Journal

With the discussion of the Cornell 7 online, I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about consent. As many people are saying, it’s critical to be working with kids on consent, boundaries, and bodily autonomy long before it becomes a conversation about consent in the context of sexual activity. I’m seeing so many posts on Instagram talking about how moms need to raise their sons better and the immediate follow up to that being that dads need to be doing this and setting a better example for their sons. As I flagged in my introduction post, so much parenting media online is by moms and primarily directed at moms. I’ve seen many moms asking the very reasonable question: where are the dads talking about this? Here’s one.

My dad has asked me a few times since my son was born if it feels like he was always here or if I even remember a time without him. My honest answer is I remember my life before being a father, but it has been such a monumental shift it’s difficult to mentally put myself back in that position. Fatherhood suits me and I have fallen into the role right in step. A month in, I’m still suprised at how much has come naturally and how well I’ve adapted. In this post, I’m writing a whirlwind lookback at the first month of being a dad, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Many new moms share their birth stories online, for others to learn from, for support, or for any number of other reasons. I haven’t seen many new dads do the same thing, but I think we should. Childbirth is obviously primarily the birthing parent’s experience, but for birth partners it can be stressful and difficult so it would be valuable to have more stories from their perspective. If more fathers share their experience as the support person for a birth, we can build a body of knowledge for other new dads to learn from and normalize talking about the whole range of experiences we have during the birth of our children. In this post, I share, with my wife’s permission, my perspective on the story of our son’s birth.