How to become a feminist dad: four years later

It is 5 am and I am sitting by the window on my kitchen table, listening to the rain effortlessly fall. It is hard to believe that it has been four years since the time I became a parent, specifically a dad, a cisgender, heterosexual, migrant dad. As I hear the day waking up, I try to seek in silence some of the reflections on this unpaved road to become a feminist parent. A road that has been travelled many times before primarily by women, by mothers and mother figures. Yet for men identified folks, it remains a vast universe to be explored and documented.

 Taking time to reflect and create space to think is underrated. There are societal and internalized expectations about the need to be productive and perform at high levels all the time. As a parent, I live under the dictatorship of routines. Yet, there are key moments when I allow myself to be present and the reflections emerge shily, like flowers in the early spring. This is a gift I give to myself in the hopes that it will make me a better parent and hoping that these reflections create space for other men to allow themselves to feel, process, and challenge themselves to find in transgressive ways of being men, transgressive ways to be fathers.

Being a parent gives men identified folks like me a real chance to reflect and act on our masculinity, the way we show up as men every day. Fatherhood reflects the kind of men we are and at the same time, fatherhood offers a path for redemption from the patriarchal sins. It is a choice you make every day. It is not your fault to have been raised and rewarded in patriarchal households or societies. It is your choice to keep living your life under those rules. Yours, to own and feed every day. 

This is the third stop in the fatherhood journey. First, after 20 weeks of becoming a dad and later, at the two-year mark.  I appreciate you are making time as well to join me on this trip.

The ocean and the rock

The early days of my journey were about understanding my relationship with my own dad. His presence, his absence, and the ways in which I made sense of them. In revisiting early days of my life, I found in storage old anguish and pain. This time, instead of running away from it, I took time to look at it closely, like a child looking at a walking ant. The longer I looked, the more pain I felt and at the same time, the clearer it became that despite not remembering all the details, second guessing myself for years or minimizing my experiences, all my feelings were real. I learned to validate, respect, and honor such feelings, in an empowering way.

One day, as I was working on the dishes, it dawned on me that I have been justifying my dad’s actions all my life, making elaborate reasons to make sense of the choices he made as a father. My companion through these times was bell hooks and her transformative reflections in “The Will to Change: Men, masculinity and love”. In this book, hooks makes her experience of male dominance at home; a sounding board for the patriarchal experience of millions of men, including me.

As I sat on all these things, I promised myself to be different, to be the dad I yearned for.

In these years, I have made a commitment to devote time to spend with my kid, to build a relationship founded on presence. I want to be in his life like the ocean, shaping his world like the water does to the rocks at shore. Every summer, when I walk by the beach, I pick up rocks of all sizes and I am mesmerized by how solid and strong they are and how the relentless force of the ocean shapes them. This is the way I want to shape my son’s life.

During these 2.5 years of the pandemic, I have used all my privileges to continue working while making his care a priority. In practice, this has meant to work four days a week. I do not romanticize the brutality of this pandemic and at the same time, it gave me an unthinkable opportunity to be fully present at home. Care work and care for my kid have drastically changed my life.

As the days went by, this idea of being the father I wished I had started to erode. I found myself growing frustrated at my kid for his apparent lack of appreciation and constant demands. I started feeling angry at his burst of complaints and whining. What else does he want? I wish I had the kind of presence and love from my own father when I was little; he does not know how good he has it. I had many conversations with myself with very little willingness to talk about it with someone else. It affected the way I was interacting with my partner and my son. This is how patriarchy works, it robs us men from the ability to talk and articulate our emotions openly.

It was fear that was breaking me inside. If this is the best father I can be and this is not enough for my child, then I am failing. I am failing and the worst of it, it is that every night as the lights come down, I feel I gave it all. If my all is not enough, what do I do?

What do I do?

My road as a dad has been a constant conversation between my father and my son. The more I learn about being a dad and what it demands, the more I see the ways in which care and love have been given to me by my own dad throughout my life. The things that have made a substantive difference and I took for granted. I am sorry for that and at the same time, it has given me a softer gaze to understand him, his story, his fears, and his own regrets. I do not justify him; his decisions are his to own. Still, our love has become deeper and gratitude and humor, our mutual language. It has been painful and difficult and at the same time, I have learned to appreciate his nurturing presence and guidance in my life. Now, as we both aged, I want more of it.

As a result of all these realizations, it became clear to me that I did not need to be the father I wish I had. I need to be the man, the father that my child needs. This might feel self-evident or a common place. For me, it has meant taking an exit on the road into a whole new direction, a new destination. It has set me on a path to listen more carefully to his words, to look at him with more curiosity and less judgement. It has allowed me to ask for help when I am at a loss. It has given me a different sense of self confidence.

I see he notices this too. I am allowing myself to become the rock and let my child turn into the ocean. Slowly, his presence and needs are becoming the ways, his questions and challenges are becoming the waves. As he becomes the ocean, I am turning the rock at the shore.  

Patriarchal lessons from nature

All the good ideas I have are born while I am gardening. It sounds like a gentle process of patting dirt softly or caressing flowers as they change color. Not at all. These ideas have come to live thanks to the grueling, messy, and fascinating process of weeding.

One afternoon on the verge of the spring, my partner asked for some help pulling out a root. After a long day looking at small squares on the screen, I came down the stairs, armed with yellow gloves and a trowel. After the first ten minutes, it became clear that I was not dealing with a single reddish root, I was dealing with an intricate system of connecting roots under the peaceful grass.  Then, it became personal. I kneeled and started to track the thicker parts of the roots. My jeans started to get wet on my knees and my long sleeve slowly got dirty. My white tennis shoes started to get muddy. Twenty minutes later, I was sweating, digging holes in new places and slowly pulling bricks and bulbs to find the main source.

