Sunday 7 June 2009

Women are all programmed mothers

Why new dads don't always love their baby

A growing number of fathers are breaking with convention and speaking out about how a new baby does not always bring great joy. "I wrote my book because of this persistent and disturbing gap between what I was meant to feel and what I actually felt," said Michael Lewis, author of Home Game, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, published this week.

"I expected to feel overcome with joy, while instead I often felt only puzzled. I was expected to feel worried when I often felt indifferent. I was expected to feel fascinated when I actually felt bored.

"For a while I went around feeling guilty all the time, but then I realised that all around me fathers were pretending to do one thing and feel one way, when in fact they were doing and feeling all sorts of other things, and then engaging afterwards in what amounted to an extended cover-up.

"Fatherhood can be demoralising. I usually wind up the day curled in a little ball of fatigue, drowning in self-pity."


Now. I am all in favour of men discussing fatherhood realistically, breaking down assumptions of instant joy, tenderness and expertise from the moment of birth to paint a more accurate picture that other men will hopefully benefit from reading.

Just as long as they don't build up assumptions of instant joy, tenderness and expertise from the moment of birth in their female partners in order to do so.

Maternal love may be instinctive, but paternal love is learnt behaviour. And here is the central mystery of fatherhood: how does a man's resentment of this... thing that lands in his life and instantly disrupts every aspect of it for the apparent worse turn into love?

...

"It's different for women," he said. "When my son was a minute old, my wife held him up and asked, 'Don't you love him so much?' I didn't really understand how she could ask such a thing. That purple squirming howler? 'He seems nice,' I said. Men, I think, need to be won over."

...

"New mums are better at parenting than new dads, but there's a reason why: they are programmed to mother," he said. "There is a mega-mother industrial complex made up of thousands of magazines, books, classes and TV shows that instruct women on how to raise the perfect child.

"Across the gender aisle, fathers are usually clueless about what to do. There are no special father TV shows, zero Maxim articles on '9 simple cures for nappy rash', and certainly no practice-dad toys like dolls," he said.

"A man doesn't have much of a foundation in fathering. It's more on-the-job training - and it starts the day he becomes a father."


Wait, what? What about the many women to whom the 'mega-mother industrial complex made up of thousands of magazines, books, classes and TV shows' provides a large amount of pressure to a) have children in the first place and b) be the perfect mother when they do? What about the women who do have children then feel exactly the same as the men quoted in this article? To the fact that mothers and fathers should be a team who can provide support for each other as they both undergo this 'on-the-job training' (because really, a woman could watch all the TV shows, take all the classes, read all the magazines and still not be any 'better' a mother than the woman next to her in the maternity ward, not to mention the fact that there's nothing to stop men picking up the same magazines, watching the same shows and taking classes with their partners if they think it would help)?

I am all in favour of bringing attention to the lack of resources preparing men for fatherhood and the social assumptions that presents dolls and childcare toys as 'not for boys' - but let's not pretend that these pressures provide women with advantages. Women and men are both socially programmed to believe that women are natural mothers. Making up your own barriers between maternity and paternity prevents a lot of communication that could go on between those parents, mothers or fathers, who do not feel natural affection for their children.