When Do You Become a DAD?

1. When do you become a Dad?
2. When do you become a man?

I’ll answer them in reverse order.

I remember a realization I had not long after our daughter was born.  I had come home from work, tired.  Hoping to get a bite to eat and maybe chill out on the couch with a cold beer.  It had been a long day.  It had been a long week.  We had a new baby at home, so neither of us were sleeping much.  My wife and I had decided that (since I’m a night person and she’s a morning person) we would split up shifts on taking care of the baby.  She’d take care of her from about 5am until I got home from work (usually around 6 or 7), then I’d take care of her after dinner, put her to bed and do the 2 or 3am feeding.  It was a good plan. 

Meaning neither of us slept much at all.  🤨 😒 😏

Anyway, this particular night, the kitchen was a mess.  My wife had already passed out and our daughter had finally fallen asleep.  I had a quiet house.  I could’ve easily plopped onto the couch with that beer.  Or even gone to bed—like that would’ve happened—and gotten some of that rest I’d been missing out on.  But, I knew that the kitchen had to be cleaned.  So, I started washing dishes.  Somewhere in the middle of all that, the thought occurred to me:  This is what Dads do.  It wasn’t one of those BIG DAD MOMENTS.  It was a small thing, really.  Something I’d done countless times before and would probably do countless times again.  But, at that moment, when I started doing the dishes, I really didn’t want to do them.  I just wanted a moment of peace & quiet, without somebody making demands on me.  I wanted some “ME TIME.”  In the grand scheme of things, it was minor.  The dishes would’ve gotten done.  

The next morning.  

By my wife.  

A woman who had spent nine months carrying that baby all by herself—ummm, inside her own body, without removing anything to make room.  Follow that up with passing an eight+ pound squirming alien through a space that only widens to 10cm; whereas the baby’s head is ~34cm in circumference, which is almost 11cm in diameter.  For reference, that’s like trying to pass a cantaloupe through a bagel.

And that’s just the physical part.  Well, except for the fact that now the squirming alien is still using her as a food source, sucking away on another part of her body that has doubled in size virtually overnight.

Now, without really getting any time to rest from all that, there’s also the emotional drain.  Newborns apparently need constant supervision and attention.  Constant.  Except when they’re sleeping.  Which is about 16+ hours a day.  Just not in a row.  Or longer than 2-3 hours at a time.  And there’s a house to take care of too.  Because your husband is away at work for 9-10 hours out of that day.  In a row.  

In other words, she’s dead-dog tired.

So, I did the dishes.  And it hit me.

THIS is what Dads do.

Sure, there will be other moments of more importance in the life of your kids—more important to them and you.  But, it’s those little moments, the ones they don’t even know about, those “small” responsibilities that you take on because they NEED to be done even when you don’t want to do them that define Dadhood.

Any idiot can become a father.  And many do.  Not all of them become Dads.  Here are a few stats:

• More than a quarter of the 121 million men in the United States are biological fathers of at least one child under the age of 18.
• In 2016, about 4 of every 5 (80.4 percent) of the 13.6 million custodial parents were mothers, while 1 of every 5 custodial parents were fathers (19.6 percent) 
• Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%).   

They all had fathers.  Only a small percentage of them had Dads.

• During 2010–2014, an estimated 56 million induced abortions occurred each year worldwide.  

They all had fathers.  None of them had Dads.