A Compliment to Complementary Fathers
From me and my husband
At some less intensely post-partum time, I’d love to write a longer appreciation of the Bradley method, which is what our family has relied on for three labors. (We used this book). The Bradley method has a major role for the husband (or other birth partner)—unless something was going a little bit wrong*, I mostly interacted just with my husband, with the midwife and doula there to troubleshoot and make suggestions.
*(And for all three labors, there were times when things got a little or a lot dangerous, so I’m glad I had all the resources of a hospital, while also having people back off when they could to give me some of the peace and intimacy of a home birth).
Going through labors alongside my husband makes me love him all the more. But I also see a big gap between the experience we were lucky enough to have and ones where the dad is more hands off (or is directed to peruse the Bump’s list of suggested “push presents.”)
I very much want a culture where we ask more of men. Not as a punitive matter, where they make reparation for their privilege, but because there are hard things it is a joy to be able to do for someone who needs you. My husband is very much not a bicycle to my fish.
So, for Father’s Day, I wanted to reup a piece from each of us, about the scope of what fathers can be. First up, Alexi for Plough:
“Men of Fidelity”
Fidelity is worth remembering and boasting about, and that today’s men need such inspiration and encouragement. American men report high rates of unhappiness, loneliness, and lack of purpose, while fewer and fewer are getting married and having children. While not every person is called to marriage and family, in my own life I have found the opportunity to practice these commitments to be immensely rewarding. Every morning I drive my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter to school, and as she demands I play her favorite Stan Rogers songs over the stereo I am grateful again for the chance to support and teach and love this boisterous young lady. I want my peers to have a fighting chance to live out familial faithfulness in marriage, family, extended family, and community. But before we can live faithful lives, we have to believe fidelity is possible; we also have to believe it is something worthwhile and praiseworthy.
Idealized depictions of masculinity do not always provide good examples of fidelity. Exemplars from the classical world are rare: neither Zeus nor Agamemnon could boast of marital constancy, and even Odysseus notches several demigoddess lovers on his way home to Penelope. Male faithfulness came to be reckoned as an important virtue in the Christian world. The boast from Secondhand Lions could be adapted for a pure-hearted paladin or Arthurian knight. Its ideal is a chivalric one – though the skeptical might amend that to a Quixotic one. A dose of that quixotism is sorely needed today: it falls on each generation of men to choose and choose again their family obligations, eschewing the wandering of Odysseus for the domesticity of Ithaca.
And from me, for Fairer Disputations, a response to Richard Reeves’s hope that men can find models of fruitful fatherhood outside of marriage. (To be fair to Reeves, it’s not that he prefers this model, but, with so many children raised outside wedlock, he wants to find a “least bad” model and valorize it). I’m more skeptical:
“Father” Is Not a Part-Time Job
Coupling without consideration of the risk of paternity means that men receive the positive feedback of being found attractive without the actual approval it historically connoted.
Setting the bar lower for men as fathers will accelerate the lowering of expectations men are held to in dating. Making the bar easier to clear isn’t a comfort to men in the long term, but a sign that they are superfluous. If a man isn’t judged as a father, he can’t be found wanting, but he also can’t be fully valued. It’s important to say, honestly, that being a father is something a man can fail at, and that his failure has consequence.
Sometimes we make a mistake that we can’t fully put right. It’s a false mercy to try to deny the wrong for the sake of encouraging the person who committed it. The fact that the wrong can’t be undone doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make better or worse choices in the world your choice has made. And trying to live within the lie that claims everything is fully recoverable takes a toll, for parents and children.
Read the rest at Fairer Disputations
And I’d be very interested to hear your own tales of fatherhood (your own or your father’s).
Love your thoughts on the Bradley method and dad’s role in birth. We’ve gone the Bradley route both in the hospital with an OB and in a birth center with a midwife, and I have many lovely things to say about it.
We originally wanted to do Bradley method. But I don't feel like the class we took really prepared u very well. In the end of course it was a moot point because my waters broke, labor didn't progress and baby turned out to be breech and it ended with a c-section. And then my attempted v-bac ended in another c-section; so in the end five surgeries and no chances to even give Bradley a try. However he was there in the OR holding my hand and being my support. And having a c-section means being incredibly dependent in the first few days after birth, and my husband most certainly rose to the occasion every time, deep in the thick of diaper changes and night time wake-ups because I couldn't even lift her out of the bassinet on my own at first. He's always been a fully active partner in childcare, from well before any of the babies were born, caring for me during terrible bouts of nausea and vomiting. And an incredibly hands-on dad. I simply cannot fathom trying to raise children without him.