Eight weeks in, I?m having a lot of anxiety about fatherhood
?So, how?s fatherhood treating you"?
It?s a throwaway question. A conversation starter as innocuous as asking about the weather or when LeBron is going to stop playing around and put on a Raptors jersey. In the eight weeks since my daughters were born, I?ve probably been asked this question an average of once a day. After fielding it 50 or so times, my mouth still runs dry and my skin crackles. I have to remind myself that I?m being asked how I am faring as a father, not how I?m dealing with my difficult relationship with the concept of fatherhood. That?s a conversation for a therapist, not the work colleague who wants to catch up over drinks.
I?ll often reply with ?It?s going great? or ?The girls are growing like weeds,? not ?I spend every day stewing in the fear that I will repeat the cycle and fail to be the father my children deserve.? But that thought is on an all-day loop in my head and, I?ll admit, it gets in the way of me fully being with my daughters. My partner, who is also wrestling with the realities of motherhood, put it to me this way: ?It still feels like we?ve got two tiny roommates.? This isn?t just a matter of my self-identity struggling to expand into the role of father and provider; it?s also a very real fear of how this world treats black girls and women and my responsibility to protect them from the worst excesses of that world.
It?s the fear of sitting down one day and explaining to our daughters that, while a world of second chances exists for t...
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