Pendragons Princess

So much for the psychology that new fathers feel more playful and loving around their newborn kids. Read on:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1191367/The-fatherhood-taboo-Men
-finally-break-silence-potential-misery-dad.html

The fatherhood taboo: Men finally break their silence on the ‘potential misery’ of becoming a dad

By Emily Andrews

June 8, 2009

Revealed: Many men feel demoralised, depressed or just plain bored when their partner has a baby

Revealed: Many men feel demoralised, depressed or just plain bored when their partner has a baby

Becoming a father is supposed to be one of the happiest times of a man’s life.

And until now, they haven’t dared say otherwise.

A new genre of confessional literature is breaking the taboo, revealing that many men feel demoralised, depressed or just plain bored when their partner has a baby.

Such work is raising awareness that post-natal depression can hit men as well as women.

One author, Michael Lewis, said: ‘I wrote my book because of this persistent and disturbing gap between what I was meant to feel and what I actually felt.

‘I expected to feel overcome with joy, while instead I often felt only puzzled. I was expected to feel worried when I often felt indifferent.

‘I was expected to feel fascinated when I actually felt bored.

‘For a while I went around feeling guilty all the time, but then I realised that all around me fathers were pretending to do one thing and feel one way, when in fact they were doing and feeling all sorts of other things, and then engaging afterwards in what amounted to an extended cover-up.’

‘Fatherhood can be demoralising. I usually wind up the day curled in a little ball of fatigue, drowning in self-pity.’

Mr Lewis is just one of those who have broken ranks to overturn what he says is ‘a great conspiracy of silence’.

He admitted that, for the first six weeks of his daughter Quinn’s life, he felt nothing more than ‘detached amusement’.

‘The worst feeling was hatred,’ he said. ‘I distinctly remember standing on a balcony with her squawking in my arms and wondering what I would do if it wasn’t against the law to hurl her off it.

‘The reason we must be so appalled by parents who murder their infants is that it is so easy and even natural to do. Maternal love may be instinctive, but paternal love is learned behaviour.

‘A month after Quinn was born, I would have felt only an obligatory sadness if she had been rolled over by a truck.

‘Six months or so later I’d have thrown myself in front of the truck to save her from harm. What happened? What transformed me from a monster into a father?’

Mr Lewis’s book, Home Game, An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood, is published this week.

Ben George, editor of the literary journal Ecotone, agreed that it is time for fathers to find the courage to stand up and talk honestly about ‘the dark moments of fatherhood’.

‘Gone are the days when it was acceptable, maybe even desirable, for a dad to be remote, enigmatic, impenetrable, emotionally inaccessible, unknowable,’ he said.

‘The job requirements for today’s father seem to have proliferated. They are unique to this age, achieving a precarious balance between manliness and sensitivity.

‘We need to admit that dads frequently experience the desire, at times, to be anything other than a father.’

Another author, Darin Strauss, said: ‘It’s different for women. When my son was a minute old, my wife held him up and asked, “Don’t you love him so much?”

‘I didn’t really understand how she could ask such a thing. That purple squirming howler? Men, I think, need to be won over.’

American Steve Doocy, the Emmy award-winning broadcaster and author of the forthcoming book Tales From The Dad Side: Misadventures in Fatherhood, believes he knows why fathers are so different from mothers.

‘New mums are better at parenting than new dads, but there’s a reason why: they are programmed to mother,’ he said.

‘There is a mega-mother industrial complex made up of thousands of magazines, books, classes and TV shows that instruct women on how to raise the perfect child.

‘Across the gender aisle, fathers are usually clueless about what to do. There are no special father TV shows, zero Maxim articles on ‘9 simple cures for nappy rash’, and certainly no practice-dad toys like dolls.

‘A man doesn’t have much of a foundation in fathering. It’s more on-the-job training - and it starts the day he becomes a father.’

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Men tend to be more realistic about raising children - they are aware that babies are not gifts from God (they aren’t) but rather, something that consumes valuable time and resources with zero compensation in the final end. I guess it doesn’t take a genius after all to make a baby - that is something that microbes can do. Reality aside, the “desire to be a parent” is another sign of human socialization and not the end result of an “instinct to breed.” Becoming a parent requires socialization into the process, much the same way education and job training does. I disagree that maternal love is instinctual - maternal love is also a socialized behavior. What with all of the scientific studies and articles coming out in the past year or so about parents being less happy people than those who do not have children, this should not be a surprise. Real happiness is not something that one blindly buys into, thinking: “Hey, my neighbor just had a baby and they look so happy! Maybe if I have a baby I’ll be just as happy, too!” In a nation where very few people engage in original thinking on any level, this sort of thing, when it happens, is inevitable.