Fatherhood

It’s strange to feel so strongly about people who have absolutely no bearing on my life. I’ve never owned one of her albums, though Borderline is on my iPod. Even so, I feel surprisingly conflicted about Madonna’s decision to ‘adopt’ a one-year-old boy from Malawi.

She chose to adopt the boy, David, during a nine-day humanitarian visit to draw attention to the southern African country’s thousands of orphans, and AIDS epidemic. Malawian law, however, prohibits non-residents from adopting its children. Madonna was made an exception.

Is this a publicity stunt? Mother- and fatherhood seem to be a growing trend among the glitterati. I’ve tagged Google for stories on ‘fatherhood’, and rarely does a week pass without Brad Pitt or Jack Black or Ben Affleck talking about how fatherhood has changed my life. And how you can really see that in my new movie. Star Magazine reported that Tobey Maquire is asking Ben Affleck for fatherhood advice. Is Madonna simply trying to make her mark in celebrity parenting?

Or did she simply fall in love? Bureaucracy sucks the life from adoptions. Given the choice, I’m not sure I can fault Madonna for taking advantage of her influence.

In the end, the key to adoption is finding what’s best for the child. Is it better for David to live in poverty, in his own country, or to be raised in obscene wealth by a nanny? One of the reasons my wife and I left California was the tendency to treat children as accessories. That trend hasn’t gone away.

Tread carefully, Madonna. Despite your intentions, David is nothing more and nothing less than a child. I have friends who are working through the adoption process. It takes months, and thousands of dollars. Though frustrating, there is a purpose for that red tape. There’s a reason it takes nine months for a child to be born, and it’s not all to do with biology.

Parenting should never be done in haste.

Canon is a four-year-old boy who was born with a heart defect known as Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. He received a heart transplant last month, but is now showing signs of rejection. His lung has collapsed, and this week has had a series of strokes.

He’s very, very frightened.

His family has created a blog for him, and is asking for prayers. Please take a moment to visit, and leave your thoughts and prayers. Please pray for Canon.

Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.

From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

For you have been my refuge,
a strong tower against the foe.

I long to dwell in your tent forever
and take refuge in the shelter of your wings.

Psalm 61:1-4

Christmas is just around the corner. Maybe a bit further. It’s at least across town, boarding the bus. But early autumn is when our church choir starts rehearsing for our Christmas concert. Silent Night and Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming are strolling through my head, and they won’t stop until well after the new year.

Of course, the joy and truth of Christmas is supposed to outlast the holly. But we forget. The tree browns, the lights are coiled, and Christmas is packed in hastily labeled boxes in the basement.

It’s a powerful holiday for fathers. During the family service of my son’s first Christmas, I nearly cried at the strength of Joseph’s faith. Not yet married, his beloved with child, and not his. Today, such stories are bread and butter for Maury Povich and Jerry Springer. But where they get right-hooks and ratings, fathers get inspiration.

And the Father. The inspiration. The thought of Ian leaving home has barely crossed my mind, except in my weakest moments of frustration. Yet God sent his son, before he was even born. And not for his own sake, but for ours.

To me, Christmas has always seemed a child’s holiday, requiring a child’s faith. I believe children are closest to God because they think the least. They question, but don’t argue; unless you’re putting them to bed. They ask why, and trust the answer. My son trusts my embrace and my kiss, and asks for nothing in return.

Tonight we sang the Coventry Carol, which is the most beautiful, if not cheerful. I kept thinking of Ian, and the fatherly urge to protect, to guard. Part of that protection is knowing that it’s not perfect, and that it doesn’t need to be.

In my quest to describe fatherhood as accurately and efficiently as possible, I’m always looking for new and better ways to describe Ian’s behavior. Nothing ever seems to fit, just so. It’s frustrating. As a parent, you want to be able to explain your child’s behavior to others. You want them to understand that there’s a perfectly rational explanation why your son is vacuuming the carpet with his head.

cranky

It’s more than being in a bad mood, and more than tantrums. When Ian gets like this, my wife calls him ‘fragile’. For lack of a tasteful analogy, I had a problem with ingrown toenails in high school. My big toe would swell, the skin taut and gleaming red. The slightest pressure—a brush, a graze—would effect a sharp intake of breath. A guy in band once stepped on my foot, and I nearly punched him in the face.

 

excited

Manic would be nearer the mark. My dad visted this past week—my son has a special, no-holds-barred relationship with his grandfathers—and Ian didn’t sit still for five days. He just ran in circles, running into door jambs and steamrolling the cats. Occasionally he’d hit critical mass, stand in one place, and shake his head back and forth and back and forth, roaring.

 

tired

Ian is never ‘tired’. According to him, he’s ‘resty’.

