"That's What My Parents Did, and I Turned Out Alright."

It's the war cry of every adult who is in fact anything but "alright." Has anyone ever used this phrase to describe a healthy upbringing from informed parent trying to foster positive human development in their child? No. No they haven't. Ever. Is it not, by and large, a defense of unhealthy parenting techniques and stressful upbringings caused by uninformed parents? Yes. Almost always.

"Well, my parents practiced extreme patience and gave me choices and went out of their way to make sure I was eating healthy meals and developing secure attachment and being intellectually stimulated...and I turned out alright."

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Of course you turned out alright, because that's what parents are supposed to do. No one has to defend good parenting; it's self-evident.

"Well, I lived on Little Debbies and Mountain Dew and my parents never read to me and spanked and yelled at me all the time, and I turned out alright. They did what they had to do; I was a little asshole."

Sounds more familiar, doesn't it? Are children ever really "little assholes"? I mean, yes, sometimes, but only if you define "little asshole" as a young human with an under-developed brain and poor communication skills trying to assert his independence. Sadly, many adults still look back at their childhood and think, "I was such an asshole." You weren't an asshole, you were a child, doing what children do and being treated like an asshole by parents lacking an understanding of human development. If you continue to act this way as an adult, you're an asshole (though, to be fair, you were taught to be an asshole by assholes).

(And I will now stop using the word asshole. You're welcome.)

"I turned out alright," is a phrase that doesn't just apply to parenting techniques, but to parents' worldviews, values, education, biases, life-lessons, ideologies, traditions, activities in which they involve their children, and so forth. These are all things that carry an enormous amount of weight and influence in the development of children. They hang with us for life no matter how convoluted we later find them to be. We see people every day in the news spouting off information that is factually untrue, and saying it with complete conviction as though they have no doubt they are correct. We hear people everyday--even people with higher degrees and professional careers--discuss things they were told as children as though they are common knowledge when they have long been accepted as false by experts studying the topic in question. One would think these people would have learned this new information sometime during their studies, but alas, this isn't always the case. And, sometimes, even when it is the case, not everyone is willing to let go of what they were taught as children in lieu of what an expert on the topic tells them, even despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Ay, and there's the rub.

Think about this for a minute. Everything we know, we were taught, or we have inferred from our personal experience with the world. Everything. Unlike our new computers, we do not come with information already installed at birth. Impulses, yes. Information, no. Babies aren't born knowing what is happening in the world, nor are they born with brains capable of inferring correctly what is happening in the world. Rather, we are born with brains prepared for anything (more on this in a minute). Thus, parents, teachers, communities, leaders, friends, etc. play a huge role in "programming" us with information necessary to survive and hopefully thrive in our new environment. However, people can only pass on the information that they have learned themselves. Is the information we are passing on true, or is it what we believe to be true? Or is it what we want to be true, even though it isn't, or what we were taught is true and never learned otherwise? Or--and this is the worst of all possibilities--we were taught something was true, later learned it is not true, and willfully chose ignorance over reality.

It would be reasonable, in my humble opinion, to define education as the act of replacing belief with fact. At one time people believed the sun came straight-up in the morning from some undefined place beneath our flat Earth and lowered back down into that unknown place at night. They believed multiple gods controlled the elements and that doing random things that they felt pleased the gods would make it rain or shine or warm-up or cool-off, etc. Of course, we now know these beliefs were incorrect and we can study the sun and the rotation of the spherical Earth and the complexities of weather with such precision as to predict what will happen a week in advance (no random god-pleasing rituals necessary). Those who have adapted to this new information have thrived and those who either have not received the new information or have chosen not to believe it have struggled.

With this in mind, we can see how important it is first for children to develop critical, analytical, creative, healthily-functioning brains and then to be given correct information about the world based on the best evidence available. When a baby is born, she has billions of potential neural connections in her brain. Think of it as all of the phone numbers in the world with which you can connect should you find such a call necessary. However, within the first year of life, her brain has pared those connections down to the necessary "phone numbers" that she actually needs to call in order to survive in her surroundings. So, if a baby is spoken to in English, her brain focuses on the connections that form the sounds necessary to speak English. If she is spoken to in both English and Spanish, her brain will hang on to the connections necessary to speak both languages. However, her brain will not focus on the connections that make it possible to understand and speak German (even though those connections are available). Our brains do a great deal of "paring-down" in the first year of development, and continue to do so throughout life--engaging certain connections more than others depending on what is needed to function appropriately in different environments.

