Dictionary For Dads

We have each received gifts from our father. There were the material gifts, perhaps toys or sporting gear. Also there were the non-physical gifts. Did your dad spend time with you? Did he take the time to personally support you in things that were important to you? Did he believe in you? What messages did he give you about who you are? Here we will reflect on the non-physical gifts, rather than the material ones.

A variety of these gifts have been received knowingly and some unknowingly. The gifts we received from our father may have seemed like a shiny, red bicycle or perhaps they felt more like a rusty old bike with a flat tire and a bent wheel, metaphorically speaking. Maybe they were wonderful, endearing and cherished or possibly not. ‘Negative gifts’ you received could be having an ongoing detrimental effect. If left unresolved, events from our past can affect our life and relationships indefinitely.These may be issues related to absent fathers, controlling parents or judgmental parenting.

The opportunity here is to integrate the gifts, regardless of their nature. If you are to discover their value it may necessitate an unwrapping and close examination of them in order to decide how they can be useful to you now, as an adult. The gifts from your father may have included love, support and encouragement or criticism, anger and blame. More likely than not, you received a combination. What if you were able to embrace the gifts, and the giver, and thereby receive value from them? For those who received what seemed like unloving gifts this may not always be an easy process, and it is possible.

We each had an upbringing which was one of a kind. No one else had the same one, not even our siblings. We were each conceived, spent time in the womb and were born and raised under unique circumstances. We also arrived at different times in our fathers’ life as an individual and as a father. As such, we have each had different influences.

This time growing up could be compared to going to school. Your father was the lead teacher in your fathering school. You were taught about fathering by your father. It was virtually the same as if you had been learning accounting, in accounting school, except it was typically for a much more extended period of time and imprinted at a deeper emotional level. Imagine attending the same school for eighteen years and every day you have a lesson on one particular subject; fathering. Some days the lesson was explicit; other times it was more subtle. Fathering may have been your favorite class. You may have had an outstanding teacher who treated you with love and respect. Perhaps you were even his favorite student. Or it could have been an unpleasant experience for you and not your favorite class, or teacher for that matter. For most, it was probably a mixture. In any case your father was giving lessons and you were receiving them.

A review of your fathering curriculum could prove valuable. View the teaching you received as your career training for fatherhood. You may want to do some review or post graduate studies in order to have more freedom in your choices about being the kind of father you want to be.

You could take this opportunity to contemplate or write about what you think you learned from your father.

• What was your childhood like? 
• What was your father like, and your relationship with him? 
• How was your father’s relationship with your mother?
  
• How did he treat her?
  
• What was your father’s relationship to your family?
  

Summarize the experience by preparing two lists one of the cherished and empowering gifts from your father/parent.

This may seem like a simple exercise but if you take the time and be brutally honest it will enable you to break some of the dysfunctional patterns and behaviors and will enable you to become open minded to learning better parenting skills while still embracing the positive gifts you have received from your parent.

Know that your father was probably working with what their parents had given him. What characteristics do you think you have inherited from your father that has become part of your personal landscape?   Becoming a parent gives you the opportunity to redefine family inheritance to include matters of the heart and bequeath to our children gifts of love and joy, strength and tenderness. Be certain about what you want to pass on to your children and make clear and good choices about that.

If you are still trying to pick out a name we recommend a fun free site called Quick Baby Names.

Parts of this article submitted by:Patrick M. Houser, http://www.fatherstobe.org/ The author of the Fathers-To-Be Handbook, A Roadmap for the Transition to Fatherhood.

A mother’s attachment to her baby often begins long before birth. By the last trimester many mothers feel like they know their babies, having been enjoying for months their familiar, reassuring movements in the womb.

Fathers also have a natural, even biological, inclination to begin attaching to their babies during pregnancy, but this is largely ignored by the scientific community and by our collective culture. We bemoan absent fathers, but do we really nurture the seeds of their involvement from the very beginning, when it may lay a critical foundation for later attachment?

When a couple announces that they are having a baby, the role of the mother is tightly defined. Her family, friends, co-workers and even strangers treat her in an unambiguous fashion: she is doted on, showered with attention (sometimes to their dismay), and regarded in a way that emphasizes her mother-to-be status. Her partner, on the other hand, has no designated, well-choreographed role to play. He is usually left to stumble along his path to fatherhood with little direction, or acknowledgment of his own internal processes.

Michael Trout, director of the Infant-Parent Institute in Champaign, Illinois, writes,

Our language and our culture clearly support the notion that it is never he, only his mate, who is expecting a baby. He is often treated as a donor, a bystander and-if he is any good at his multiple but vaguely-defined jobs-it is understood that he will be supportive of the one who is truly important, the only one who is doing any work, the truly pregnant one.

