Parenting as Discourse: Talk to Your Partner Dads!

 Soon, I’m going to launch into a series of posts for new dads, expectant dads and thinking about being expectant dads. These posts will contain ideas about the things that worked for me. Emphasis on me, since we’re all different people, that, by inference, means my spiffy ideas might not work for you. At all. And that’s OK. They might just not be your thing. Everyone parents differently.

Before I do that though, there’s one other implied tip in the above that is completely hidden, what with all my talk of ‘I’ and ‘me’. I think—no, I believe, deeply—that this hidden tip can help everyone who identifies as a dad. Everyone. This one is important, so I’m going to lead with it.

I talked to my partner about all my parenting plans before I put them in motion.

We started talking about plans before my partner was pregnant, and eleven years in, we still talk about them a lot.

Talking about plans works on tons of levels, so I’ll list the ones I can think of now, and plan on adding others in a different post.

1. Autonomy
2. Avoidance of more spirited talking later (arguments)
3. It’s really useful to think about parenting with intention
4. You can get your compromises out of the way early

Many of these ideas, (all of them?), fall under the category of avoiding surprises. Still, I’ll roll out some concrete examples for each of them.

Autonomy: If you’ve discussed, with your partner, how you’re going to parent in both the long and short terms (strategic and tactical if you prefer), then you can—more often anyway—just parent without having to think about it. Frequently, when I talk about parenting I get asked why I don’t talk more about my partner. My snarky answer is I’m not talking about my partner because she wasn’t there. 

A more complete answer would be something like, “Well, yeah, the kids and I did stop off at the pub for lunch on the way back from camping. My partner didn’t go on the trip, but we discussed how we felt about camping and hitting pubs with the kids before we had kids—she and I are both really into both things by the way.”

And that’s the beauty of it. I know what my partner does and doesn’t expect and/or want when the gang and I hang out. I know because we talked about it. I don’t have to second guess myself or check in, except to say hi and tell her that we miss her.

Avoiding more spirited talks later: I might be doing the whole parenting thing wrong, and if so, apologies, 'not every parent', and whatnot, but you’re going to have arguments about parenting. A lot of them are going to spring up out of misunderstanding of what each of you thought about what it means to parent, what your job is in parenting, and what you think about the kids’ place in all of this is. It’ll just happen. It’s OK. But, what if you could have fewer of them? For me, fewer arguments is nice. Also, for me? Fewer surprises, means fewer arguments. And, fewer surprises can be arranged by talking about your parenting thoughts over a bottle of wine before they’re a surprise. 

I should make an aside here. I’ve traveled in France, and was thoroughly amused by the number of couples who screamed at each other and then fell into passionate embraces as accidentally capture in the picture of me below. Again, maybe I’m doing this whole thing the wrong way. (I clearly also need a pack of cigarettes.)

It’s really useful to think about parenting with intention: Another huge advantage of talking aobut the parenting before doing the praenting. Once I talked—out loud—about how I wanted to parent, I had a much more complete picture built up my parenting style. For me, that meant I wanted to hang out with the gang doing things they liked and things I liked. I also wanted the gang to feel comfortable wherever they were. I also wanted to be a low-maintenance parent, (more on this below). Once I’d built this whole picture in my head by listening to myself say it out loud and getting my partner's perspective, and thought about how it looked over the course of years, it was much easier to look for other collections of ideas similar to mine. With my new, more complete vision, I was able to find one of my favorite books, The Child in the City. I needed that vision first though, and I got that vision from talking to my partner.

And finally.

You can get your compromises out of the way early: OK, let’s talk about me and low-maintenance parenting, and … strollers. Strollers are not my thing. It’s a piece of equipment, and I’m not into more pieces of equipment. Carrying babies? Yes! Pushing equipment—a stroller—that can store even more equipment? Not so much. So, I discussed with my partner that I’d much rather just plop the baby in a wrap. She was in favor of strollers. We came to a compromise. When I wasn’t traveling for work, I’d be in charge of getting the kid around, and I could wear the kid to my heart’s content. When I wasn’t in town, my partner had a stroller that she used to get the kids around when she wanted. I carried the kids a ton. I loved it. When my partner had to get the kids from place to place, she did that the way she wanted to. We were both happy with our solutions.

Also, on the way to having kids, when I spoke about me baby wearing with relatives, and got all the different flavors of “That just won’t work,” my partner was supportive of what I wanted to do. (Just for the record, it did work out great, and contributed—a lot I think—to the gang and  I hiking as much as we do now.)

But, my proud parenting moments aside, everything worked ‘cause my partner and I had already discussed how we saw things going and adjusted and made compromises before the kids got here.

Talk to you partner!!! :)