This is why appropriate parenting techniques are so necessary. If a child lives in fear of being yelled at or physically abused because their parents lack the information and skills to engage and discipline them in appropriate ways, their brains will focus on fear connections, which do not involve much thinking, but rather engage fight or flight impulses more appropriate for primal animals. Instead of developing a neural map of appropriate behavior to get what they want/ need they become frightened and frustrated because they are incapable of articulating their very large emotions and their caregivers are angry and hostile with them for something they cannot help. Engaging their fight or flight response teaches them nothing except mom and dad don't care about what I'm thinking and feeling and are potentially dangerous. These unfortunate children lose a great deal of their ability to learn right from the get-go because their brains are frequently relying on impulsive brain-stem responses instead of developing connections necessary to become more articulate, competent, and intelligent people.

Not only is their brain suffering from parents creating stressful environments (or doing nothing to decrease a frustrated child's stress levels), but the child's body fills with the stress-related hormone Cortisol, which weakens the immune system, inhibits proper bone and tissue development, causes gastric and renal issues, causes increased blood pressure, and a whole host of other negative physiological issues. Thus, for a person to truly "turn out alright," they need to grow up in an environment that is low-stress and high stimulation, and be exposed to as many healthy life interactions as possible in their early years. People using this phrase and citing a high-stress, low stimulation, low positive-interaction childhood most likely have a very low bar for "alright," which isn't really their fault since they have likely fallen in with a community of people raised similarly who share their low standards of "alright."

There are better ways out there. Yes, they will require most to do some research since an unfortunately low number of Americans grew up in households that refrained from corporal punishment and impulsive disciplining, but these new techniques are available. The alternative is creating people who may find a way to make money; they may even overcome their poor start (the brain is mutable after all) and rise to positions of power and be viewed culturally as "alright" or even "successful," but this won't make these lucky few good or happy people, just wealthy and powerful, and potentially detrimental to the rest of us. The vast majority will not overcome a poor start. The vast majority will struggle academically and socially, they'll become hostile adults with limited capacity for creative and critical thinking, and they'll be a burden on their families and communities. They'll view experts as threats to their beliefs instead of gateways to their intellectual growth, and they'll literally become psychologically incapable of change without a great deal of work (i.e. therapy). Perhaps worst of all, they'll continue the cycle of misinformation, unhealthy behavior, and archaic beliefs and practices that lower the quality of life for society at large. In a place where everyone gets a voice and a vote and can contribute great things to the world or cause great havoc and suffering, NOT doing what your parents did may not only be your best option, but your responsibility to the rest of us.

That Sounds Like A Lot of Fun (If We Didn't Have a Kid)

I don't think I'm alone when I say there are times when I forget to insert my daughter into the equation when invited to social functions.

"Hey, some of us are going out to dinner tonight if you're interested."

"Sounds great!" I say...

Except, it doesn't, because I'll spend the entire meal splitting my focus between an attention-seeking toddler and friends without children trying to share their excitement and existential dilemmas while becoming increasingly intoxicated.

"We're going to the beach, you should come!"

"Sounds fantastic!" I say...

If we weren't meeting an hour before our daughter's bedtime and I didn't have to spend the entire experience directing her away from an obese woman's thong twenty feet away (this actually happened) while keeping her from ingesting half the beach.

