The Curse of Low Expectations
When I became a father, I didn’t know what to expect from my new role of raising a young man, and I lacked a father to consult for guidance or to mimic.
However, what I soon found out was that my expectations to be an involved father were far higher than many other parents that I encountered. I would look into the eyes of adults who deployed the defeatist language of accepting minimal contact with my son because, in their words, “It’s better than nothing.”
I would listen to conversations of men describing themselves being relegated to only a day or two with their children every other weekend, and it was applauded as sufficient time involved with their ever-developing children.
There is an active, ongoing effort in the culture to minimize the importance of Dads in their children's lives. This campaign limits the roles and expectations of Dads to being earners. As if money is what our kids want from us. Money isn’t really that hard to produce. When it is hard, the state quickly moves in to replace us. Some Dads are happy to let that happen. Those are the ones who have internalized the narrative that they won’t be missed.
In a somewhat backward way, our culture has embraced the traditionalist view of the father being the breadwinner and treats it as the beginning and end of the father’s role. This is a story in which we’re simple, instead of multidimensional figures in our kids’ lives.
We’re portrayed as emotionless. Indifferent to how our children are raised. Desperately delegating all childrearing decisions to our children’s mothers, since we couldn’t be bothered to get involved beyond bank deposits.
We even go as far as shaming fathers online when they hold their children for the first time with their shirts off to experience skin-to-skin contact with their newborns. It’s “creepy” when we strive to bond with our children in an affectionate way. There is no winning.
Despite not growing up with a father to learn from myself, I instinctively wanted to be close to my son when he was born. I couldn’t wait to make him laugh with a gentle tickle for the first time.
Supposedly, men don’t have any interest in staying at home and nurturing a newborn, but the most rewarding time I’ve experienced was raising my son every day for the first year of his life.
I’d work overnight shifts until 6 AM and watch him all day until his mother returned from work around 6 PM, then sleep for a few hours and repeat this harsh schedule the next day. And the day after that.
I was always tired. Sleep deprivation was winning daily. As tired as I was back then, I was overwhelmingly rewarded by watching my son grow up happy in front of my eyes and establishing an indestructible bond with my only child.
Real fathers are willing to sacrifice anything for their children, including their lives, to ensure that they’re protected and prosperous. I knew that my son needed me more than I needed a couple more hours of rest.
There are millions of men out there who are just as devoted to their children as I am to my son, yet their contributions are minimized and their pleas to remain involved in their children’s lives get muffled by an overbearing family court system.
Our cultural standards for fathers have moved in the same direction as the family court system, where minimal contact with our children is suitable because fraternal “paypigs” don’t need to embrace what they created; they just need to pay for them.
Someone once told me that my son was watching me, and they didn’t mean it figuratively. They saw how my son was watching my mannerisms and how I maneuvered as a man in this world.
It was then that I fully grasped how important my physical presence was for him and how I was teaching my son what a man was… without realizing it.
If you grew up without an active father, it can be hard to understand how important a Dad is in your life. All you understand is what you feel about his absence. All of this is harder in a culture that reinforces the narrative that our existence is optional and a borderline nuisance.
A father who is willing to sacrifice for his family is priceless, not rare.
is an author and founder of . He writes on Substack at .
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Bravo Sir!!
I believe that fatherhood is one of God's crucibles, for molding men. However, it's only used if the men choose to stay in the melting pot, as it's put into the furnace.
As you and your son well know, the father that emerges from the oven, is much more than the man who went in.
Thanks for choosing to be there and raise a man, who has the best head start you could have given him, a father that wanted and needed to be there. In part, this is how great societies were built.
I grew up without an active father. It broke my heart, and I believed when I was little that it was because I was a girl. My brother seemed to have a good time with my dad.
When I had my own children I took this experience with me. I didn't feel my role was important, or that I had any idea what I was doing. But one thing I knew when things fell apart was that I was NOT going to deprive my children of their father. And I'm glad. They are far better adjusted and mature than I was at their age. I'm so glad you could learn from others and not take the road often traveled, and be a solid father. Bravo 👏