Yes, pregnancy is a lot of work for a woman’s body-rearranging ligaments, building blood volume and cranking out hormones. Oxycontin, the closest thing in Mother Nature’s pharmacy to an “elixir of love,” spikes at birth and is responsible for “biologically inspiring” many maternal behaviors: close contact with her newborn continually stimulates Oxycontin release in the mother, causing her to experience intense feelings of caring and increased sensitivity to her baby’s cues.

But guess what? Fathers, too, experience a cascade of hormonal changes during pregnancy that quietly echoes that of their partner. During his mate’s pregnancy, a man’s oxytocin level begins to rise, encouraging him to desire closeness with his mate and child. Together with vasopressin, it makes a male more protective of his family and committed to their care. (Vasopressin has been called “the monogamy hormone” because it causes males to desire the comforts of home as opposed to the thrill of the chase!)

While prolactin is mainly recognized for its role in milk production in females, it belongs to the hormone group that promotes caring, bonding and attachment—in both mothers and fathers! Prolactin levels in the male also begin to rise during pregnancy and then, after a few days of close contact with the newborn, surge even higher, increasing his desire to care for and be close to his baby.

Pregnancy, birth and parenting awakens for all of us, mothers and fathers alike, old feelings and sense-memories of our own womb and babyhood experiences, which further makes parenthood a journey of unprecedented proportions. Though it is rare for a father to be considered “pregnant” along with his wife, why should he not be given this consideration and status? He, too, is on a profound, life-altering roller-coaster!

When Trina was pregnant, her husband Doug often spoke in terms of “us” and “we” with regard to the pregnancy, his language clearly reflecting his emotional and psychological participation in that monumental life event. One of his female colleagues was annoyed by this and would indignantly declare, “You, Doug, are not pregnant! When you get fat and have stretch marks and an aching back every night, come and talk to me!” This response is archetypal in our culture, a staple sitcom punch-line that unfortunately reflects the prevailing attitude.

Devon, a 29-year old computer technician, said that during his wife’s pregnancy he felt as if he had become invisible to everyone, including her (from whom he is now separated.)

I wanted a baby so bad! But after the initial excitement wore off, it was like, what do I do now? Michelle was totally into the baby and how her body was changing and how I didn’t get it. Everyone else acted like that too, like I could never understand since I wasn’t the one who was pregnant. But I felt like I was. I know it sounds really corny but I really did. It made me feel crappy that no one cared how I felt.

This is a common, if unspoken, experience. Perhaps as a result of this early exclusion, and feeling insufficient support and opportunity for forming a prenatal attachment, fathers often feel uninitiated and awkward with their newborns. Infants are exquisitely sensitive to emotional cues, and may react with discontent to a father’s insecurity. This can set off a cycle of uncomfortable and not-quite-right feelings between dad and baby. Defeated, the father may interpret this as confirmation that he is simply “not good with babies” and decide his efforts will be better received (and rewarded) “when the kid’s older.”

So how can dads jump-start their fathering during pregnancy? Several dads we spoke with indicated that laying their hands on the mother’s abdomen and making “contact” was a powerful experience. Kevin recalled lying with his wife in the early evenings and placing his hands on her still-flat belly. He whispered to the baby quietly, so his wife couldn’t make out what he was saying, and when she inquired, he’d grin and say, “This is a private conversation between me and my little girl.”

Mothers-to-be can be encouraging and sensitive to these delicate first steps, putting forth every effort to making their baby “accessible.”

Blake, father of eight-month-old Erica, described the weeks when Erica’s movements were first noticeable under his touch, and the emotional tidal wave that washed through him, carrying with it the reality of his unborn child. He reminisced of times when he could scarcely attend to his work during the day because he was so anxious to get home and feel his baby moving beneath his fingertips.

I liked to just lay with my head resting on Jess’s belly so I could breathe on her skin. I thought that maybe somehow, Erica could become accustomed to the feel of my breath surrounding her and she’d know how much I couldn’t wait to see her, and maybe she’d know me when she was finally born.

Fathers can be full participants during pregnancy, parents who are deeply affected by the experience of conceiving and loving a child and who process the experience in their own profoundly personal ways. We don’t need to designate a new “role” for fathers regarding this process; a role already exists, naturally-not as replicas of women or as assistants to carry the suitcase, but as the biologically inspired [MA1]care giving partners they are designed by nature to be, and as men who long to be enthralled with the very presence of their unborn babies.

article submitted by Marcy Axness, Ph.D., with Trina Strauss

Trina Strauss is a doctoral student in the Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, mother to 2-year-old Elijah and wife to Doug. This column is an adaptation of a research paper she wrote for a course with Dr. Axness,