Along Came Daddyhood

I’m 26 and fully ensconced in the transitional portion of my life. School is far enough away that has officially become a memory but I don’t feel fully engulfed in adult-ness. Rowe helps me feel as though I am becoming a grizzled veteran of life, but I can’t help but still feel like a kid sometimes.

Maybe this is because I am the younger sibling so invariably feelings of youth will trickle down to me. But regardless, I feel marooned between two eras of life.

But this isn’t anything new. I think my generation has been searching for some kind of larger identity that will define us but there is yet to be a calling card for us. 9/11 was certainly the landmark event of our generation but it didn’t really change any fundamental dynamics of our life. We briefly became patriotic and then quickly found ourselves receding into the familiarity of cynicism and snarkiness.

I mean there hasn’t even been a unanimous choice for my generation’s label. Is it Generation Y? The Millennials? The Trophy Kids? No one knows for sure and I think this identity crisis has most impacted males.

That isn’t to suggest an exaggerated importance or a more put-upon existence than women; rather it concerns the average man’s struggle to identify his purpose. We have had no World Wars, Vietnams, or Cold Wars to define us. It seems as though the conflict my generation fights is cliché and marginalization.

Instead of fighting the advancement of Hitler, Mussolini, and Khrushchev's ideologies, my generation is fighting against the advancement of stereotypes perpetuated by Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson and Doug Heffernan. Are we all really chubby, incompetent, and perpetually covered in barbecue stains?

It seems that we are caught between converging ideologies. Is it better to be the domineering husband of the 50’s or the submissive husband conditioned by feminism? Is it ok to show emotion in front of my son or should I always project stoicism?
Where exactly do we stand?

And the church doesn’t do much to help negative perceptions either. Granted, there are some alarming trends among Christian males, but we aren’t all porn-addled bums incapable of turning away from a pretty female who isn’t our wife. To a certain degree I think it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Men are becoming what they are being told that they are.

I haven’t read Wild at Heart, but I think the essential message is that at our core, men need to be able to be who God made us to be: physical, aggressive, adventurous, etc. But in this digital age, men are being cornered more and more into becoming creatures of the cubicle and unable to be true to ourselves.

When I see Ashley with Rowe, I envy her because it is apparent that her transition to motherhood has been without much problem. She instinctively knows what Rowe needs and how to provide it for him and she completed this transition with very little complication.

I, conversely, am less natural with Rowe. My methods are trial, error, and panic.

By no means am I asserting that young W.A.S.P.s like myself live a painful existence. It’s more that we seem to be becoming more and more lost without the relief of compass or maps.

There’s a dearth of resources out there for young Christian husbands/fathers to consult and I’d like to see more dialogue and discussion about what it means to be a good, honorable, and faithful man. Because I love this point in my life and I want to be what my family needs, but I need all the help I can get.

After all, we can only glean so much from pro wrestling and football, ya know?