Fathering - what it's like

Reluctant servant, breadwinner or house husband – what does being a dad boil down to? Adam Lindsay gives a father’s perspective.

From the time your partner’s waters break, you could be forgiven for thinking that no-one takes the father’s role seriously. While you stand transfixed by the bed, the uniformed staff flit and dart around your partner, like frenzied seagulls swooping onto a discarded fish supper. There’s your screaming partner, the ‘seen it all before’ midwife, the student nurses and dithering interns – your presence seems irrelevant, your role undetermined.

The delivery suite of an NHS maternity ward provides an initiation into fatherhood that you are unlikely to forget. Be prepared for some unprecedented behaviour by your partner. She will swear like you have never heard her swear before, and then she will affront your masculinity by falling in love with the anaesthetist. Forgive her this brief affair. It is drug induced and lasts only a couple of hours. Anaesthetists possess a means of seduction more potent than any aphrodisiac or native oyster. It is called an epidural.

When my wife was given the injection, her anguish gave way to a look of such benign calm and peace, that I started sniffing the air like a drug squad detective. As the anaesthetist packed up his instruments and potions, my wife touched his sleeve and purred: ‘You are an absolute saint. Thank you.’

‘I’m over here, darling,’ I said. She turned her head, gave me a frosty look and retorted ‘This is all your fault.’

She has a point. Throughout the ages, fathers have been there at conception, bang on time, but until my father’s generation, we were discouraged from adding to the clutter in the delivery suite. Fathers were left to pace anxiously outside, hour after smoke-filled hour. Times change. Now, it is considered unusual for fathers not to be present at the birth, and smoking is taboo.

This isn’t the only change. From the birth, and for evermore, your priorities and responsibilities are dramatically altered. No longer are you and your partner equals in a mutual, fun, adults-only relationship. Now baby is in charge, mother is the loyal deputy and mentor, while father is the provider and reluctant servant. Of all the changes that have taken place in our society, one ideal has remained solidly intact: ‘Women and children first.’ It is a cry of survival and a definition of the family hierarchy. When a baby comes on board, fathers come last. So when you hold that screaming spasm of pink and purple flesh in your arms, and feel the pride and sheer animal delight of being a father for the first time pumping through your veins, remember that you have, in fact, lost.