I didn't want to be this person when I became a parent. Despite being thirty-three when our daughter was born, my wife and I were somehow the first of our immediate peer group to have kids. We wanted to make it look easy. We wanted to keep going out and show everyone that it's not so bad and that they should join the parent party. But I have since learned that this is futile, and no fun for anyone. The switch has to happen. Parents have to become family-first people, or live with the turmoil of having one foot in the world of early evenings and child-focused outings and the other in trying to appear sane and completely content with people already skeptical of your sanity for wanting children. Most people without kids don't care about your kid. They may enjoy playing with her for a few minutes here and there when she's around, they may allow you to tell stories that are of the utmost significance to you as a parent, but boring as hell to everyone else, but, ultimately most people without kids wish you had a permanent babysitter for your child so you could be the person you were before reproducing. They forget when inviting you to events that you will have to bring her along, or forget, as I do myself sometimes, that bringing her along doesn't mean she will sit quietly and allow you to carry-on as though she isn't there. In truth, both parties should consider what it would mean to invite a psychotic person to the event and then ask, "Does this sound like a good idea?"

This being said, some people do have relatively tame children. I have met a few who actually will sit still in a restaurant and entertain themselves with food and toys without the need for constant parental intervention. They can sit quietly on the floor and play while adults talk, and they only speak up when tired, hungry, or soiled. This is not my daughter. She's a wild woman--a huge presence with a big voice and boundless energy. She hates being restrained, be it in a high-chair, car-seat, changing table, crib, stroller, or by mom and dad's constant chorus of, "No honey, don't do that/ don't push her/ don't eat that/ let's stay over here/ he was playing with that first/ can you not pour that dirt down your shirt, please/ let's not rub peanut butter in our hair (you get the picture)." We turn our attention away for thirty seconds and she will inevitably find the messiest, most dangerous, most socially awkward way to entertain herself within a thirty-foot radius. And yet somehow I forget this about her on a weekly basis. Or, if I don't forget, I stubbornly insist that I am up for the challenge and go out anyway. If being insane is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result, I'm as nutty as they come. But then, one has to be nutty to be a parent, because at some point kids do produce different results (after all, most of us, as adults, don't throw our food in restaurants and scream our heads off because we're bored--though, we may be tempted).

Hence, parents remove themselves from civilized society. Our houses slowly denigrate from tasteful, yet easily destroyed decor to brightly-colored durable plastic furniture and educational throw rugs--couches with food stains, and toy chests bolted to the walls. We create a sort of insane asylum for little people where they can literally bounce off the walls and rummage about impulsively without injuring themselves. We scatter toys throughout each room and in the yard so that no matter where the adults venture, the children may be entertained. Fortunately, our friends with children do the same to their houses, making it much more enjoyable for everyone to corral the kids into a playroom leaving the adults free to converse like grown-ups. Eventually, in such an environment, the kids will wear themselves out and can be fed in an area that is easily cleaned before carried off to a quiet back room to sleep in pack-n-play. Parents also know that an enjoyable night out does not mean an enjoyable morning after. Thus, we know to leave at a reasonable hour so that we and our child-ed friends can sleep before our lovely little ones crow like roosters at dawn.

We mean no offense to our friends without children. We really don't. But it is impossible to appreciate the muted joys of manageable social functions if one does not have a child. The criteria for such an event requires arriving on-time (none of this fashionably late business, parents do not appreciate having their very limited social hours robbed by those with a careless sense of time) and cutting the evening short no matter how much fun you are having (and this is earlier than you think, 10:30 PM tops). It requires the aforementioned safe and untethered environment for the children, and it requires drinking--if drinking will occur--to occur immediately so that parents can get a buzz on and sober up to drive home within a matter of a few hours. So, it is not that parents are shunning their friends without kids, it is that we know you all have no desire--nor should you--to abide by these guidelines and we can't bare your bummed faces expressing that we are the lamest people you know.

I remember events when we were childless. Those with kids were there, but not present, and usually disappeared abruptly without my understanding why or even taking much notice. I never stopped to consider what they did with the rest of their evening when they left a party at six o'clock while the rest of us devolved into drunken hyenas. Now I know. They went home and sadly lamented their inability to join us in our devolution. They watched television or read a book or perhaps had another drink and tried not to bring up endless life logistics and then went to bed at nine-thirty (and were excited about it).

