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.

How you adapt to this new domestic order becomes clearly defined over the next fortnight’s paternity leave. Before the baby is born, most fathers view the prospect of paternity leave as an extra period of paid leave, on top of normal holiday entitlement. But a holiday it is not.

With feeds on the hour, nappy changing, incessant crying and winding, spilling gripe water, running baths, emptying laundry by the line-full, and fetching cups of tea upstairs, I thought seriously about installing one of those stair lifts, or moving to a bungalow. With every passing day, paternity leave seemed less like a holiday and more like a sentence; only, there was no chance of going back to work early, for good behaviour. But then I was saved by the mother-in-law. Never before had she received such a warm and friendly welcome from me, when I met her at the train station.

Once she was settled in the sitting room with baby in her lap and cuppa in her hand, I wasted no time on small talk and biscuits. Using all the tactics I had learned from those expensive residential courses in negotiating skills, man management and – what was it? – ‘resource extraction and redeployment’ (aka sacking staff), I suggested to mother and grandmother that it would be more supportive if I split my paternity leave and took the second week, when grandmother had gone back north, a fortnight hence. That way, my wife wouldn’t be alone with baby until the start of week five.

‘So, what you’re saying is you can’t wait to bugger off?’ my mother-in-law replied. ‘Well, we are very busy at work, and…’

‘Go on then. You’ll only get in the way and upset the baby.’ Sensible woman, my mother-in-law.

That was then. Seven years have elapsed and our baby is now a young schoolgirl with a strong personality, and a growing sense of self. We have another daughter now and together they make a formidable team. Watching them grow and helping them through every stage of their development, rekindles many memories of my own childhood. It’s a poignant reminder of how important every member of a family is to each other, in the chain that links one generation to the next.

So, if I had my time again, would I still become a father? Absolutely. Would I change anything? Well, I would like to see fathers develop a better capacity for communication with each other. Maybe an anthropologist would have a better explanation, as to why we don’t readily talk about our children with our mates and fellow dads in the way that mothers do daily. At least iVillage has made a step in the right direction. In a way, that will preserve the great British sense of reserve, the ‘Great Dad’ message board is somewhere to share your views with other dads in private, and in your own time, without anyone knowing. Mum’s the word, so to speak.