When at the hospital for the birth of our son, I remember being unsettled by the fact that much of the medical staff kept referring to me as my wife’s “birthing partner.” This label struck me as deflating the stakes and investment I had (and have) in both my wife and child, and I likely showed my dismay in a variety of facial expressions (which I am not the best at hiding). One nurse, my favourite of the lot, noticed this at some point and began referring to me as “Dad” instead. She explained to me that this habit of calling the person accompanying a woman in labour her “birthing partner” is simply to be as “inclusive” as possible. While understanding this desire, I will admit that I take this as being a pathological aspect of our contemporary society that wants to define family in such a loose manner that it virtually ceases to have much meaning that is distinguishable from mere friendship or circumstance.
This concern obviously perturbs me, but I will admit that I have not sufficiently thought out these problems to provide something of an ‘analytical’ response or argument. Unlike many other topics that I can more easily theorize and contemplate, I find that this one simply smacks me in the face from time to time and forces me to stop and reconsider the importance and meaning of family. What is it? What is it constituted of? Why is it important? To what degree are its constitutive parts integral to its proper functioning? No doubt, becoming a father made such questions burn with a sense of urgency and responsibility. I will admit that I think about them virtually every day — and yet here I am without a substantial argument or conclusion.
In place of my usual sequence of thesis and support, I therefore think these concerns are best contemplated (at least for now) in the form of two anecdotes. One is a story about me; the other is a story about a friend and a conversation we had about our lives. I am not entirely sure what they mean. I do not believe that I have come to any substantial ‘rules’ that can be gleaned from these experiences so as to inform others. My desire in relaying these is only to suggest that they strike me as pertinent to thinking about this topic of family life and why it is of such import. My only tentative conclusion is that the flippancy with which, I believe, we have come to treat this topic is deeply problematic — though I recognize that the implications of this conclusion are far reaching and will suggest much for a great many subjects that, in our age, have become virtually ‘taboo.’
As stated, the first story is about me — specially, the circumstance of my early life and how they affected my trajectory in part. My parents separated when I was less than a year old. They were young and probably struggling with so many difficulties at once that maintaining a relationship seemed impossible. At the end of the day, I don’t know the details; I am merely familiar with the consequences. In my case, my young mind developed only within this context of separated parents. I actually recall in grade school learning of how odd my circumstance was (divorce rates were radically lower even then, just some twenty-plus years ago), which was doubly confusing as it seemed so normal to me at the time. Since that young age, I’ve seen several friends endure the divorces of their own parents – and I am oddly thankful for my situation. A family separation and the attendant tumult that follows is far more deleterious for the seven through fifteen year old than it is for an infant. All this is to say: I had separated parents, but I hardly consider myself a child of divorce — it was the best kind of a less than optimal situation.
Despite my acknowledgement of being spared much pain, I relay all this because I later came to a conclusion based on my circumstance: I was composed of two people who do not love each other. This is not to say that my parents were enemies; in fact, they’re very friendly today. Nevertheless, their reunion always struck me as impossible. I saw how different they were (and are) and could not conceive of them being together (not to mention that they’ve each married since). Their differences, consequently, also manifested in differences in me. In my middle to late teen years, I began to slowly realise this: I was virtually two different people with them, and I would move back and forth between these personalities depending on context. Of course, the obvious sense of this is that I behaved more like each parent when I was with him or her; more indirect, however, was how I was much more like my mother in work settings but acted like my father when engaging in sport, just to name one for each. The logical question then began to occupy much of my attention around the time I turned twenty: if I have these two versions of myself, which one am I? If I choose one, I seem to betray one of my parents; if I choose neither, I turn from them both.
This was enough of a crisis that I went to one of my best friends, both then and now. I am blessed to have him, as he listened to me spill all this out and then just begin to cry. He just sat with me. He admitted to me that he had noticed this tendency to shift between the two personalities when we were growing up. He told me, however, that he saw something that he took to be distinctly me. He described that person (I’ll spare you the details), and he noted at each point how I am very much like and dislike both my parents. We walked through how to embrace that single identity and try to develop it for myself. He was explicit about the unavoidable tensions of revealing to each parent aspects of myself that may be similar to things they do not like about my other parent — but doing anything else would be to go on as no one in particular, and that was and is untenable. He finished by stating that, though this may cause stress, their separate loves for me should override these problems; for the most part, he has been right — or at least I hope so.
The more recent anecdote is about a conversation I had with a friend of mine. He is a good man that grew up a little later than I think he would have liked. He had a child out of wedlock with a woman to whom he was never really committed, but he was trying to do his best as a father while navigating a strained relationship with his son’s mother. I met him when his son was still young and I had no children yet; we often chatted about navigating relationships and how to be good men even in difficult situations — at least insofar as we could manage such aspirations. My friend, like me, came from a split home and had many concerns about himself that were similar to those I have of myself. This made us incredibly fast friends who were shockingly vulnerable with one another very early on in our relationship. I wish all friendships were like this, but, alas, that may be some romantic element of my imagination getting away from me.
I tell you about this great friend because of a conversation we had that I think about regularly. He wanted to talk to me nonstop when my first child was born; having spoken to me so openly and frequently about being a father, he was beyond excited to hear about it from my perspective and offer whatever limited wisdom he could — something he did very well. A few months after my son was born, my friend called me for a chat. We spoke of a few things, then he asked about fatherhood as was his habit. He then asked a slightly different question than usual: as opposed to his normal inquiries about how I was relating to my son, he asked how becoming a father had impacted my relationship with my wife. I welcomed this, and I gave as short an answer as I could manage: “Don’t get me wrong, there are tough days and the romance can sometimes get hard; but, at the end of the day, the biggest thing is that this has compounded the love I have and feel. When I look at my wife, I see my son; I look at him and see her. In loving either, I love them both. I can’t describe how perfect it is, even despite the struggles—”
My friend was weeping. The sobs were vicious and frequent. I was silent on the phone, listening to his heavy breathing; aside from the gasps for air, all I heard was him quietly saying, over and over, “But I can’t give him that. I can never give him that.” I gave him a moment to collect himself, waiting for the sense that he calmed (suggested by his breathing regularizing again). In that moment, I knew I could say I was sorry, how hard it would be, and that it was not his fault. But none of that seemed appropriate.
“You’ll have to be strong.”
“I’m not that strong.”
“Yes you are. I know few men who speak so easily of the love they have for their kids. That will carry you.”
“I pray to God you’re right.”
“I will too. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Hoping for Clarity 