So, please, to the child-ed and childless alike, may we come to the understanding that our lives are incompatible without some serious compromises. Parents, get sitters if you're going to hang out with childless friends, and childless friends lower the hell out of your expectations when hanging out with parents. Understand that that extra hour of laughter at the end of the evening is costing us an extra $15 in sitter fees and robbing us of an extra hour of sleep (which in turn robs our children of a patient and competent parent the following morning). Parents, stop expecting your friends without kids to care about your child's developmental milestones and try to talk about something worldly. Read a newspaper (aka: a news website, what is this 1998?) before you go out. Bring up something halfway interesting. Childless friends, forgive us if we are incapable of bringing up anything halfway interesting. To the childless, we cannot start a "kids welcome" function at six o'clock. Toddlers go to bed at seven and they are relatively inflexible with their routines. Parents, stop getting offended that your childless friends don't plan around your decision to have a kid. They aren't bad people for not living family-friendly lives 24/7. In fact, they're doing us a favor by boring themselves to tears just to spend some time with us and our family. If we can all take a few things into consideration when hanging out together, we can make this work. If not...well, it was fun while it lasted, may we part ways in peace.

It's Not You, It's Me: Parenting Self-Awareness

One of the more difficult aspects of being a parent is remaining mindful of my own mood and present stress-level. I can't count the number of times I have put my daughter to bed in the evening and thought, "Geez, she was in a mood today," only to realize later, after I have relaxed, that, "Geez, I was in a mood today."

This is not to say that toddlers don't have moodiness like the rest of us; it's just that their moods are usually less tainted by the concerns of adult life. That is, toddlers aren't as complicated as their parents. My negative mood could be stemming from a conversation with a friend or family member that riled me in some way. It could be from a life situation I'm thinking about, or a financial situation I'm thinking about. I could be dwelling on how I exercise about half as much as I did before becoming a parent, or how my writing has all but ceased due to lack of time and energy to be creative. On the other end, I could be in a good mood because I actually slept for eight hours, or because I played well in my weekly basketball game, or because I got some time with friends to have adult conversation and laugh (not that raising a toddler doesn't come with its fair share of laughter).

My daughter's mood can change from negative to positive about eighteen billion times a day for reasons that are intensely present and neurologically unregulated. She could be upset because she woke up too early and decided to cry (and I use that phrase loosely, more like reacted) until my wife or I came to get her out of her crib. Even then, she may throw a fit when we pick her up for reasons that are unclear to us and, I'm guessing, unclear to her. She has no filter, no thought process around feelings. "I'm groggy," manifests itself as arching and flailing and crying, making her initial morning diaper change--after peeing herself for eleven hours--impossible. Two minutes later, she may see the cat or a toy she's interested in and be playing and smiling like the previous emotion never happened. Seeing a food she wants (right this goddamn second and screw you if you can't open a banana peel instantaneously with your mind) seems to be as intense an emotion as me smashing my finger with a hammer. Mom walking out of a room for five minutes to change clothes sucks as badly as a close friend leaving town forever. And, when she returns, it's as joyous as seeing that friend again after a decade of barely speaking.

These feeling are constant for a toddler, and ultimately beyond their capability to regulate. They lack impulse-control, and try as you might to instill some in them, their brains simply aren't developed enough to achieve this discipline. In fact, the frontal lobe, which is responsible for impulse-control, isn't fully developed until age 25 (so, slow your roll on making those big life decisions in your early twenties, millennials). Thus, the difference maker for whether my daughter and I have a good day together isn't whether or not she is in a good mood, but whether I'm able to shelve my heady emotions and be present with her moods. I have the ability to respond, rather than react, to her ever-changing emotions. If she throws a fit for five straight minutes over my not letting her go outside (because I happened to open the front door to get the mail and reminded her the outdoors exists and that she "likes to go to there"), I can't let this outburst continue to rattle me when those five minutes pass and she is ready to dress her teddy bear in her pajamas and laugh at him. I have to roll from "Worst experience in the world!" to "Greatest experience in the world!" seamlessly and constantly if I ever want to have a good day. It's a level of Zen that is nearly impossible. True, I have the ability to respond instead of react, but in the same way that a surfer has the ability to calmly navigate tidal wave-like swells breaking overhead while enjoying the ride to shore. Sometimes it's going to end in getting your head slammed into the sand. It's all a part of the process.