Today, though, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day provided me with at least one flawless, matchless, most beautiful word to describe my son’s sometime contrary moods:

obstreperous

noisily and stubbornly defiant

YUVA Studio is a simple, web-based drawing application that allows kids to create artwork by manipulating shapes. Kids can move, flip, stretch, color, and doodle:

‘YUVA consists of five activities: STAMP, PUNCH, PATCH, DOODLE and DRAW. The activities start out simple: choose a shape and stamp it on the canvas, punch it out of the canvas, or use a single shape to make mosaics. Then advance to doodling to add detail to the drawing. Some allow single-color drawings, others multiple. Some use single shapes, others use many. Each activity has been designed to develop different skills of composition and inventiveness.’

Kids can then send their drawings to family and friends via e-card.

YUVA offers a seven-day free trial, after which there’s a $30 license fee for one ‘Artist’. The service is still new, but eventually you’ll be able to purchase additional shapes, activities, and add storage space to your account.

I spent some time playing, and YUVA has promise. I had problems with the interface, and the response time seemed slow—never a good combination with impatient five-year-olds—but it’s simple enough for toddlers to use, and has more advanced tools for older children. My son loves playing on the computer, but similar online games offered by PBS Kids and Sprout are limited and repetitive.

(Via Lifehacker)

For five years, the Arlington, Texas school district has been helping teenage boys make the transition to fatherhood:

‘The fatherhood program serves about 50 to 80 teenagers at a time, providing support groups and educational sessions at each of the district’s high school campuses and lots of other one-on-one contact. The teen fathers and fathers-to-be learn about parenting basics like changing diapers and feeding as well as how to register with the state child-support office or establish paternity.

…”We’re keeping kids in school. That’s our ultimate goal,” said Tori Sisk, coordinator for Pregnancy Related Services. “If we have kids dropping out of schools, we don’t want it to be because of pregnancy-related issues.”‘

Read more →
Star-Telegram

The program has been funded by a yearly $320,000 federal grant, but was just awarded an additional $1.85M over the next five years.

Though students learn the logistics of parenting, they’re also realizing the fundamental truths:

‘”When we first found out she was pregnant [with Mariah] a lot of people were like, ‘You’ve just messed up your whole life,’ ” said Oscar Perez. “But we didn’t look at it like that. We look at it as we started a new life.”‘

As a kid, I remember watching Amazing Stories with my parents. We’d order pizza, lay a blanket on the living room floor, and dim the lights. It was a Friday-night tradition.

Last night, at eight o’clock, I sat to watch NBC’s new series, Heroes. My three-year-old son was freshly laundered, and nearly ready for bed. In the first few minutes of the episode, one of the main characters was lying in a morgue, her skin peeled away and chest cavity exposed. I was thankful my son wasn’t in the room.

Later, a woman in a bra and thong had sex in a Las Vegas hotel room with a married politician. After she’d threatened to shove her heel through another man’s skull. Another character is a heroin addict who paints the future, but only when he’s loaded.

It’s heart-warming, really.

I know a lot of parents decry the evils of television. Instead of allowing their sons and daughters to atrophy into bowls of tapioca, they instead encourage their children to chronicle nature walks in homemade notebooks, using pastels and watercolors. It’s a wonderful idea. Yet the average American watches hours of television each day. Our family doesn’t come close to the national average, but we do watch television…our son included. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to at least watch television together?

It’s getting more difficult. Television isn’t produced for families, but for demographics. Specific ages, genders, races. Single men, married women, three-year-old boys. Right now, the only shows I feel relatively safe watching with my son are Spongebob Squarepants and Dirty Jobs. And Star Trek, which probably isn’t the best choice.

I know channels can be changed, and power turned off. I understand that, for now, what my son sees is ultimately my and my wife’s decision. But is it too much to ask that bloody corpses and lap dances be relegated to nine o’clock?

If you look at the Men’s Ministries section of my chuch’s bulletin, you’ll see the Businessmen’s Luncheon. I’ve been attending for three years, and the notice has never changed. Our Sunday School class for ‘young married couples’ has Mommy’s Day Out.

We lived 1,500 miles from my father when my son was born. Now it’s 400, but we still don’t talk about what it means to be a father. Then again, I don’t ask.

A visit by poet Robert Bly prompts Bob Welch of the Oregon Register-Guard to ask: ‘Whatever happened to the men’s movement?’

‘Now, the drums and stadiums have largely grown silent. But for all the humor spun from the men-as-drum-beating-warriors theme, the movement brought to light a need we should take seriously. “Most men,” wrote Thoreau, “live lives of quiet desperation.”‘

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Please understand, my limited experience with fraternities comes from a campus where there was a raging feud between Greek business majors and the arts. I was an English major. During homecoming of my freshman year, the bars stopped selling alcohol at midnight. A riot ensued, during which at least two cars were upended and set on fire.

I’ve never held fraternities in high esteem. This is, apparently, my mistake. In 1982, Alpha Phi Alpha joined with the March of Dimes to create Project Alpha, a national program which provides support and education to teen males about responsibility, fatherhood, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and relationships.

