Hello World!
The first How To Be A Dad post...
I became a dad around seven years ago. I knew I wanted to be one a lot earlier than that. Being a dad is a big part of who I am, and I am trying to be a good one.
This newsletter (blog? project?) is my attempt to write down some of the things I have learned along the way. In many ways, I am trying to build a resource I wish I had earlier in the game. My hope is that I can be helpful to other dads and those interested in fatherhood whether or not "being a dad" is currently a part of how they would describe themselves.
Each post will articulate something that I’ve learned, adopted, or I believe to be true, and I think is worth sharing with others. Maybe "true" is a bit of a stretch: none of this will be universally applicable, and readers might find they disagree with some (or all) of it. I will do my best to make each piece of advice as practical as possible, to articulate why I think it it is worth sharing and thinking about, and to illustrate it with real examples from my experience. I will also try to be as transparent as possible about how well I live this advice myself, where I succeed and where I fail.
Overall, what I'd like to write is a guide to a practice or craft of being a dad.
There are a few general points that I think will apply to everything I write. These are worth being explicit about at the outset so that readers are aware of them and can use them to approach the project as a whole.
First, I am writing with a very specific audience in mind: other men who have a spouse and kids, or who want to be a dad one day. This obviously isn't inclusive of the broad range of individuals or families that might come across this project. If you are are reading this and feel like you don't fit neatly into that specific audience, please don't feel as though you aren't welcome. There might be things that you still find are relevant or helpful, and so I would encourage you to take what you'd like from the writing and leave everything else.
The main reason I am thinking about this specific audience isn't a normative belief that this is the only kind of reader that matters, or the only way one could "be a dad". It's just the audience that I can speak to with the most confidence, because I'm part of that group myself. I don't have enough confidence to offer these pieces of advice to others directly.
Let me illustrate this here a little more explicitly. By defining my audience above, here's a group of potential readers that I'm leaving out: men who have kids but aren't married, either because they have separated from their partner or wouldn't describe their relationship status as "married" for a host of reasons. If you are a man who has kids and is divorced, you might still find this to be an interesting and (hopefully) helpful thing to read. But you won't see the specifics of your own situation illustrated frequently or at all. I don't think I can speak with much authority to the realities of parenting in this situation... and so I won't. This illustration can be extended to a range of other specific arrangements, lifestyles, and realities that readers might find themselves in. If you find that the way I articulate specific things limits the applicability of what I write, please accept my apologies: take what might be useful and ignore the rest. Please also accept my reassurance that when I use words like "dad", "father", "married", and "wife" I'm not expressing any judgment of you if you find that these terms don't speak to your reality effectively.
Second, I'm writing to share things that I think are helpful but I won't make any promises about the originality of anything here. Far smarter people have written about fatherhood and parenting, far better than I ever will. If you find that this isn't a great resource compared to other things you come across, please feel free to ignore what I'm saying or avoid reading at all. But at the same time... I do think there's a lack of writing about how to be a dad today, otherwise I wouldn't be putting any effort into this.
Third, I think that "being a dad" overlaps significantly with some other things we can be. Primarily: "being a husband." In my humble opinion, being a "good" dad is inextricably tied up with being a "good" and "happy" husband. So some of the specific pieces of advice might be more about how to be a husband (or, less frequently, friend or neighbour) than being a dad. Where this is the case, I'll try to be as clear as possible about what the link to being a dad is.
Finally, it's worth explicitly recognizing that everyone has opinions about parenting, and every situation is different. The "advice" I offer here won't always apply, and might actually be terrible advice to you in your specific circumstances. Certainly I live these pieces of advice inconsistently at best, even though I feel strongly enough about them to share with others. Take everything with a grain of salt.
I'm going to end this introductory post with a list of what I think I’m going to write about as this project develops. My goal is to expand each specific piece of advice into a distinct post, once a week. I'll add to them over time; I will probably also revise and even change my opinion on some of them as we go. Hopefully I can build a community of readers and update the list over time with their help! Here they are:
Take your kids seriously
Take fewer pictures
When you aren't working, don't
Be good at making love with your wife
Let your kids do things for/to you
Apply the principle "What Would My Kids Think?"
Involve your kids in your chores
Check books out of the library all the time
Say no
Say yes
Play seriously
Be affectionate
Choose what you are doing deliberately
Re-evaluate what you are choosing to do regularly
Have a hobby or a craft that you are excited about
Walk around a mall without buying things
Have a close friend
Help your wife cultivate close friendships
Do favours for other parents in your community
Eat dinner together
Don't wear a smart watch
Read more
Let your wife know you desire her (sexually)
Cultivate a sense of agency
Explain things
Lean into your kids' interests
Help your kids be tolerant with each other
Talk to other parents