My ability to stay present often comes from what I do for myself in the times that I am not navigating my daughter's tidal wave-like wants and needs. There are no days off as a parent. Weekdays come and go; weekends come and go. Early mornings do not; baby's needs and wants do not. If I neglect to exercise and choose to eat like a nineteen year old living on his own for the first time, I am in a poor state to stay present with my daughter. If I try to go out for drinks with friends and don't get to bed at a decent hour, we both pay the next day. Parenting is much like any discipline I've been a part of; the healthier and more focused I am, the better I preform. In school, in sports, in relationships, in work, in writing, the more present and focused I am, the better I am. And, healthiness doesn't mean never going out for drinks or indulging in hedonistic pleasures. All work and no play can be just as detrimental as Tiger-mom-like structure. What I can't do (and can't really understand how other people do) is be apathetic. Apathy is a downward spiral. The very nature of not being present is not knowing you're not being present. Thus, if I never do the things that keep me present I never get the clarity to look back and critique the times I wasn't being present and suffered for it.

In noticing the connection between self-awareness and parenting I have become more aware of the connection between presence in the moment and all things in my life. Hanging onto an emotion I was having five minutes before while writing a frustrated email to a customer service department when I am currently presented with the opportunity to go for a run is pointless and unhelpful. Ruminating over shortcomings only gets in the way of overcoming those shortcomings. I have to thank my daughter for these lessons. She's a Zen Master without even trying. She feels things fully and authentically and lets them go immediately to move to the next moment. I miss a few shots in a basketball game and I'm in a funk the rest of the game. She slams her head into a wall and thirty seconds later she's chasing me down the hallway laughing hysterically. So, in this regard, I have many things to learn from my underdeveloped offspring. In the meantime, I can only strive to focus on my own state-of-being and respond appropriately to the toddler-ness of my toddler.

Dad is the New Mom (and Vice Versa)

To be fair, statistically speaking, the title of this blog is completely untrue. Of stay-at-home parents, only 3.4% are fathers, and that's up from 1.6% in 2001. That said, dads care more today than ever about the things that historically only moms have deemed important. More than half of fathers say they would stay at home if their spouse made enough to allow for it, and most dads I meet are doing everything in their power to rearrange their careers to get just a little more time with their kids.

Whether because they must or because they choose to, both parents work in 59.1% of families with two married parents and children. Leaving around 41% with a stay-at-home parent (whether out of choice or because one parent is unemployed), and, as previously mentioned, only 3.4% of those are men. So, while it is a privilege, as a stay-at-home dad I am far and away a minority, which makes me a bit of an anomaly while toting my little lady around town in the middle of the week.

Parks on the weekend are full of dads. FULL of dads. Moms, if they are in the 41% staying at home all week, likely remain at home on a Saturday, as I often do, splitting their few hours of free time between getting chores finished that are impossible to accomplish with a babbling, pint-sized dust devil spiraling at your ankles, and pretending to relax while staring mindlessly at the internet and enjoying an uninterrupted meal. 

During the week, the parks are all but devoid of fathers. It's mostly moms, a fair amount of nannies, and me. And because it's just me, I am being watched like a lion wandering into a pride of lionesses caring for their cubs. Many are skeptical to say the least. For starters, if I am not constantly near my daughter, I look like a creep hanging out in the middle of a "work day" watching small children and mothers at a playground. Mothers and nannies meanwhile sit on the periphery chatting up a storm or staring at their iPhones, their children enjoying some time to themselves. In addition to avoiding looking like a pedophile, I have to avoid looking like a home-wrecker. Not only are moms protective of their children, they are protective of other moms. A man engaging moms on the playground instead of playing with his child, raises eyebrows. I'd like to say I'm better than these cynical moms labeling all males as aggressive, sex-driven threats to their children, neighbors, and marriages but in all honesty I too would cock an eyebrow if I saw a man sitting alone at a park in the middle of the day, or too involved with other people's kids or their moms (safety first, after all). 

