Congratulations!!! You're going to be a dad! Dads love immediacy, so here are some basics right away:
But what we would especially like to say to you: fathers are super important! Be and stay involved in taking care of your child. After all, you are desperately needed!!! It is very important as a man to get started right away and dive fully into taking care of the baby. Go all in right away. Even as a father, you can quickly learn everything about taking care of a baby. Everything a mother can do, you can do too, except breastfeeding of course. If you go all in on taking care of your child right away, it will greatly benefit the healthy bonding of your baby and you. That results in healthier and more stable children, as well as healthier and more stable families. So with every diaper change you make, you are actually investing in your child's future.
Children with fathers who have an active role in parenting have children who have higher verbal skills, IQ scores and later academic achievement.
What is frustrating for some fathers is that in all those books on parenting, the father is far in the background. If he can be found at all. In the bulk of children's books and movies, the father is often portrayed as absent, authoritarian and unkind. But fathers are of great importance! The way fathers play with their children greatly influences how they grow up. The way fathers play is physical and challenging. Of course, fathers can also be sweet and cuddly. But physical play makes children more accepted by their peers later in life. When fathers engage with their four-year-old child's emotional world, the children later become more social and competent, psychologist Robert Seers found. The best predictor of the level of compassion in a 31-year-old adult is a father's involvement at age five. Later, these adults have the best relationships with their spouses, children and community.
In short, it is important for fathers to be actively present.
Sometimes fathers are excluded by their wives. Sometimes they exclude themselves. When fathers discover that they can make all caregiving a game, they are less likely to be pushed out. They thus discover the great joy of the primary caregiving process. When parents get violent conflicts, you see that fathers not only get a distance from their partners, but the father also withdraws from the child. This is not something that just happens; he has a role in that as well.
What is parenthood anyway?
Parenting is an intricate process involving the activation of many complex psychological processes. The transition to parenthood is a radical change in the family system. The roles of partners and parents must be reinvented and redistributed. Today's parents spend more time with their children than in the past. How will you emerge as a parent? That is very difficult to determine in advance. Also, one does not know how one's partner will emerge as a parent. One may experience the other partner in the parent role as a stranger. As a parent, you develop your own identity (not joint!) of parenthood. This happens sometime between pregnancy and the first 18 months postpartum. As a parent, you need time to feel comfortable in that role. This is different for everyone. Some fathers feel like complete fathers right away. For other fathers, it takes a lot longer to feel comfortable. For fathers, it may take longer than for mothers (is also really often enough not true), because mom has a head start. She has carried the baby in her belly for 9 months. It is good to take the time to feel comfortable in this role. No one should be ashamed if this takes time.
The parental role may be waking up sleeping dogs in a parent.
Issues that went wrong in one's own childhood may rear their heads. This can manifest itself in explosive anger, guilt and indulgence. Finally, in addition to caring for the baby, it is also important for parents not to forget to enjoy the baby. The biggest cliché is true. It flies by. Make sure you don't miss it. And you are super important as a dad!
Want to get more and better prepared for parenthood? The online Parents Inc. course is for expectant parents and parents already in the tropical years and will make you the best dad in the world!