Last week, my wife gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, bouncing baby boy. He is all the things that you hope new babies are. A blessing. Loud. Adorable. Soft. Precious. Gassy. Alert. Moderately bemused. Perpetually hangry. Vaguely human. Somewhat reminiscent of Fred Sanford.
He is also life-changing. Heβs our second child, but our first boyβmy first sonβand there are myriad reasons why this first son status is so crucial. I look forward to people asking if I plan to dress him like a miniature replica of me, just so I can respond, βWhy would I do that? Heβs his own person, not a miniature replica of me,β and walk away. Iβm anticipating the day Iβm able to teach him how to catch, because then his big sisterβwhoβs practically a catching maven nowβwill have someone to play with while Iβm crafting clever Facebook statuses about fatherhood. And Iβm more than anxious at the thought of our first trip to the barbershop, because if itβs anything like my first trip to the barber, I might have to fight a barberβlike my dad almost had toβand Iβve never done that before. Mostly though, Iβm beyond grateful for this boy person in my life because holding him in my arms and looking into his eyes will finally teach me to do something Iβve never done, which is respect and honor men.
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Although I am 39 years old, and although Iβve encountered tens of thousands of men in those 39 years (the vast majority of whom, I think, were human beings) and although I am a man, treating men with kindness and compassion is something that I just never learned to do. When Iβd see men and boysβand this includes when Iβd look in the mirrorβand Iβd ponder whether to have any empathy for them, Iβd just think βNah.β
Of course, Iβve grown to respect men and think of them as equals worthy of protection and care. I wasβand still am!βaware of all of the statistics about how boys are more likely than girls to drop out of school and how men are more likely than women to be incarcerated and how males (in general) are more likely than females (in general) to be Kappas. And these things mattered to me, but in theory. They mattered mattered. But none of it mattered mattered matteredβit wasnβt realβuntil that boy was born, and I held that boy against my manly chest. And then, and only then, did I start to really get it.
Now, because of this male child that Iβm legally and morally obligated to care for, I am more sensitive to the unique challenges facing men. Iβm more cognizant of the language I use, the images I consume, the music I listen to, the people I surround myself with, and the sports teams I root for. Iβm more mindful and respectful of my dad and my uncles and my cousins and my homies and my barber and my favorite male barista and the rest of the men currently in my life, and I even find myself thinking back on past relationships Iβve had with men and wishing Iβd regarded them with more empathy. I now shudder at the thought of all the times I was on the basketball court and guarded by men shorter than me, and how boorish and vulgar I was when Iβd post them up and dunk on them. Iβm ashamed of myself.
Just think, for a moment, about how much better men would be to men if more men had boys. That should be a requirement, actually. Vague eugenics aside, how else can you expect men to have any sort of compassion for a gender comprising half of Earthβs population if we donβt literally create one of them with our own sperm? Where else are we going to find that? How else will we learn to respect them?
This transformation hasnβt happened overnight. I still have considerable biases and blind spots about men that need rectified. But now, when I look in my sonβs sleepy eyes and he stares back at me, wondering when this awkwardly bearded man is going to hand him back to his mother, I know that I have an investment. A stake. Some skin in the game. (Itβs his skin, but still.)
Thank you, son.
Straight From
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