To Be a Father

I joke with my wife that, while she gets Mother’s Day, I have to settle for Father’s Hour. Meaning I get an hour of praise and celebration, but after that, it’s back to work. The house doesn’t maintain itself just because it’s Father’s Day, you know. There are yards to mow, cars to wash, clogged drains to clear, garages to clean, and dinners to grill. And hey, it’s Sunday, and since you’re not doing anything anyway…

To be a father is to accept the responsibility of taking care of business, without excuses, without complaining, and without question. Because it needs to be done, and someone’s gotta do it. And a real husband doesn’t make his wife mow the lawn. A real father doesn’t leave his kids unsecured or unsupported in any way. A real man just does it. There is no credit to be given because there is no credit sought.

To be a father is to de-prioritize yourself. A leader eats last. If you’re all hungry, you ensure the family is eating before you sit down to eat. If you’re all tired, you ensure your family is sleeping before you lay down to sleep. If you’re all sick, you make sure your family gets medical care before you get medical care. If you’re all cold, they get the blanket. If you’re all wet, they get the towel. If there is severe weather, you get them to the basement first before heading back upstairs to gather supplies and secure the home. The dog will be in the basement before you are. You come last. And that’s not a complaint; that’s a badge of honor.

To be a father means doing your best to live the example you’re trying to set. It means constant self-evaluation and correction. Having a baby forces a choice onto a new father. He can himself remain a boy, or he can grow into a man. The real fathers, the ones we desperately need more of, are the ones who grow into men.

Want your kids to dress and behave decently in public? Then you yourself don’t dress like you’re at a frat party, and stop dropping F-bombs like you’re an '80s comedian aiming for shock value. Want your son to treat his girlfriend with respect? Then treat your wife with respect. Don’t want your kids to be alcoholics? Then maybe you don’t need a beer at 9 a.m. at the indoor family water park. Don’t want your kids to be morbidly obese before they enter junior high? Then they’re worth the time and effort to prepare a healthy breakfast rather than throwing McDonald's at them. Want your kids to feel your love for them? Then turn off the sports game, spend some time with them, and stop treating them like they’re a nuisance. To be a father is to put away childish things and do the hard work towards real change.

To be a father means listening to the biological instincts infused into the DNA. You are not “toxic” because of your paternalism. You are not “killing the planet” for having children. You are not “bigoted” for instilling senses of responsibility, decency, and traditional morality in your children. You are doing exactly what God and nature have designed you to do. And it has worked for the last half million years. And doing this, more than anything else, is what separates the real fathers from the chinless soy boys with inflected voices who are too scared of their own shadows to even imagine enforcing any boundaries with their children who, by the time they can talk back, are already running the show. Your family survives, and your kids succeed, because you do listen to your instincts.

To be a father means to accept the responsibility for your family, their security, and their development. The buck stops with you. A father doesn’t look back to when things went awry and blame his family. Or the government. Or society. Or the internet. Or the school. Or climate change. A father owns it. And even if it is all the fault of outside forces, it’s the father’s job to meet the challenge, to overcome the obstacle, and to lead his family through it.

To be a father is to exist in a state of constant vigilance. A real father is an apex predator, but even an apex predator has to be on high alert for the scavengers and bottom feeders looking to wreak havoc on his offspring. When a father takes his family out to a restaurant, he immediately scans the restaurant, even before they sit down. Who is in here? Where are the threats? Who is loud? Who is drunk? Who looks out of place? Who has a backpack? Who in here just feels “wrong"? And when the family is seated, the father takes the seat that gives him a clear line of sight to the front door. And for the entirety of their dinner, the father will keep that front door in the corner of his eye. And as his family enjoys the outing, the father will have silently formed and rehearsed a plan for how to protect them should bad things suddenly happen. To be a father is to never truly be at peace.

To be a father is to be alone. Soon-to-be fathers, take note. Whatever you’ve heard in school or on social media about how it’s acceptable for fathers to show emotional vulnerability is drivel. It’s absolute, incontestable, and undeniable drivel. Go ahead and try it. The world could not jettison you quicker. A father is expected to be a rock, a foundation, a personalized safe space. And they won’t consider you a refuge for their own vulnerabilities if you yourself show weakness. People don’t trust a foundation with cracks. People don’t build on rocks made of glass. You are on the outside looking in, and whatever problems you have, nobody cares about them.

People will tell you that they want you to “open up,” and they are sincerely trying to help. But, consciously or unconsciously, the people you open up to will gradually lose respect for you. Nobody can ever truly understand your “lived experience,” and the more you “open up,” the more you’ll inevitably be seen as a crutch instead of a support. I say this as a warning, only because I’ve personally witnessed father after father after father after father after father make the same mistake of believing what society tells him, only to lose the confidence and trust of everybody in his life to whom it matters most for him.

To be a father is to have nobody to turn to for help except the person in the mirror. And even he will judge you harshly.

But best of all, to be a father is to give your kids such a sense of security that you will have provided no memories better for them than to fall asleep in the back seat during the cold, dark drive home from the Christmas Eve party, with complete confidence that dad will get them home safely. And once home, to be able to get them out of the car, and to carry your sleeping children as delicately and as lovingly as if you were carrying a crystal feather, and to lay them down into bed without them stirring even the slightest. And then to stand back and watch your children sleep. Your children.

That right there is worth all our anxiety, all our dismissed loneliness, and all our silent pain. When our fathers provided that security to us as kids, we never slept better. And neither do your kids.

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