Fatherhood

Wednesday

Bill McMorris

The importance of the Band-Aid

Alexandria, Virginia Back in February, the first grader sustained a scrape that left a tiny red dot on her leg. She requested a soft cast and a medevac chopper. She settled for a dollar-store bandage. She shouldn’t have: it turns out she was quietly bleeding to death from the inside. She would have continued to deteriorate had we not been alarmed by a toilet clog the week after she fell. The Band-Aid was invented in 1920 by one Earle Dickson, a New Jersey cotton buyer with a clumsy wife. All her cooking mishaps inspired her exhausted husband to combine his stock with the methacrylates of surgical tape and some crinoline fabric found in petticoats. The J&J website can’t help but note that Mr.

band-aid

Monday

Cockburn

Daily Mail dominated by Elon’s baby mama

Rumors of a romantic entanglement between the Texas-based conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair and Elon Musk have been buzzing around MAGA circles for some time. Yet St. Clair, a former Turning Point USA ambassador and Babylon Bee staffer, decided to go public with a Valentine’s Day statement on, where else, X, the website her child’s father owns. St. Clair wrote that she had not previously disclosed her infant’s parentage “to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.” One atypical aspect of St. Clair’s plea to be left alone: the inclusion of an email address for crisis PR guru Brian Glicklich.

ashley st. clair daily mail

Wednesday

Bill McMorris

Draft my daughters, please 

When a man has three consecutive daughters, people inevitably ask if he intends to “keep going for a boy.” I always handle these questions with the requisite courtesy laugh before speaking honestly: I’m not going for anything beyond what is assigned me by the Most High, who is both funny and just. After six in a row, people start believing you. They will return your courtesy laugh and pause before moving on to other small talk. The bomb won’t go off until they hit the pillow: “Holy moly, what did McMorris do?”   After Friday, I will amend my answer with a hearty “Yes. God is both funny and just.” For nothing would be funnier than if he sent me a son.

draft daughters

Saturday

Marc Oestreich

Are we losing the American dad?

Over the past weeks, a cadre of young men has spent their days marching across the quad, demanding an end to a justifiable, nay honorable, Israeli war on amoral terrorists. An overlapping segment has donned their rainbow buttons and profile-art propaganda to honor the sexual proclivities of their fellow man. They scream borrowed sentiments in all caps, tapped self-righteously into the iPhones their parents have surely furnished. They take over streets and public spaces, inconveniencing the world around them. Their posters, wearing whatever slogan trends on social media, may as well say, “Look at me, world… but let me put the right filter on first.” These are the men of their generation. These are the next generation of American fathers.

father dad

Wednesday

Bill McMorris

The ins and outs of fatherhood

Alexandria, Virginia  It is impossible to read through the transparent eyelids of an eight-day-old just what kind of young lady she will become, but I already know Katherine Matilda is going to have impeccable comedic timing. She announced her existence a week after we donated all the maternity and infant clothes, diapers and, natch, car seats — a month after we signed off on a renovation that demolished the entire ground floor for the duration of a pregnancy. She came home on a Saturday, a week into a pinkeye epidemic in which half of her sisters proved allergic to antibiotic eyedrops. There was a time when such chaos would have sent sleep-deprived parents into crisis. That time was Monday.

fatherhood

Monday

Matt Purple

Becoming a father

They say immersion journalism is dead, but I just might have proven them wrong. The night before I wrote this column, I took on a most unfamiliar role, one my wife has been playing for the past two months: waking up in the night to take care of our baby son. We recently started bottle-feeding him, which allowed me to overcome my, er, biological inabilities in this department. This won’t be so bad, I thought around 5 a.m., as I sat in the dark while he cooed and sucked down formula. Cut to an hour later as I lay in bed, my mind churning through the latest NFL trades. While my wife can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, I have a giant spinning turbine of an overactive imagination.

fatherhood parenting father

Wednesday

Cosmo Landesman

Daddy issues: the fatherhood revolution has failed

This article is in The Spectator’s October 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. When I was growing up in the late 1960s, boys like me craved the admiration and approval of our dads; we wanted nothing more than to impress them. And now that we are dads, we crave the admiration and approval of our children; we want nothing more than to impress them. But the curious thing is, they don’t care about impressing us. In fact, our teenage children are just like our dads were — distant figures who are busy getting on with their own lives. Today we demonize dads of the recent past for being cold and uncaring. For failing to change diapers, read stories at bedtime, provide the unconditional love and praise children need to grow into happy, well- adjusted adults.

fatherhood

Wednesday

Daniel Akst

Thanksgiving advice for new boyfriends

Congratulations! You’ve been invited to Thanksgiving with Dad. Since you’re new to the role of my boyfriend, please take a moment to review some of the special considerations that can make your time with this important American writer more rewarding for everyone. As soon as you receive this memo, begin following Dad on Twitter. Then complete and return the attached six-page release. It’s just a formality, giving him unlimited rights to use any and all of your stories, mannerisms, disabilities and family secrets in all media anywhere in the known universe. You also pledge to indemnify and hold him harmless in the event of a lawsuit, however frivolous, by anyone in connection with this material, including you.

thanksgiving advice