As part of Project Alpha week, the University of Kentucky’s Alpha Phi Alpha chapter held a discussion with 43 African-American boys about what it means to be a father:

‘”When you become a man, you got to care about others, not just yourself,” said Teakola Smith, 14, explaining the difference between a man and a boy. “You become a man when you’re ready to take responsibility and not do stupid stuff.”‘

Read more →

I think the challenge isn’t simply to get boys (and men) to acknowledge that responsibility, but to take pride in their roles.

Rob and his wife have created a support group for their autistic son, which is comprised of family, friends, and care-givers:

‘First, there will be many other minds involved with creating ideas to help out with the fostering of Moose’s development. Perhaps we’ll feel like we’re not missing opportunities and such. Second, it’s an organized approach to helping us help Moose. We know we’re not alone in our interest to support him, but this is yet one more thing we can do in an organized fashion to provide a sense of community for him.’

When my wife and I left the hospital after our son was born, I felt…abandoned. Orderlies were hovering around our room, waiting to change the sheets. The phone stopped working. The hospital administrator kept walking by the door, tapping his watch. No one even waved goodbye. I was allowed to leave the hospital with a real, live human being, for which I was completely responsible, without so much as an eye exam.

Is it any wonder parents sometimes feel that we’re raising our children in isolation? In addition to the emphasis on being independent and self-sufficient, parents are also faced with experts who bemoan the lack of multi-generational households and long-distance families. Yet our kids don’t live in a vacuum.

Well. Unless you’re this freak.

Everyone my son meets has some hand, no matter how small, in raising him. Some have more influence than others, and most—even strangers—care about him. As a father, my responsibility isn’t simply to my own son, but also to every child who crosses my path.

What’s neat about Ron’s idea is that it goes beyond an academic understanding of this truth. He and his wife are making their community an intentional partner in their son’s life. They’ve helped their friends and family recognize the significance they play within the family.

I’ve written before about Australia’s impressive efforts to boost the perception and role of fatherhood. What I didn’t know was that the urgency of these programs may have to do with the country’s falling birth rate. Much like the United States, more Australians are choosing to have fewer children, later in life.

Professor Michael Chapman, head of women’s and children’s health at the University of New South Wales, says that—in Australia—it’s become ‘almost manly not to have a child‘. In the U.S., the trend isn’t so much ‘manly’ as it is (for lack of a better term) ‘progressive’. It’s considered noble to postpone or forego having children in order to further one’s own life and career. Popular media often portrays children as financial burdens, or speed bumps keeping us from how life’s supposed to be. Keeping us from what we want.

Not that I believe people should become parents for the sake of having children. My wife and I are perfectly happy being the parents of an only child, no matter how wistfully my mother sighs. I’m also a proponent of having only as many children as you can support. But it makes perfect sense that the general perception of children as the new ball-and-chain could result in smaller families.

The difference is that the U.S. can afford the trend. From 2000-05, its birth rate fell by only 0.4%. By contrast, Australia’s fell by just over 6%. Concerned about the country’s future base population and workforce, in 2004 the Australian government issued a series of financial incentives to encourage families to have more children.

Fatherhood may be the key. Improve the image of the father, and more men may be willing to face the challenge. When our son was born, my wife was—I felt—overly sensitive to my feelings about carying a diaper bag, let alone a paisley one. ‘I can get something different, if the light blue bothers you,’ she offered. But I didn’t care. After becoming a father, I’d never felt so manly.

Jack’s written his first post about being a father. He’s pretty sure you’ve read it before:

‘It’s hard to know what to post for the first time about being a dad. I really have not been able to put any of my thoughts into words yet. It’s hard to say anything at all without sounding cliche.’

And it’s true. Every father, whether he blogs or not, follows the same general script when trying to express his fatherhoodly feelings for the first time: ‘I don’t know what to say. I’m in awe. I’ve never felt such love so quickly, or so deeply. Wow.’

It’s much like our reaction to Star Wars.

Jack, staying true to form, of course tries to explain how becoming a father has altered his life. He calls it ‘forced perspective’. Which really caught my attention. Apart from ’sleep now’, the advice most often given to expecting fathers is: ‘It’ll change your life.’ Though well-meant, these are the most banal and least helpful words of wisdom for a new dad. Ironically, they’re also, perhaps, the truest.

What’s missing from that advice is how abrupt and thoroughly becoming a father changes a man’s life. It’s complete, and instantaneous. Change is most often gradual. A new job, marriage, college: life is a matter of acclimation. Life takes getting used to.

But fatherhood forces your perspective. In a moment, every aspect of your life is shifted in relation to that squirming boy, red-faced and lounging under a heating lamp. Not only the obvious, like your marriage or career, but parts of your life which have no logical business caring whether or not you have a child. An impulse to stop for coffee can turn into frenzied internal debate about bills and savings accounts. Suddenly a grande mocha is all that stands between your child and a PhD.

And how can a man be expected to convey that inner turmoil, except by saying, ‘I don’t know what to say.’