narrative shows is that men have their very own story to tell as they’re going through the nine months of their partner’s pregnancy. If we allow this experience to unfold, if we are able to see it as part of the couple’s overall process of getting ready for the baby, then the man’s experience of this process is just as important to the baby’s care post-birth as is the experience of the woman giving birth. Moreover, men who have had the space and “permission” (their own and that of their partners) to explore their own sense of the pregnancy tend to provide for the baby later in ways that are more solidly grounded in their own judgment (rather than being just a copy of what the mother would do). Such fathers exhibit more independence in child-care.

I want to finish with a story told by a grandfather:
Paul and I had been talking about the arrival of this—his first grandchild—many times. Paul was all excited. He and his wife Lucy were poised to go see their son and daughter-in-law as soon as they knew that the child was born. Actually, their daughter-in-law needed to be induced and Paul and Lucy were able to go the day of the planned procedure.

I talked to Paul again two days after the birth. Everything had gone well. He was happy and truly elated about his granddaughter. Apparently, both sets of grandparents were there and could stay in the room right up to the time when the pregnant mother began to push. Then, right after the birth, the women (i.e., grandmothers, sisters, etc.) were allowed in, but the men were not. They got to hold the new baby right after it was born, the men, however, including the father, didn’t get to hold the baby until the following day. Paul told me that the doctors were of the opinion that the baby had to be protected from “viruses and diseases” and shouldn’t see anyone else.

Oh, yeah, I said, we men carry all these bacteria and other bad things around with us, we shouldn’t be let anyone near the baby. Paul laughed, he understood the sarcasm in my voice. I could tell he was both saddened by and resigned to accepting how this particular part of the birth experience had gone. This is how much power we men have he seemed to be thinking. We simply don’t get more. Why should we complain?

I, on the other hand, still can’t get my mind off the palpable sense of disappointment in Paul’s voice and face, despite his deep happiness about his granddaughter (Nobody should say he wasn’t happy. Nobody should say that this had any effect on his overall feelings about this new human life.) But, his face seemed to ask, why? Why would they keep me (and other men of the family) out?

Paul’s experience is, of course, another anecdote showing us how men are still kept away from participating fully in the lives of their children and grandchildren. We know about this, we have begun to see that this is, indeed, happening. What is, perhaps, more complicated to understand about this experience is that it reminds us that men, too, are only now beginning to understand their own feelings about this experience. Paul has a sense that something is wrong here. That there is a dissonance in his experience is undeniable to him, but can’t be easily verified culturally. Did I just feel left out? Did I just feel pushed to the side? Did I just feel unimportant? The quite conspicuous absence of a strong cultural verification of those feelings is troubling to me. Where are the enraged fathers, grandfathers, uncles and brothers who want to be involved but aren’t? Why are there no protests, no demonstrations, to show hospitals and doctors that men’s involvement with birth is sought for by men themselves? In my experience, the strongest factor working against these kinds of changes is shame. Men are ashamed and embarrassed to admit that they have these feelings. At the time a child is born this shame and embarrassment is in its third phase. The three phases, as I see them in men I have talked to, approximately run like this:
a) hesitation about having children (often out of fear of being displaced); this is laughed about by many because men are seen as still being infantile and immature, unable to “grow up and face the demands and expectations of adulthood.”
b) Pregnancy itself during which men are seen as largely irrelevant because they “are not pregnant.” Men feel left out and unable to communicate their feelings about being an expectant male.
c) Post-birth when men are seen as direly in need of “learning” how to deal with a new-born, while women “know” everything there is to know. There is still a sense that men are bumbling idiots when it comes to dealing with infants and toddlers. Paul’s case showed us that in the 21st century even, men are thought to carry disease into the birthing room.

One last note:

If we’re serious about men relating to babies well, if we will focus on this not first when they become fathers, but rather already when they’re still boys.

For a boy to learn about his capacity for emotional expressiveness is to counter what Heinowitz (2001) calls “the pool of common fears” we men have acquired in terms of fathering.
Only boys who have learned how to express their feelings will be able to express them again when they become fathers.

This is particularly true when it comes to understanding male sexuality. Teaching boys that their sexuality is as much about fathering as a girls sexuality is about mothering is an important part in opening up the ways in which men relate to babies. This means that

a) male sexuality is always also about fathering: “always” means there is never a time when it is not about fathering; “also” means that it is about fathering next to other things that are also true about male sexuality.
b) When we see male sexuality as always also about fathering, we are making a direct connection between his sexuality and his creativity: almost every time a man has an orgasm he also ejaculates. The production of sperm is at least potentially about fathering.
c) This does not mean that every sexual act must be carried out with the intent of fathering a child. It merely means that when we make love to our female and male partners we are participating in the flux of life, whether or not a child results from that act.


If men want to be understood as primary caregivers to their babies, then men are greatly responsible for talking to each other about this nexus, to our children (especially our sons) and to our partners.