Additionally, I must keep my cool at all times in public settings with my daughter. This, of course, is a good thing. Patience and responding calmly are necessary skills to have as a parent, but we all have our limits. If I see a mom lose her cool in public, I think nothing of it. Such an act, depending on the severity of said loss of coolness, is a daily occurrence and elicits looks of compassion: "Poor mom probably hasn't slept in days and obviously has her hands full with that kid." A loss of coolness from a man can be downright frightening. Most of us in my generation were raised to believe that dad is boss and kids listen or feel dad's wrath. I think my generation of men are becoming a bit more artful than our fathers at talking to our children, but it certainly is something we have to work at. Fortunately, my daughter rarely pushes me to the point of raising my voice, but she is reaching the age where she understands the word, "No," but feels the need to test whether it is a hard "No," (such as, "stop right now because you're about to kill yourself) or a soft "No," ("Please stop dragging the laundry I just folded all over the house because it's really annoying."). However, if I were to respond to her testing the way I hear moms respond to similar situations, people would flee like I was an escaped gorilla. There is no love for the frustrated father. He is scary, he is potentially dangerous, and he is to be avoided. 

On the peer front, stay-at-home fatherhood is largely viewed as laziness. It is, at the very least, not considered a job. Whether it's the constant replies of, "Oh, that must be so rewarding, you're so lucky," through tones of feigned sincerity that want to say, "Well, isn't that nice, you've found a way to avoid the hellish world of work," or overtly suggesting jobs I could be considering--as though I am not staying at home with my child but simply unemployed and hiding it in the guise of "staying at home with my child"--people on the outside don't get this familial distribution of responsibilities. It makes their brains hurt. It challenges their understanding of gender roles. It elicits thoughts, if not whispers, of, "That poor woman. She has to support her child and her deadbeat husband. That's so much pressure on a mom." People believe that working moms are doing everything, regardless of whether dad stays home. They don't get why dad isn't fulfilling his responsibility to support his family. They don't believe a man is capable of running a house and raising a child, and many think dad has lost his balls as they try not to cringe at his talk about nap-times and cute new behaviors his little girl is exhibiting. Women will tell you that a man playing with his child is like female porn, but that applies to working dads--dads with infinite energy and joy while spending time with their children on their one day a week--not the tired stay-at-home dad who is tasked with finding another day's worth of productive activities and may not always seem over-the-moon about being at a park for the fifteenth hour this week. 

On the home front, it is difficult for mom and dad to stick to their chosen set of responsibilities rather than defaulting to the roles they were prepared for by society. My wife runs her own business and is incredibly successful at it (part of our aforementioned privilege that allows us to choose to have a stay-at-home parent in the first place), but I run the family finances and constantly have my nose in the financial end of her business. Why? Because men are raised to believe we have an obligation to support our family financially and we cannot seem to let go of that ingrained need to play a role in the making of the money. On the other hand, my wife spends time she could be putting into her business pouring over parenting resources and sending me suggestions of things to do with our daughter. She worries constantly about whether I am overworked and puts more pressure on herself to give me "time-off" rather than taking time-off for herself. Why? Because women are, despite their progress in the professional world, largely still prepared by society to be homemakers who nurture their family and allow their husbands to focus on their careers. We all want to believe these stereotypes and gender roles have disappeared, but anyone who has children and a partner will tell you, they're alive and well (or, unwell, depending on how you want to look at it). 

I say all of this not to whine, but to enlighten (because I really do enjoy being a stay-at-home parent). Stay-at-home dads are a growing breed and even those of us who are not capable of staying at home full time still want bigger roles in raising our children. The general public discourse suggests that everyone wants this from men, but the behaviors on the ground are not as supportive of this redistribution of work. Women are fighting in the workplace for equal pay and equal opportunities while fighting the view that they are bad mothers for not staying at home. Men are fighting on the playground and at social functions to be taken seriously as nurturers  and homemakers while maintaining some shred of masculinity. Both genders are completely capable of taking over the traditional responsibilities of the opposite gender, but, both moms and dads need support in doing so. We're undoing thousands of years of indoctrination here. Women should not be pitied or judged as bad mothers for taking on the bread-winning role of the family and men should be given the same compassion, support, and respect that is given to women who give up careers to raise their kids. Just as women need to talk shop with men in their shared profession, men who stay at home need to be included in shop-talk with women who are running a household and raising kids. Men talking about the day-to-day development of their child, or complaining about mundane chores and the isolation of caring for a non-verbal (or semi-verbal ) communicator, still need to be considered men (if only for their ego's sake). And, a working women who talk to working men about the pressures of work instead of to other moms about their day-to-day life with the kids should be considered just as feminine.  

