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| Importance Of Fatherhood |
Three other things you need to remember: (a) your passports, (b) your hospital paperwork and (c) your baby. The registrar will look carefully at the first two and slightly more fleetingly at the third. Does baby have your ears? And her nose? Really, the registrar couldn't care less. It's his day off tomorrow and he can't decide whether to go fishing or visit prostitutes. Within the blink of an eye the significant forms are filled in and, for a small fee, you get a birth certificate and the reassuring feeling that your baby is now officially alive.
It also means that you are now a Registered Dad. If at some time in the future you are savagely murdered by lunatics or injured in a wholly preventable train crash, newspapers will refer to you as a 'father-of-one'. By creating life you have unwittingly become a person of consequence. You are a parent. According to many people's prejudices, that makes you a pillar of the community. From there it's but a short step to fat bastard, pompous old fool and desperate, pitiable dirty old man.
Still, all communities need their pillars, if only to chop them down. In your new role you will do many things you could never have imagined doing before all this crept up on you. These include:
- Going out to the shops to buy Tupperware.
- Willingly going to bed at 9.30 in the evening.
- Eyeing up women as potential mothers as well as bed partners.
- Waiting at a pedestrian crossing until the light goes green instead of nipping across when there's a break in the traffic.
- Sticking your nose right up against your child's arse to check whether or not there's a poo in there.
You may also spend some time wondering exactly what it means to you to be a father. At this stage, mothers are generally too sore and exhausted to think too much about being a mother. Being women, they have been thinking about it for years, anyway. They have also endured nine months of pregnancy, which tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Whereas most of us spend that time not thinking about anything at all if we can help it. It is the fate of fathers always to be slightly behind the game. Walking down the street, we wonder whether we are walking in a slightly more, well, fatherly way. Is there such a thing? Do people treat you differently? Do you feel different?
If so, that's probably as it should be. Remarkably, given the incidence of postnatal depression among fathers, all the research shows that becoming a father can actually do wonders for your self-esteem. You look in the mirror in the morning and think, Hey! you're all right. No, you're better than right. You're a-fucking-mazing. (Make sure you are only thinking this rather than saying it out loud.)
In the long run, you may be surprised and pleased to hear, fathers seem to do rather well out of family life. Studies show that, while women often feel equivocal about motherhood, fatherhood just makes men happier. That patina of seriousness you always lacked; well you've got it now. And then there's the most fundamental truth of all: your equipment works. You have cojones. The proof lives with you and probably has your surname. This knowledge is a wonderful thing, and the glorious smugness that now resides in your manly chest is something that, you will be delighted to hear; time will never erode, not even a little bit. To find out more, you can check out Importance Of Fatherhood.