Two-Thirds Excited, One-Third Terrified

I've alluded to it a couple of times before, but I don't think I've come out expressly and said: we're having a baby!

(It's a boy, due in January)

When people ask me how I'm doing, I have a stock answer: "Two-thirds excited, one-third terrified." It's always good for a laugh. But it's more or less accurate.

There's so much I'm excited about. I'm excited to share my favorite books. I'm excited to get him into Calvin & Hobbes. I'm excited to take him to hockey games. I'm excited to tell him stories. I'm excited to see him sit up, crawl, and walk for the first time. I'm excited to learn his passions. I'm excited to find out who he's going to be. I'm excited to be a dad, and I'm excited to watch my wife become a mom. This is, of course, only a very partial list.

But I'm also, admittedly, a bit terrified. And I know that's normal -- everyone says the moment the hospital discharges you and just ... sends you home with a baby generates a feeling of incredulous disbelief ("Who, me? I'm in charge now? You're just letting this happen"). But I want to talk about the fear side in a bit more in depth.

One overall salutary development we've seen in society recently is that we've moved towards allowing women -- including women who very much want to have children -- to have a more complicated relationship with pregnancy and childrearing beyond "it's the greatest thing ever and if you have any misgivings you're a failure as a woman." There is at least some more space to acknowledge that pregnancy is uncomfortable, and labor painful, and parenting is exhausting. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother. It's an acknowledgment of reality, and it makes for stronger, not weaker, parents.

Meanwhile, for men, there's been a cultural push in the other direction, because the gendered social dynamics began in a different place. For men acculturated into thinking of children as either "seen not heard", or a sort of doomsday event ("baby trap"), the emphasis has been on accentuating both the positives of fatherhood but also the responsibilities of being a good partner. Parenting is equal parts our job. It's not okay to just leave it all to the missus. In fact, the missus almost certainly has it a lot harder than you (you're not the one gestating and then expelling a whole human being inside your body).

This, too, is a salutary development. But it has I think left a bit of a gap in men being able to talk earnestly about their legitimate fears -- in part precisely because those fears in some ways need to be subordinated to the more pressing needs of one's partner.

For example: one thing I'm really scared about is the process of labor. Leaving aside catastrophizing about medical complications, it's a terrible thing to see my person, whom I love more than anyone in the world, in pain. Under normal circumstances, that fear and fright solicits resources of care and concern -- probably from my wife, who is my main source of care and concern when I'm feeling fear or fright. But of course, in the context of labor, that resource is unavailable, and more broadly my need for care resources is obviously of lower priority than my wife's -- what kind of self-absorbed jerk would I be if I made the pain of childbirth about supporting me? My job in the delivery room is to support my wife however I can, not to horde care resources for myself. I don't want to reenact this scene from Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I've spoken about this before as an "empathy drought": circumstances where our care resources are overtaxed and so need to be triaged. And so again, I want to emphasize that the prioritization here is absolutely, 100% proper. There is no injustice here. And the lack of injustice is, in its way, the injustice -- or at least the loneliness: what is one supposed to do when one's genuine needs (because I don't think, in the abstract, that the pain of seeing a loved one in pain is not the sort of thing where one might need emotional support) are rightfully subordinated? It's hard, and it generates a lacuna.

Childbirth represents an especially clear case. But there is some carry over to fatherhood as well -- it's hard to talk about one's genuine fears and concerns without sounding like one wants to reach back into the not-so-misty past of overgrown man-babying where mom-wife just took care of everything. And again, it's a good thing that we're rearticulating manhood and fatherhood. But that doesn't change the fact that, just as a more complex relationship to childrearing for women that speaks to both the joys and the fears doesn't make one out as a bad mother, so too for fathers as well.

Because while I'm two-thirds excited, there is plenty that sits in that third of terror. I'm scared of not getting enough sleep. I'm scared of freezing up when my kid throws a tantrum. I'm scared of not knowing how to balance between transmitting my values and letting him be his own person. I'm scared of my two-person life suddenly adding a third. I'm scared of not having time for my own hobbies. I'm scared of raising a Jewish child in today's world. Hell, I'm scared of bringing any child in today's world. Again, only a partial list, and not one I claim is unique to men. But it's a real list, and I don't think it's one that is unreasonable in soliciting support. 

I'm not a parent yet, so I don't have some deep words of wisdom to offer on this. But I do believe, and I've always believed, that letting oneself be vulnerable and honest encourages others to be as well. Talking about these things openly lets others do so too. We don't have to work through these fears alone. We should not and need not present these fears as the number one priority of parenthood. But the more people who come out and speak, the more this burden can be shared, and the more room we all have to also turn our attention to the essential task of being great fathers and great partners. So this is me doing my part: being open, and being vulnerable, and trying to make everyone a little less alone -- because there's so much to be excited about.