Dad Post #226

I read this from Dierks Bentley (a country-musician) recently: "I thought I was a man until I had kids, and then I realized that my life had just begun. It tears away the person you were before, builds you up to become the person you have to become, makes you learn a lot of skills - a lot of man skills. That all comes with a kid." Well, it's a life-changer, I know that much.

I like Vanity Fair magazine. Revocation of my man card has been threatened for this affinity, by my badass hunting buddies, but the writing is exceptional, and Vanity Fair does other creative things like ask people, “Would you pick your child’s genetic traits if you could?” Happily, I read that 83% said, “No, I'd leave it up to nature." Whenever we doubt humanity, it reaffirms its heart, altruism, and tradition.

Here's another parenting anecdote I read recently from Bill Bryson's "At Home." Bryson is a brilliantly funny and informative writer. (Sometimes I wander off my well-worn path of murder mysteries, books about Native Americans, acclaimed fiction, Christian and Buddhist exegesis, and Robert B. Parker novels.) And so I came across this: "In the mystifying world that was Victorian parenthood, obedience took precedence over all considerations of affection and happiness, and that odd, painful conviction remained the case in most well-heeled homes up until at least the time of the First World War." My how the pendulum has swung. The obedience / affection equation is an interesting one. I think, at a minimum, we over-entertain our children (and no parent is more guilty of this than I am). Bryson adds, humorously: "By withholding affection to children when they were young, but also then endeavoring to control their behavior well into adulthood, Victorians were in the very odd position of simultaneously trying to suppress childhood and make it last forever. It is perhaps little wonder that the end of Victorianism almost exactly coincided with the invention of psychoanalysis."

Continuing with Bryson: "What is often striking - and indeed depressing - is how freely parents withheld not funds but affections. Elizabeth Barrett and her father were intensely close, but when she declared her intention to marry Robert Browning, Mr. Barrett immediately terminated all contact. He never spoke or wrote to his daughter again, even though her marriage was to a man who was gifted and respectable, and based on the deepest bonds of love." Hmm. A tough call. Naturally, no one will be good enough for Megan, but maybe a writer-philosopher-poet like Browning is preferable to the parade of unexpressive, mentally-flatlining meatheads I'm afraid she'll bring home. Okay, glad I got that off my chest.