Burp, Poop, and Puke Specialist

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First published on December 29, 2013





Have you perused the bookshelves at a Barnes and Noble lately? Or the pages of any current parenting magazine? Or listened to the latest parenting tips on PBS? Paid attention to daytime commercials recently? What is the one thing they all have in common?


Answer: Dad is missing.


Dads have never been afforded much opportunity to take an active role in the birthing and infant-raising process, except as “support partners”- and, bless his heart, Lamaze tried to improve the situation for Pop -but the fact remains: being a new dad carries with it a certain loneliness that only a formerly childless man can know.


My wife and I had our first baby sixteen years ago. That in itself was definitely an above-average experience. Even more impressive was that just thirty-six hours after our son entered the world, the hospital staff let us take him home- nay, they encouraged us to take him. Pushed us out, practically. There were no tests to take to prove we could take care of him, no license requirements, no permits or loan agreements. Nobody in uniform followed us down to the car to see if we had a legal, approved car seat, let alone if it was facing rearward (lest they should take him back upstairs and keep him).


What? we thought. You’re just going to give him to us? The most valuable, complex, intricately delicate life form in the entire known universe, and you’re simply going to hand him over to a pair of ten-thumbed amateurs like us? What’s wrong with you people? Dad the chauffeur sat behind the wheel and fought traffic; mom sat in the backseat with baby and softly showed him the world.


It never occurred to Mom, though it certainly did to me, that from the very beginning she had an unfair advantage in procuring our son’s affections. Immediately upon his birth, for instance, he found a serene warmth and a comforting, familiar heartbeat as he was placed upon her chest. I, on the other hand, stood coldly beside them, stainless steel surgical scissors in hand, and severed the lifeline they had shared for nine months without me. At the behest of everyone except my son, who I’m sure would have protested had he had the presence of mind to do so, I cut my infant away from his mother forever. Dad the home wrecker.


The point is this. Dad has virtually nothing to do with the growth and development of his child while it is in the womb- headphones on the belly and reading Winnie The Pooh to his wife’s naval at night notwithstanding -and this banishment is bad enough. But is it fair that dads are almost universally excluded from the entire newborn experience once the baby arrives? The truth be told, all men are not created equal- at least, not equal to women.


There was the heartless act of severance at birth; the raging foray onto the automotive battlefield; next came the feeding. Hunter-gatherers are we, the men. But are we needed for hunting or gathering in, say, the first six months of the baby’s life? Nope.


Enter breastfeeding. Baby and mother conspire to link up again, in spite of Pop’s dastardly deed, and so he is once again effectively exiled from the bonding process. It wasn’t enough that Mom got to keep the baby to herself for thirty-six uninterrupted weeks, she unfairly gets to continue the affair long after the baby is born while Pop remains, at best, a sympathetic persona non grata. A burp, poop, and puke specialist.

 

As a Dad who endured this discrimination not once but twice, I’m calling for an immediate investigation.





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