Currently, I don't see these things happening, and to be fair, they are complicated situations to navigate. It's hard for a working woman to talk about her career without making a stay-at-home mom feel judged for not working. Likewise, a stay-at-home mom might have a hard time talking about how glad she is that she gets to spend so much time with her kids without making a working mom feel guilty for wanting a career. With men, it's even harder, in my humble opinion. Men, in general, are far less sensitive to how they are making other men feel. In fact, I don't find that most working men care a thing about what a stay-at-home dad does all day. It's all they can do not to shake their heads in pity if I dare talk about my amazingly domestic and mundane life (never mind trying to convince them I enjoy what I do). Meanwhile, stay-at-home moms seem to inherently know not to ask another stay-at-home mom what she's been up to. The conversation immediately turns to where their child is developmentally, what they are feeding her, what she said the other day that was hilarious, and listening sympathetically as the other complains about going stir-crazy without other adults around.

It's a strange dance this blending and reallocating of traditional roles. It can seem like a petty predicament when placed in the scope of other social issues, but if we want true equality and true freedom for families to distribute responsibilities as best works for their goals, everyone involved needs a little love and understanding from their communities. Shouldn't the goal be happy, healthy, well-adjusted families? Does making money have anything to do with being masculine? Is feeding, clothing, changing, bathing, reading to, playing with, parenting (etc) a child not something a man can do? Is competing in the workplace and supporting a family financially not something a woman can do? Because it's happening, and many are having great success with it. What we need now is some acceptance from the rest of society. 

Raising the Woman the Girl is to Become

Sloane turned one last week. One year old. One very short, very fast year in which she went from a pink, wrinkly, flailing poop factory with no sense of the world around her to a walking, babbling, little girl who no longer lets mom and dad feed her and can retrieve an item from another room simply by asking her to go find it (I'm still working on "Find dad's beer?" We'll get there. We must). In many ways parenthood--especially stay-at-home fatherhood--has met all my worst fears and greatest expectations. On a good day, Sloane wakes up at 6:30AM, takes three naps, laughs and smiles and plays (sometimes with me, sometimes perfectly happy on her own), entertains herself in the car, plays with other kids on our outings, and makes me feel like the most competent person on the planet. On a bad day, she wakes at 5AM (ready for the day!), skips naps, becomes overly tired, refuses to eat, clings to me demanding attention, wails in the car as we try to drive somewhere to have fun (and then falls asleep before we get there, forcing me to turn around and go home), and makes me question why I possibly thought having a kid was a good idea. Some nights I sleep eight hours straight. Other nights we all wake up every few hours. Some days, after she's in bed at 7PM, I look at our battle-zone of a house--bedazzled by talking toys, brought to you by Fisher Price--and have to decompress for half-an-hour before I can even consider picking up. Other evenings I feel so jazzed from a fun day on the town and a pre-bedtime, slap-happy laughfest rough-housing around the living room that I blow through cleaning and dishes and kick back with a nightcap to appreciate my good fortune.

And this is my life now. I don't pack up a backpack full of life's necessities and lead teenagers on multi-week trips through the mountains. I don't drive cross-country on a whim just to have an adventure. I don't stay up all night studying, or stressing-out about a deadline. I go to parks and the zoo and baby storytimes and swim lessons. I haul a child to the grocery, entertaining her while dodging other shoppers and looking for healthy food in a sea of processed crap. I cook dinner while playing peek-a-boo and placing finger foods on my daughter's highchair only to watch them be immediately flung to the floor. I drink more, exercise less, try to ignore the upcoming, never-ending expenses of supporting an incapable human, and avoid sounding like a total drag to my childless friends who use me as their walking, talking birth-control--a clear image of why they chose a dog over a kid.

