What Little Boys Learn

Our society doesn’t invest nearly as much time and attention preparing boys to become fathers as it does preparing girls to become mothers. Here’s just one illustration, drawn from two of the oldest national nonprofits dedicated to developing kids into well-rounded adults:

• In the Girls Scouts of the USA, young women can earn badges in: Caring for Children, Family Living Skills, Food Power, Healthy Relationships, Consumer Power, Let’s Get Cooking, Sew Simple, Toymaker, Fabric Arts, and “Food, Fibers, and Farming.”

• In the Boy Scouts of America, the only parenting-preparation merit badges a young man can earn are: Family Life, Cooking, and Textiles. The number of Boy Scouts earning a Family Life merit badge is less than half the number earning Woodworking, Archery, Fingerprinting, and any of 35 other merit badges.

We aren’t casting aspersions on the Boys Scouts (or Girl Scouts); indeed, the thousands of Boy Scouts who earned their Family Life badge are better off than most young men. The point is, few boys in our culture get much hands-on training in child-rearing—especially infant care. Boys are not usually asked, expected, or encouraged to learn child care during their boyhood.

When you were a boy, did you learn to change diapers? If you did, the odds are slim that your father was the one who taught you.

Think about what you learned from your father and/or stepfather about parenting. You probably learned a lot from his example, even if it was a bad one. But how much did he ever say to you about how to be a father, or about how his life was enriched by having you as his son?
This lack of words—father silence, if you will—is important for any new dad to acknowledge. Because we tend to start out with less training and information in fathering than our partners have in mothering, we have to recognize our need to actively reach out for knowledge.

The good news? Every one of us dads is equipped with valuable fathering instincts developed over millennia of human history. When we combine that instinct with the wisdom of veteran dads (and good fathering resources like this website), we can be outstanding fathers!

Adapted from The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being an Expectant Father by Joe Kelly and used by permission.