Resisting the urge to mother

If you have been a father for some time you will appreciate that many mothers tend to place a gentle but persistent pressure on fathers. "You never do..." or "You always say ...", implying that your interaction with your child is wrong. The thing is, it's not wrong, it's just different. I get frequently accused of always tagging praise with criticism. It's a fair comment but that doesn't make it wrong, and it doesn't mean I think any less of my children.

Someone anonymous made an interesting observation - Children go to their mother for love but their father for the truth. That statement feels right to me. It seems to me that the worst thing I can do for my children is to build an artificial world for them to live in, because one day they are going to have to participate in the real world and if they have never been told that their work is substandard, or their behaviour is unacceptable, they will get setback that they may never recover from - their entire view of their world will be shattered.

As a society we have begun to womanise child rearing. Again, this does not make it wrong, but it does make it unbalanced. Having visited dozens of early childcare centres I have yet to see a toy gun or sword. Even forts and soldiers are a rare thing. "No wartoys" is the policy of many organisations that deal with children. Personally I see this as incredibly dangerous. The only way to get rid of boys aggressive is to filter the testosterone from their blood. Aggression is simply part of being a man and it is really, really important that boys learn to explore that aspect of themselves and learn to set limits around the use of aggression. It is far safer that they do it when they are three with rubber swords than when they are sixteen and have the keys to mums Starlet.

Some schools also take a role in womanising childhood by taking a softly, softly approach. No one fails, everything is worthy of unqualified praise. This celebration of mediocrity is dangerous for boys. Boys need a pecking order. They need to know who came first, who came last, and who they should look up to. It is simply the way they operate and it makes them safe. Bullies are often dealt with quietly and kindly, and schools that do that often have persistent bullying problems. I'll bet a school that makes a bully stand up in assembly and apologise to the school for their behaviour won't have a bullying problem. That is possibly closer to a man's way of dealing with bullying - you make the bully own their behaviour and you move on.

As a species we have been rearing our children for thousands of generations and until seven generations ago men and women participated equally in that. Humans are incredibly sophisticated. Most animals are independent of their parents within weeks of birth, some even before birth. Humans need many years before they can survive independent of mum and dad. It is crucial that those years are filled with balance and child rearing is not overly swayed by the instincts of either parent. For father the message is simple - be a man, and interact with kids as a man. Your children have a mother and will encounter many women in their childhood. Men are now rarer in their lives so it is important that the ones they engage with don't shy away from what feels right and good to them.

Steve Gore