It was a long time ago, so much that I can barely remember the time, but I know that since I was young (which is not that it is not, or I feel, still) I had what I have decided today to call "the need to be a father". Why? I have asked myself many times, who or what encouraged me to have children? It is still today that I still do not have it clear, the only thing I know is that before the question of, Do you want to be a father My answer was, "Yeah right".
Time passed and the sketches of your head are gradually taking shape and body and so you look like that father of ads, surrounded by children, smiling and happy. Yes, that was just the father I wanted to be.
And then, what comes is reality
Today, 20 years, a marriage and two children later, I can say that life has passed like a whirlwind, leaving many of those perfect dreams in a complete mess of toys lying on the floor, shirts with spots of porridge and dark circles able to challenge even the best proofreaders in the market.
In short, I could say that there is not much left of that father I wanted to be, and that is that looking back I can say that there is little left because there was not much. That father that I longed to be, that father, lover and friend was nothing more than decorated, cardboard, stone and paper couché. It was not really the father that I wanted, but the father who had sold me. He was the social and labor-perfect father, provider and with perfect children.
Society sold me a father smoothly, a father with the ability to be at the right time and in the right place, a formal father at the same time that rebel and groundbreaking with the known canon and I bought it, in the same way we did many. It was a perfect product, why we weren't going to want it ... Maybe, because it wasn't real.
Wait, stop and think
We don't even stop to think the basics,Do I really want to be a father? Do I have to be? Do I have other options?
Society expects you to continue on the wheel, to question the fair and criticize the least, study, have a good job, get married, have children and make them give you grandchildren. That's how we saw it, that's how they sold it to us. No one raised other options; Well, some there were, you could be the single man of gold, the one who never stopped in the same house for too long, the one they all loved but didn't love any ... But there was a catch, that post was never for you, because either you were not rich enough, or handsome, or successful, or as was my case, none of the three things together.
So while you were thinking about the kind of father you wanted to be or the one you DON'T want to be, the time to be the perfect father passed and ran out, they said. And so, they prevented you from wondering if you were really prepared to have children, ask what was coming to you when the nurse placed your first child in your arms ... and then what came was fear.
Who did we want to be? Who are we? Who do we want to become?
I think, as I suppose it will happen to many more men and women before being fathers or mothers, that I did not want to be as my father had been. Not because he had been a bad father or anything like that, but because times change, society, although snail steps, also changes and demands other ways to educate children.
The father who wanted to be years ago is light years away from the father that I want to be now
And beware that I am not even saying that I have managed to be that father model (we are working on it). So we could say that within me three parents coexist, the one I imagined as a young man, the one I am and the one I have modeled.
The reader might think that the editors we publish here have a perfect or idyllic relationship with our children, but speaking of my particular case, I can say that far from it. I face day to day with my children and my partner trying to be the best father I can give my children, but I don't always get it and even when I do well, or at least when I'm happy with the result, I know there would be things That can be improved.
But the reality is not perfect and in it there are afternoons of anger, of bad faces, of despair, of desire to leave all this, to throw in the towel, to yearn for that model of absent father who left in the hands of his partner the responsibility for the care and education of children. But one of the points I know is that Being a parent means being responsible and that is not being supportive of the other, but of being part of the main structure in the family, that co-responsibility so acclaimed by much of society, I am not the father who helps with the upbringing of my children, I am your FATHER, well with capital letters, I don't help, I play father, which is just what I owe and I have to do.
One is not a father overnight
All this evolution does not come overnight, one does not enter the parlor and goes out with a child and being already a father. You leave with a very strong bond that has entered into you like a trickle of water that leaves everything upside down. Now it's time to work every day, relocating everything again, only from the moment you have your son or daughter in your arms, you probably don't want to put everything back in the same place where it was before; Not even where I was yesterday.
Because it will be your children who are carving the father that you will be in the same way that we will mold part of who they will become. It doesn't matter who we think we are, the type or the way we want to educate them, they will make you change. Of course I am not talking about it being a change from night to day, but one day you will see yourself doing things that you did not even consider before having children, even some that you would have flatly denied that you would do.
In my case, I was not a supporter of the schoolboy, I thought that a child should have his room or at least his crib, until the day comes when you are so tired that you do not have the strength to get up and take him back to his crib and discover that having him near you not to let you sleep, relaxes you and so, another useless rule that goes by the toilet.
Many times, from sites like ours or televisions, magazines, the media in general, we talk about parenting methods, in short, being a specific father or mother. I think so much study, so much pattern together is to go crazy, especially because many times, when we try to behave differently than we are inside us what comes out leaves a lot to be desired, mainly because we do not believe it and cannot educate if One first does not believe in oneself.
Don't be the father that society wants you to be, be the father that your children want you to be.
If we are an unloving person, for example, we cannot become overnight the king of kisses and hugs for many books we read, courses we attend or pages we visit. The important thing is to be sure you want to change because that change is better for everyone and then direct our effort in that direction. Over time, we are probably not like those model parents who sell us, but surely the father we are then will be far from what we were when we decided to change and it will have been a won battle, something we can be proud of.
I strongly believe that we have to change the paternity model we have had so far. I think we have to be parents much more emotionally involved with our children, we should not remain as mere providers of money in the family or as weekend taxi drivers in the activities of our sons and daughters, the work is daily and titanic, because it involves restarting all the education we have received in the past, but I know, because I see it, that it is getting, slowly (maybe it would not be possible to step on the accelerator a little more) but we are going in a good direction.
We do not stay with these models, but with the changes that will improve the relationship with our children and adjust it in the way that best suits each one, because not everyone goes at the same speed or the same paths. Don't be the father that society wants you to be, be the father that your children want you to be.
And you, are you the father you always wanted to be?
Photo | iStock