As I took a step back to look, I started to think about how some minutes ago, it was almost impossible to see the way in which all these roots were taking over the garden and how they were ready to take vital nutrients and resources from the dormant bulbs.

The bulbs and the seeds are the things I cultivate in my life, some silence here, reflexivity there, connection with others and self-awareness.  My relationship with my son has a special place in that garden, one that I tend with tenderness and vigilance. I have been planting seeds on it with the hopes to enjoy together the flowers, the bees, the butterflies and to be reminded that even during the harsh days of the New England winter, those seeds are there, those bulbs are there waiting to bloom, hoping to bloom.

Then, I look at all of these roots. I think about the patriarchy that lives in me. I think about my authoritarian ways, how I shut my feelings down when I need to share them or how my own ways to hold myself to high standards continuously slowly permeate the beautiful wildness of my kid’s own garden. No matter how beautiful these flowers look now, in the middle of the summer. I know that beneath there are powerful sources, ready to take over.

This is how patriarchy works in us, men identified folks. We grow up in cultures and systems where being cisgender and heterosexual grant us advantages that we confuse with rights, and we grow accustomed to that, and we feel deserving and entitled. These are the roots of my garden too and the more I learn about them, the better I can try to find the core and pull them.

It has been an hour; I am not even close to getting halfway through this root system I found. But I made some headways. I am tired, my arms are sore, and my back is complaining. I know that if I keep going at it, I will start stepping on plants and pulling delicate bulbs unintentionally. In the hopes to kill the weed I might also kill my garden. Just like in being a man and being a parent, rest becomes an essential act, a political, survival act as Audrey Lorde defined it.

How can I be compassionate and caring for others if I am not with myself? How do I keep working at getting these patriarchal roots with a sense of urgency and kindness?

These four years have taught me that accepting the presence of these roots, these patriarchal weeds are essential. Recognizing that patriarchy lives in me and it is seeking every chance it can to take space in my garden, every day. Fatherhood and parenting have been a constant reminder that the power of patriarchy resides in plain sight, in making itself the norm.

Yet, once you see the weeds, you cannot only see the flowers.

Emotions, distractions, and distortions

“This is a delusion we have, that we can take a sincere path in life without having our heart broken. And you think about the path of parenting, there’s never been a mother or father since the beginning of time, who hasn’t had their heart broken by their children. And nothing dramatic has to happen. All they have to do is grow up — and it happens”

These wise words from David Whyte have walked with me as I partake in the wonder of witnessing the life of my child unfold, like a piece of paper that turns into origami. The beauty and the effort of words slowly emerging to make sounds, to build words, to edify phrases and rapidly turn into opinions and feelings. So many feelings, like ice cream flavors.

I look at his stuffed animals, piled on the sofa. There were weeks when the bear, the cat and the sheep were a requirement to nap, nurse or fall asleep. We had to overnight a cat replacement when it got lost in a playground in the middle of March. We brought them everywhere. We made their voices, created elaborate plots about their whereabouts. The things we do for our children that we don’t tell others, like making animal sounds to help them brush or curving hands in odd positions to offer a finger for them to hold as they fall asleep.

We sing the same songs, read the same books, play the same games, over and over and over and over. And then, without warning, things change. Children move on. The moment is gone. Life with my child has taught me to grief and move on. The last day he used a cloth diaper, the week before the winter holidays, he stood next to the last bag to be delivered. He was proud and gleeful. As much as I dislike dealing with those diapers every week, I shed some tears walking the stairs to the front porch to drop them for the pickup service. Independence can be bittersweet.

I am learning day by day how to engage fully with his emotions. How to be empathetic and caring when he is unable to contain or self-regulate. It is hard. I hate when people scream, particularly, at me. When I was five, my grandmother was taking care of me and called my mom to tell her that I kept yelling at her. At home, she sat me on the couch and asked me why I was doing this. “Because she yells at my first”. From that moment, my grandma did not yell nor did I.

Socialized as a man in a sexist culture, I learned to shut my emotions down thanks to intimidation and punishment. I decided to reject both tools as a parent. I know they work well at the moment but deeply harm the relationship between children and caregivers. It also teaches children a dangerous lesson: it is okay for those who care for me to be mean, to use their power over them, to hurt them and use fear and rejection. If we love our children for what they do and not for who they are, they grow up thinking that this is the way long lasting bonds are created with others.

Many of the resources out there target moms in helping parents to learn how to raise emotionally healthy kids. I rejected many of these sources that my partner patiently shared with me after I had a good session of crying over my emotional limitations. They did not speak to me. I felt rejected, misunderstood, unable to do my parenting work with love. Emotional literacy has been one of the most challenging learning tracks for me in these four years.

If you are on the same boat, I found in this book a wonderful set of resources to better understand how my child works, how I work and what kind of strategies I can implement every day. This other book focuses more on the way in which labeling your emotions becomes the key to understanding ourselves, setting limits, articulating feelings with words and standing by them.

I strongly believe that the more men learn how to express and articulate emotions, the more we reject the use of force, violence, and intimidation as a normalized, valid tool to be a man, a partner, and a father. Emotional literacy and care are the antidote to violence.

I would say, they work, and they make me feel like I no longer hold a hammer in my hand, and I only look for nails. I have found a calmer presence in me that helps my child to feel safe and calm, at least half of the time. It is not perfect, but I settle for good enough.

The road

It is almost 9 pm on a Friday. I sit on the couch while my partner puts our kid to sleep. From the moment I started to write these reflections to this moment, two months have gone by. As John Lennon said “life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans”. The road to a way of being feminist men and feminist parents is plagued with love and hard work. It is for you and your children to choose to walk it together.