The Collected Wisdom of Fathers. Will Glennon

or intended to exclude the new father, but the focus is clearly and specifically on mother and child—Dad is somewhere unobtrusively in the background.

      The minute a man faces the most momentous change he will ever encounter, he is pressed by tradition, by circumstances, and often by his own fear into assuming a quietly receding position.

      While reason and compassion dictate that the new father should be ritually welcomed and as emotionally propped up and supported at this crucial juncture as the new mother is, he is often ignored, left to deal with his insecurities with stoic silence or nervous bravado.

      Even if men are properly prepared in the diaper-and-bottle department, we are still woefully unready for the sudden and dramatic realization of the awesome responsibility we have just taken on. You can do what you can ahead of time to prepare yourself, but nothing will make you ready for the impact of the feelings that are suddenly unleashed. This is your child, and it is your responsibility to protect her, to make sure that nothing bad ever befalls him.

       The first time I had a chance to even stop and think about what had happened to me was about three months after my daughter's birth. I felt like I had been hit by a runaway truck and dragged for a mile. I never thought that my feelings of love would be so strong. I never realized that such a tiny little thing could so completely drain my energy. I never believed the comfortable routine I had built up with my wife and buddies could be so totally shattered. And I never could have imagined how frightening the weight of responsibility would be.

      If there is any instinctive “father response” bred into men, most fathers would probably conclude that it is the overpowering urge to protect, at all costs, the helpless infant that has suddenly become their charge. It is a rare father who has not experienced that powerful rush of adrenaline at the door to fatherhood, and the strength of those feelings raises the odds dramatically. What prior to your first child's birth was a logical understanding of the extra financial burden you were about to undertake, coupled with a vague notion of the time and energy commitment that would be required, is suddenly elevated to life-and-death issues-this is your child, and your sense of duty and responsibility expands almost beyond bearing.

      Ironically, men's response to this protective impulse often leads us into a series of actions and reactions that draws us farther and farther away from the real tasks of fathering. Becoming a father is almost always frightening, and, when our sensitivities are raised so quickly and dramatically at the birth of our first child, often our initial response is near-panic. Right when the arrival of our child has opened up emotional channels into the most vulnerable part of our heart, we are suddenly placed in a situation in which we don't understand the procedures, much less the rules, and we are hit with a very real and practical expansion of our job description.

      Add to that a wife who is, at the very least, temporarily out of the job market, and you have a prescription for a large sack of emotional and financial burdens that men often find hard to carry. But carry it we must, because it is our job, because we feel it is our responsibility as men, even if we are not at all sure we can measure up. It can be a terrifying beginning, because if we can't protect our new family from even the insecurity caused by its inception, we will have failed before we've even begun. In the midst of this swirl of fear, our immediate response is to grab hold of anything that appears solid, and more often than not, that means putting up at least a pretense of being strong. We want our wives and babies to feel our protective strength, not our quivering insecurity. And often, that's what our wives want from us, too.

       I remember lying on the bed with my wife just before our baby was born six years ago and telling her how afraid I was of not being a good father, of not being a good provider. She absolutely freaked out. “You can't be afraid!” she screamed. “I'm the one who's scared.” I learned then to keep my mouth shut.

      Given all these realities, a new father can end up, not by design but by circumstance, withdrawing at precisely the moment he should be reaching out. Feeling unimportant, left out, and scared, he is apt to retreat into silent stoicism—feeling the enormous load of his newborn responsibility, but having no apparent support or acknowledgment from the outside and no ready avenue to relieve his burden.

       It was really frightening. My wife was so wrapped up in the baby that it never occurred to her that we were going to have a very difficult time making it on my salary. My daughter was so beautiful, I used to stand at her crib late at night, watching her. Half the time my heart was full to bursting with love and the other half I was fighting down bile at the sheer terror of the responsibility I had taken on.

      This terror of the burden we have assumed is often just the first subtle push of what, all too easily, can propel the new father into a trajectory that takes him away from his child. By shutting down instead of opening up, by pulling away toward the seductive safety of isolation instead of stepping forward into the frightening no-man's-land of an infant's very raw needs, a new father can unintentionally establish an emotional distance between himself and his child that will be difficult to bridge.

       As I watched my wife breast-feeding our son, they seemed to be surrounded by some kind of beautiful, glowing light. It took my breath away, but it also made me feel so inadequate and so much like an outsider. I just thought the best thing I could do was to avoid disturbing them.

      To some new fathers, witnessing the power of the mother/ child connection can be so dramatic that they retreat out of respect rather than fear. Add to that the return these days to breast-feeding rather than bottle feeding, and men can find themselves in the very uncomfortable position of not being able to satisfy their crying baby's very real need. Whether out of respect, fear, or circumstance, the result is the same—the entrenchment of distance between father and child.

       It was like there was some kind of unspoken language that no one ever taught me. She was such a tiny thing, and her very survival depended on someone understanding what she needed and providing it. At the time, I thought it must have been some magical genetic thing, because my wife—who frankly was never the most practical person in the world—suddenly seemed to understand exactly what this little creature needed. It wasn't until many years later that she told me how scared and inept she had felt.

      Ironically, our collective mythology about women being intuitive and “natural born” mothers often contributes to nudging new fathers away from forming a strong emotional bond with their newborn children early on. Many new mothers express their own insecurities about mothering by being overly attentive and focused on their infant. This can come across to an often nervous and baffled father as a possessive and near exclusive takeover of all the nurturing and comforting roles. We men frequently contribute to this unconscious takeover because, after all, we are already feeling inept, and it suits our need for security to imagine that our wives really are “naturally” good at this sort of thing.