Mothering by Fathers

I read in a magazine about these two women who have just released their book on parenting. These gorgeous women have adorable kids, married to successful men and have the figure of glamorous celebrities. As in, they look really fetching and glamorous. If they have not written a book on parenting and have not posed with their children (eight between them), I would not have believed that they are actually moms.

Having said that, I must say that I am not writing about how great they look – it’s just something I can’t help mentioning here. I haven’t actually read their book so that is not what I am posting about either. It is something about a piece of information they divulged during the magazine interview that caught my interest. Fact is, they both had bad or sad experiences with their mothers, though they eventually made peace with them when they were older and had their own families. Both of these women authors positively affirm that they received considerable amount of mothering from their fathers. Considering that these women (as it appears) turned out to be good mothers and wives, their dads must have had done a good job with them.

One of the two women-authors, whose parents divorced when she was very young, considered her weekends as her lifeline, when she would get to see her dad again. Living with her mom throughout the week was almost unbearable, according to her and her time spent with dad was the little sunshine in her life.

This struck me quite hard, because until now, I really haven’t entertained the idea that fathers can potentially have profound effects on their daughters in terms of how they will end up eventually as parents. I mean, they can be great parents, of course, and they can positively influence their kids to do well in life. But particularly to help their daughters to be better moms someday is quite foreign to me.

I don’t have scientific data, I know, but being made aware of this possibility makes me suddenly realize how hands-on a father my husband is, too. Well, he may not have the culinary skills to feed his children with nourishing food, but he sure knows how to be there as their mentor or friend in a lot of ways. He is there to teach his kids how to tie their shoelaces (believe me, I could not break down the whole process into simpler steps for the boys to understand!) or to help them with their school work.

The thought humbles me, actually, because I now suddenly realize that I am not the “star of the show”. I have my husband who is my brilliant “co-star” and who knows how to complement my mothering with his own brand of parenting. Of course, I cannot expect him to mother the boys in exactly the same way that I do – though I sure would love him do that.

By nature, men are not designed to give the kind of mothering that moms actually give, but they are designed as well to contribute to the parenting process with their unique contribution of leadership, strength, boyish playfulness and laid-back approach to life in general.

Whereas for me, I do my share of mothering with a little bit of tenderness, strictness and a good measure of obsessive-compulsive style thrown in. Plus, of course, the other good things that can be expected of a mother (I’d like to think that).

I am thankful for having a man who has this ability to commit to his role and responsibility as a parent. Somehow, I have more reason to believe that my boys will grow up to be more adjusted in life, given the right modeling of fatherhood they got from their Papa.