Becoming a father

The process of becoming a father is more lonely and ambiguous than I anticipated.

In the early days of fatherhood I believed, if I could apply some universal parenting principles, adjust for blind spots in our sociey, and add a few father-specific principles, I’d be a great dad.

However, the daily practice of being a father is only marginally informed by principles. It’s much, much more informed by the traits of my own parents.

There’s great overlap in being a father and being formed into a saint. Merton writes that to be a saint is to become myself. One could replace saint for father.

In this way, becoming a father is lonely work, for no one knows “the secret of my full identity” except the One who formed me (Merton).

A less mystical way of framing this is to relate parenthood to genetics.

I am 50% of my father’s genes. My fatherhood will shadow his by nature, whether I prefer that or not. But it should be a redeemed version, taking in the disordered expressions of his nature and restoring them to whole, healthy expressions by the Spirit.

Since I am also 50% of my mother’s genes, I also shadow a her “fatherhood” and and require the same restorative process, made more opaque by the conversion from a female-to-male expression (which is certaily possible with God, who expresses both male and female parental attributes, but not so easily formulated).

The merger and redemption of my father and my mother’s parenthood into one identity exceeds principles, theories and human effort. It’s as often misinformed as it is informed by comparison to other parents. To become a parent is, therefore, as lonely and ambiguous a process as becoming myself.