Fatherhood Will Change You and It Will Not All Be Good

There are many obvious truths about fatherhood but the most obvious one that’s obviousness somehow didn’t get through to me was that fatherhood turns you into the type of person that you’d never thought you’d be.

Fatherhood is certainly and truly a giant sacrifice. A rewarding endeavor, but a real, REAL big sacrifice. Some components of your life (e.g., the important components) are greatly enriched through fatherhood. But there are definite losses in other components in your life (e.g., the fun components).

I once had a fucking clue when I filled out a NCAA tournament bracket, but I left college basketball -- along with a peripheral interest in hockey and the right to watch regular season games in any sport not involving my favorite sports team -- at the hospital, in the maternity ward, when I exchanged my interests in those and countless other things for my daughter. I once actually attended movies in a movie theatre now and again and could thus converse with people about them instead of listening to them talk about a cool new movie and responding for the 72nd time with “sounds good … I’ll make sure that gets into my Netflix queue.” I once had sexual relations outside of the weekends. Really.

And while the pluses of fatherhood outweigh these minuses, the pluses you are gaining don't really replace what you’re losing, because they are in different areas of your life. One impact of this is that your life becomes more enriching and interesting in many ways. But, unfortunately, it only becomes more enriching and interesting to you. From your point of view, you have a lot more going on, but you also have just become immensely more boring to the rest of the world. It is not an illusion that people with kids seem less interesting. We really are less interesting, and thus it is a good thing that we can only get out to a bar with our buddies once a month (or twice at most), since we need that much time to gather up enough material to sustain the three hours of conversation that are necessary for a guys’ night out. We’re less interesting because the stuff we spend our time on is much less richer and intellectual than in our pre-child days, and we certainly don't get to continue to appreciate arty stuff (including literature, movies, music in this category) the way we once could. After your first kid is about a year old, while the kids are awake, watching movies or reading books long enough to get into a groove without interruption becomes close to impossible. And once they're asleep ... well, lots of the time you're just fuckin' tired. Even if you CAN watch a movie, you're often going to pick "Major League" on reruns TBS (or better yet, watch an edited-for-TV Gladiator on FX for the 10th time) over risking edification with the a classic movie that you haven’t seen before or recent Oscar candidate. The point is that, your life, while richer in many respects, is less rich in others, and you will miss your old life. You may not want your old life back, but that doesn't mean you don't miss parts of it. It’s almost exactly akin to breaking up with the sexy, psycho girlfriend. You’d never want to have to spend another second with her in your life, but there were times when…

In any event, you start to realize that you are working at a less-than-ideal job and spending a fair amount of your time reading Dr. Seuss books for the 12th time, long after they remain interesting to you (one thing about 1 and 2 year olds that you don't recognize until you have one is that they love repetition more than anything), and you’re doing this because you love and care about your kids. You realize that you haven't watched a syndicated Seinfeld or Simpsons episode at 5:30 p.m. or 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. for the last 5 years, and while that isn't necessarily important, it was nice when you used to do that. You realize "hey... I am giving up a lot of shit because I love them so that this fucker can have a good life." And then you think: "That fucker better turn out to be an interesting, worthwhile person, because I'm wasting a lot of freaking time and money on this kid."

And this is how it starts.

I think most new dads would think "I'm not going to super-schedule my child and be super-hands-on and take them to dumb shit like organized soccer for 3 year olds." And you think that the correct reaction to the growing concern you are starting to have about the importance of your child being "worthwhile" or "interesting" is... shit, maybe I need to NOT spend so much time/money on this kid. I mean, you can't live vicariously through your kids: you have to let them find their own way. And I, certainly, would have led that pack. And you figure that you need to back off a little bit.So you wake up Sunday morning (at 7 a.m., because it’s your turn because your wife woke up with them on Saturday morning) and you feed them and put their clothes on them and you play with them for an hour, and it’s 9 a.m. and then you say "now they need to play by themselves." And you try to read the paper but you notice that your child builds the same boring fucking tower with the blocks 18 times in a row. Let’s spend a little time and talk about this tower, because you may not get just how boring it was from my prior description: it was straight up... about 10 blocks until it fell... same size blocks every time, despite the multiple sizes at their disposal ... no variation in design from time to time ... it was fucking unbelievable how boring it was... and forget about color patterns; its like the color didn’t even exist; it was like they were colorblind. And you think "my god, there are much cooler possibilities,” and later on you watch them waste 90 minutes in a row on the most inane tv programs imaginable. And you think... "my god... I'm stuck in the house today and making my sacrifices in my life so that they can do this incredibly retarded shit like watch Clifford?... screw this backing off and not overscheduling their lives; I better read to them or teach my daughter football pass patterns or fucking something."

And so you find yourself in your living room shouting "No... down and IN... NOT down and OUT" at your 4-year old daughter. And she tells you that she only wants to run fly patterns. And you roll your eyes in disgust... the prima donna finds only fly patterns to be cool enough for her, the spoiled brat... I didn't know my daughter's name was Terrell Owens -- but not even your wife understands this joke. You’re just talking to no one, amusing yourself. And then you realize that you're playing “football” with a large spherical purple ball, and by large I mean real large, like 2 feet in diameter, because she can't consistently catch an actual football, and when she turns the wrong way and you nail her in the back of the head with even the mini-football, not even the genuine leather one that hasn’t otherwise been touched in the three years since her birth, the game ends suddenly and it is somehow your fault, according to your wife, which is really ridiculous when you think about it, because the pass was right there for the taking. And then you realize that your daughter is wearing a princess outfit – including a tutu, which I guess technically makes it not a princess outfit, but whatever - as you throw the football at her. And you realize that you might be going insane. And so you think... fuck... maybe I should take them to a freakin' kiddie class or something, because this football pattern game just isn't working out for either me or the princess. And so you end up driving them to "Art Class For Fours" and you know it's just ... not YOU, but ... well, what can you do?

And that's how that happens.

You start doing the weird shit you never thought you'd be doing. And you can actually sit in the periphery of the class with the other parents and read a magazine or book in peace and quiet while the kids do their thing. And you like it. And your kid actually seems to enjoy the class. And you take them to the class for a few weeks and ... and then you start to think. And you think unhelpful thoughts, thoughts that will disturb the peaceful state that you've achieved. Thoughts like: "Well, shit. Big Boring Bob the accountant from down the street can take his kid to 'Art Class For Fours.'" I mean, I'm now devoting a decent chunk of my life to working on this kid: caring for them, showing them cool stuff, and I am devoting my life to this and I'm doing no better than giving them approximately the same upbringing as Big Boring Bob the accountant?

And it is then that you realize that your conceptions of fatherhood have probably been all wrong, that your ideas that you could somehow merge your prior self seamlessly with your new self are a joke. That there are many more shades of gray within fatherhood than you ever imagined. That you should have been slapped for (at least most of) the quiet, unvoiced criticisms you made of other fathers when you saw what they did with their kids (you thought things like "my kids wouldn't be allowed to whine that much" HA!). And just right then you realize that if you are going to be a father, you are going to change, and you are going to change a lot, and you probably going to change in ways that the old you probably wouldn’t approve of, and you’re going to change in ways that you might not really have an opinion about because you’re just BUSY and don't have time for shit like opinions and you're also starting to realize that maybe you don’t have nearly as much control over your life and who you’re going to be as you did when you were just making decisions for you.

And here is the place where I feel like I should sum up and say "and that's fatherhood" but I think I'll just end now, because that seems way too silly.