I am dad. Hear me grumble.

That said, I am realizing more and more the responsibility that comes with this mundane, rewarding, challenging, joyous job. I'm not managing an account, or writing a set of instructions, or climbing the corporate ladder. The repercussions of my actions don't result in company money lost, or a demotion, or customer dissatisfaction. I'm raising a human being. FDR was a human being. So was Hitler. So is Bill Gates. So was Jeffrey Dahmer. And so are the billions of people existing in between these extremes. The way I talk to my daughter, the way I carry myself day-to-day, the things I teach her, the worldview I paint for her, the values I instill in her, the discipline I push, the experiences I offer will all culminate in an adult who succeeds or flounders, who is harsh or kind, who is ignorant or informed, or is compassionate or cold, who is trustworthy or deceiving, who is greedy or generous. Moment to moment the interactions shaping my daughter seem so commonplace that it's easy to forget they're significant. But they are. And I have to stay mindful of this.

As an adolescent I had the good fortune of going to an all-boys Catholic high school where the faculty had a motto: "Teach to the man the boy is to become." I think about this often now. I see the obsession our culture has with what to feed our kids and how to stimulate them properly at each phase of life, and how much to coddle, how much to back-off, do we cry it out or keep her in our bed for five years? Do we breastfeed for life or start her on a bottle straight out of the womb? Do we dress her like a princess or a rugby player? Spoon feeding or baby-led weaning? Was that piece of fruit organic? And are we screwing her up when she sees a TV?! Will she become a sociopath if we don't give her a sibling?!! Holy shit, I think she just ate refined sugar!!!! Oh, the horror!

It's all a bit much, no?

Don't get me wrong, development is important, as is nutrition, as is education, as is fostering a safe, secure, stimulating environment. Let's face it, in America, the alternative to obsessing over new parenting strategies and human development data and the like is not giving a shit at all. The default child of American culture is an obese, uninformed, superstitious, aggressive, bigoted, entitled scumbag (and boy, are there plenty of them). Many of today's parents (if they're doing anything at all) are just repeating the patterns of their parents who repeated the patterns of their parents and their kids will be the same awful, unhappy people their grandparents were but on an exponentially worse scale in an exponentially less healthy culture (C'est la vie. Ain't that America. Let's move on). I believe there's a middle-ground. What I know for a fact is that I've met women who were dressed in pink as kids who grew up to be hardcore academic powerhouses in ripped jeans and flannels (apparently in 1995) and people raised on hotdog casserole and Mountain Dew who grew up to be triathletes and health nuts. Conversely, I know kids who grew up with a stay-at-home parent, went to private school, received every resource in the world to become a stable, successful person and became a drug addicted spouse abuser who can't hold down a steady job. So, there's no formula to this thing; parenting is a game of odds.

What I have realized and think about daily when considering how to raise my daughter, is that poorly-raised kids work right alongside well-raised kids. Well-raised kids sometimes work for poorly-raised kids; they have to compromise with these people; they have to fight these people ideologically in the political arena; they have to stand up to them in the PTA meetings when they want to implement their grandparents' ideas and patterns into the educational system; they have to confront them on the playground when their kids are stealing the toys of the polite kids who have been taught to share, and in the business world when they're stealing your money, because you were taught to share. In fact, well-raised kids seem to be in the minority in the adult world. I'm baffled by the number of people around me falling to pieces under the pressure of being a grown up. People I thought of as care-free and capable are suddenly tingling with stress and losing their composure. People who preached integrity are giving in to temptations of money and sex and power. Emotionally deep individuals are as shallow as they come. Commitments mean nothing. Friendships are fleeting. Communities are groups of enablers instead of people empowering each other. It's all a guy can do to hold tight to a set of values in this environment. It's even harder to imagine filling a young child with hope for a bright future when the world around her is telling her the opposite.

So, I beseech you parents: What kind of men and women do we want to raise? What kind of values will serve them? And, perhaps most importantly of all, is GMO food rotting our children's bodies?!!