The backpack caught my eye.
“Hey, look,” I said to my husband, “another guy carrying a backpack!”
Turns out Darryl Bell is a member of the same club Aaron is. He’s a modern dad.
Isn’t a dad a dad? Biologically, yes, but in terms of societal impact, a modern dad has transcended trail blazer, is beyond trend setter, and is truly a whole new paradigm.
What’s so different? While my mom was spending 25 hours and 50 minutes in labor, my dad was in the expectant father’s lounge, smoking and drinking champagne brought by his sister. Years later, my husband’s father was by his wife’s side in the delivery room…but he fainted. Aaron and I watched a football game before going to sleep, only waking up for the important part.
Thanks to programming myself based on the Silva Method, Hypnobirthing, and Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s Childbirth Without Fear, I slept through my labors, only waking up when my kids arrived, without having to push once.
My body but our baby. I’m lucky. My parents set me up for pregnancy success. When I was about nine, my father told me of a special he’d seen on TV. In Russia, women sometimes gave birth in hot tubs with midwives. He told me, “You should have seen it. They gently lifted the baby out of the water and the change in temperature caused it to gasp for breath. No smacking a newborn butt. Natural. It was beautiful.”
My mother told me, “I picked up the phone after you were born and called my mom. I told her you were a girl and said the next one is going to be a boy.” I was born at ten before midnight. She’d been in labor since ten o’clock the night before. They’d told her at 1 in the afternoon that it would be any time. What do doctors know?
When I got pregnant, I had positive experiences to draw on, a lot of humor, and my understanding of holistic and natural methods to draw from. Still, this was Aaron’s baby too. All decisions were jointly made.
I think Aaron would have been more comfortable at a hospital but he was willing to investigate the alternative, so we interviewed midwives and visited the birthing center. I had a hard time picturing us going through the experience in a building next to the bail bondsmen, across from the jail, in a rather seedy part of town. The organization also had a high rate of women who ended up being transferred to hospitals to give birth for failure to progress and a no-refund policy. My doctor is an amazing Chinese American who supported my holistic approach to pregnancy, birth, and health, so we went with a traditional hospital birth.
A mobile professional. Because my husband is a mobile professional he was able to push the baby stroller while participating in conference calls, enabling me to catch up on badly needed sleep. He built up muscles holding a growing infant in one hand while typing answers to a proposal in the other.
I spotted Darryl and Nicole Bell across a restaurant, and was immediately curious. Was he really a modern dad or was he window dressing? Did he do it voluntarily or did his wife browbeat him into it? Did he get grief from his dad? His father-in-law? His peers?
Whipping out my business card, I went and introduced myself. Then I did what writers do… I interrogated.
“I noticed you have a backpack.” Yeah, we used to have a diaper bag but realized they aren’t very practical. A backpack is a whole lot easier.
True.
“Are you self-conscious about being an equal partner in parenting your child?” No, I don’t judge my parenting skills by what other people think.
What a healthy attitude!
At this point, Nicole walked up and I introduced myself.
“I’m writing an article about modern dads and how, unlike their predecessors, they are equal partners in raising their kids, helping their wives.”
Nicole, a very pretty woman who glowed with health and happiness, smiled. “They have to be, don’t they?”
I nodded in agreement. Especially when the women work.
“Did you guys have this understanding before you were married? That you would work together to raise your kids and be equals?”
Fellow Midwesterner, I bet Darryl caught my use of you guys. He shook his head. Nicole replied. No, we didn’t. It evolved.
Working together…the marker of a strong healthy relationship!
Kids are a lot of work. Careers are a lot of work. For two people to be juggling all of that responsibility and doing it with such a healthy attitude is outstanding. Clearly, the Bells have a very healthy sense of self. They don’t need to prove anything. They don’t justify why they do it this way, but they are more than happy to satisfy sincere curiosity.
A healthy sense of self. My dad was self-employed and very active in our upbringing. My mom has a queasy stomach so he stepped in when we puked up in the middle of the night. He coached my baseball team, went to bat against the nuns when they told me it wasn’t seemly for girls to play hockey, and taught my brother what it meant to run your own business.
My brother’s a modern dad, too!
He told me girls could do whatever we wanted…equality and treating people how we wanted to be treated.
Setting a new standard. Aaron had a more traditional upbringing which, in my eyes, makes him more of a hero for stepping up to the plate as my partner raising our kids. Darryl explained that he also had a traditional upbringing and that he and his wife, who is from the east coast, had additional differences. However, it’s obvious he takes these differences in stride and they don’t interfere with his decision to be an equal partner in raising their family.
Weekend dads. Most modern dads rarely saw their own dads participate in their upbringing. Their dads might have caught the kids in time to say good-bye as they went to catch the bus. They may have gotten home in time to join the family for dinner, but typically got home in time to say good-night. Around on the weekend, these dads might have taken the kids to a ball game while the moms cleaned the house from top to bottom, ran errands, and caught up on anything they didn’t have time to accomplish during the week.
Modern dads change dirty diapers, laugh at wearing mushed peas, plop screaming kids in front of Baby Einstein videos, and take their kids’ class groups on field trips to museums. They also cook (not just barbeque), and do housework, including laundry and scrubbing toilets.
And get this…they do it because they choose to. Without the image hang-ups of their predecessors, they shrug off implications they somehow aren’t masculine and step up to the plate to, in the eyes of their families, hit a home run.
And it’s outta here!
Post Script: I believe every expectant woman, along with dads-to-be, can benefit from reading Dr. Grantly Dick-Read’s Childbirth Without Fear. You can find more information about hypnobirthing at http://www.hypnobirthing.com. The wall chart from the Silva Method Basic Lecture Series shows the brain frequency range associated with painless childbirth. Techniques taught in this course can help facilitate it and nicely dovetail the principles taught in hypnobirthing.
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