On fatherhood, and parents
Thoughts on fatherhood (after two weeks).
My daughter arrived just over two weeks ago, and the abstract idea of parenthood has suddenly become very concrete. She’s small, cute, and needs us for everything.
I never really understood the pronatalist zealots. For years my worries were big-picture and anxious — financial dependence, global warming, an uncertain world. Now those worries haven’t vanished, but they sit next to something warmer: love of my daughter and gratitude for the people who raised me. Did they really have to change my diaper this many times?, I think.
I always imagined parenthood as a way forward, a hope placed in the future. It turns out it’s also a way back. Holding her, I appreciate my own parents–the care they gave and the choices they made for me, and to the quiet anxiety and love that must have accompanied those early weeks.
Why Americans Aren’t Having Babies: Millennials are thinking hard about whether to have children at all, and the broader story of falling birthrates worldwide is everywhere. But in choosing not to bring children into the world, do we also miss out on a thread that ties us to our forebears?
Parenthood links you to the future and to the past at once. Paul Kingsnorth writes about how modern life can unravel those human ties in Against the Machine. These first two weeks have made that feel personal: love, for my daughter and for my parents, is what makes the thread hold.
