No one forgets the birth of their first child. That fortunate event for me happened on 21 November 1969. I did my best to train my wife through the Lamaze breathing techniques we learned in our childbirth classes. Now it was time to go to the delivery room to complete the birth process and welcome our newborn baby into the world.
We both were ready for the last leg of the journey. The nurse turned towards me smiling and said,
“Okay, Mr. Diamond, you are now done. You can go to the waiting room and we will let you know when your baby arrives.”
I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. On the one hand, we had lived together for so long and I wanted to stay with my wife until the birth. On the other hand, I was afraid I might go crazy and faint. I didn’t want to spoil things.
I kissed my wife and told her she was going to be okay. She tried to smile but was overcome by the next contraction. As they turned her left towards the delivery room, I went in the other direction. But as I walked through the waiting room doors, something stopped me. I felt my soon to be born baby saying,
“I don’t want a waiting room, Dad. Your place is here with us.”
I turned around and went back the other way and went through the door into the delivery room. I did not ask for permission and if I had asked, there would have been no question of my going. I didn’t care what the rules were, my baby needed me and I answered the call. It wasn’t long before our beautiful baby was born. As soon as Jemal was handed to me, amidst tears of relief and joy, I pledged that I would be a different kind of father than my father and do everything possible to create a world where fathers are fully engaged with their children throughout their lives.
When we brought him home from the hospital, I took three weeks off work to be a supportive parent to my wife and continue our relationship with our son. The event of Jemal’s birth and its aftermath changed my life forever. A year after Jamel was born, my wife announced she needed a break from 24/7 parenting. She acknowledged that I was very helpful, but she needed a break from being the primary caregiver. A girlfriend had invited her to go on a road trip, maybe for a few weeks, and asked if I could take a few weeks off work again and stay with Jamel.
I wanted to be a good, new-age, independent father, so I immediately agreed. But inside I was scared. It was one thing to be a supportive parent, knowing that my child’s mother could step in at any time. I believed that mothers had an inherent understanding of children and knew what to do, a special thing that I felt men lacked. I thought I learned a lot about caring for my baby, but what did I really know? I was just a man. What do I do if she needs something I can’t give her? There weren’t any moms in our area who could help us, but my wife assured me that I could call her any time if I needed advice.
The first few days were scary, but Jamel and I figured things out together. I discovered I had abilities I didn’t know I had. We, father and son, played together. I fed him, changed his diapers, slept with one ear open to hear screams at night. My wife called several times and I told her honestly that things were going well. We both missed him, but father and son were alive and thriving.
We did more than just survive and thrive. We created a bond together that lasted for a long time. We are connected in a way that most fathers and sons are not. As a father and a man I feel more confident than I ever imagined I could.
Jemal will turn fifty-six in November. My wife and I now have six grown children, seventeen grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. I continue to love and learn. I recently heard about a new book, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies By world-renowned evolutionary anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hardy. This helped me understand my experiences as a father and the importance of fathers throughout evolutionary history.
I recently had the pleasure of Interview with Dr. Hardy, which you can watch here. After an entire career that has included studying the lives of mothers and writing prestigious books The woman who never evolved, Mother Nature, He began to recognize the importance of fatherhood that had been largely neglected by experts in Darwinian science and evolutionary psychology.
“It has long seemed clear that women care for babies and men do other work,” says Dr. Hardy. “Has it not always been this way? When evolutionary science arrived, it sealed this respectable division of labor: Mammalian males evolved to compete for position and mates, while females were created to conceive, nurse, and otherwise nurture the winners’ offspring.”
Yet Dr. Hardy’s experience of watching the men in his family nurture infants helped him trace the evolutionary roots of male nurturing of young infants and help us recognize the more expanded reality of what it means to be a man. What he discovered would forever change our view of masculinity.
I learned this more than fifty years ago when Jemal was born. More and more men have experienced this expanded reality.
“Men who care for children have the same neurological changes, similar increases in prolactin levels and similar oxytocin-induced erotic pleasure as mothers,”
Dr. Hardy says. I didn’t understand the biological changes he went through at the time, but that was certainly my experience as I spent a significant amount of time physically in contact with Jemal.
“If their brain shape changes to resemble that of mothers, won’t men’s psychological preferences also change?” Dr. Hardy asks. “Could men’s preferences be almost the same as mothers’, with mothers being more social? Might such men also be more likely to choose safer and more sustainable courses of action?”
I’ll take it one step further. Will men with such changed minds, minds that are dedicated not only to children, but also to humans and other living things, be the men who can work with women to create a healthier, more sustainable world? We do not need experts to alert us to the reality that humanity is out of balance with the laws of nature and that we must change our ways if we are to survive and thrive as a species.
Thomas Berry was a priest, “geologist” and historian of religions. He spoke eloquently about our connection with the Earth and the consequences of our failure to remember that we are a member of the community of life.
“We never knew enough. Nor were we close enough with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the different creatures of the earth, each telling their own story. However, now is the time for us to listen or die.”
At a time when mothers are struggling to care for infants and many are seeking or even looking for child care from strangers AI robots to raise our childrenThe answer may be to support fathers and their children in a more practical and heartfelt way. What do you think?
You can learn more about Dr. Hardy and his work by visiting his website. you can see deep into me Interview with him here.
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