Fatherhood Is Learning: Becoming the Men Our Kids Need Us To Be - a memoir in essays

By Matthew S. Rosin

When I decided to become a stay-at-home dad, after having earned a Ph.D. in the philosophy of education and worked in nonprofits for nearly a decade, I knew I’d learn at least as much from my kids as they would learn from me. I was excited to take part in opening up American gender roles.

But I didn’t anticipate how easily my anxieties about competence and failing as a caregiver would spark reactivity and self-judgment during difficult parenting moments, nor how I would reinforce my social isolation by avoiding other parents whose judgments I feared.

Fatherhood Is Learning shares how I’m becoming the man my kids need me to be through reflection, mindfulness, and friendship, and how loyalty to this cause has transformed my understanding of love and myself. The book is for any man who cares about healthy masculinity, yearns to be the responsive dad his kids deserve, and seeks connection—and for the people who love these men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthew S. Rosin
• Release date: Sep 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005698737

Matthew S. Rosin

Matthew S. Rosin (he/him/his) is a stay-at-home dad, author, and composer based in the Bay Area, California.Rosin is author of the memoir-in-essays Fatherhood Is Learning and publishes the Fatherhood Is Learning newsletter. His reflective essays on fatherhood as a learning process have appeared in STAND Magazine, On Being, and Fatherly Voices. Before staying home with my kids, he was a writer and researcher in the education non-profit sphere, and he holds a Ph.D. in Education from Stanford University.Rosin’s short fiction has appeared in KYSO Flash, The Luxembourg Review, r.kv.r.y. quarterly, and Shotgun Honey, and he is author of the novelette The Honeydrop Tree. He also composes and records music that blends popular and experimental genres.

Book preview

Fatherhood Is Learning

Becoming the Men Our Kids Need Us To Be

a memoir in essays

Matthew S. Rosin

2021

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2021 Matthew S. Rosin.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Early versions of the following essays first appeared in STAND Magazine: The Dad In the Room (Issue #3, Spring 2016); Learning To Smile (Issue #8, Winter 2018); Learning To Be Present (under the title Learning To Smell the Flowers, online, December 4, 2017); Learning To Connect (Issue #10, Winter 2018); Learning To Trust (under the title Learning To Meet a Need, online, May 30, 2018); and Learning To Forgive the Man I Don’t Want To Be (Issue #9, Summer 2018). // An early version of A Letter To My Toddler first appeared on the On Being blog on June 21, 2015.

Book design by Matthew S. Rosin.

Cover image rendered from a photo by Todd Rafalovich.

www.matthewsrosin.com

fatherhoodislearning.substack.com

For my family.

Table Of Contents

Prologue: Remember To Be a Better Man

A Letter To My Toddler

The Dad In the Room

Song: So Much Pee!

Learning To Smile

Singing About Poop and Pee

Song: The Tiniest Poop!

Learning To Be Present

Song: The Poopy Abuts!

Two Dads Breathe

Learning To Trust

Song: No Poop On Me!

Learning To Connect

Learning To Look Vulnerability In the Eye

Song: Aromatic Bum Bum!

Learning To Forgive the Man I Don’t Want To Be

Epilogue: I Smile To Myself

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

About the Author

You may give [your children] your love but not your thoughts, / For they have their own thoughts. / You may house their bodies but not their souls, / For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. / . . . / You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.¹

- Kahlil Gibran

But we need a clear-eyed sense of our history, even the ugly parts, because without it we are mindless actors in stories we never agreed to.²

- Thomas Page McBee

Prologue: Remember To Be a Better Man

It wasn’t my finest performance as a dad.

After dinner, I headed upstairs with my kids, Sprout and Cub, expecting the evening to move quickly into our usual bedtime routines—only to discover that Cub’s bedroom was a disaster area. Side and activity tables from both kids’ rooms were piled about the bed with Tetris-like precision. Boxes and spare sheets and blankets from the highest reaches of Cub’s closet were strewn about the floor, and it looked like they’d used the closet shelves as a ladder to get them. The kids had clearly had a fun and imaginative time during their afternoon rest time.

A rush of heat surged through me, and I did not so much as pause to breathe and collect myself.

You’ve got to be kidding! I gasped, my voice already strident and cutting. Pick it up, now! All of it!

A soft, steady voice inside me counseled: Take a breath. You don’t have to be this guy.

But I was swept up with anxiety, as if fired from a slingshot, sprung from the tension of my forehead, scalp, and shoulders; from the tightness in my chest. My tired body, wanting only to sit and just not think, puffed with indignation at the thought of the long clean-up ahead, as if an exaggerated stance of dominance could ensure my kids’ rapid compliance. And the more I moved about the mess, the more I suspected that Sprout had taken advantage over Cub: only the younger sibling’s room was in disarray, from the floor to the highest shelf.

God damn it, I muttered loudly, wanting my kids to know the inconvenience they’d foisted upon me. Then I turned to Sprout. "And you, why doesn’t your bedroom look like this?"

(In the background, the steady inner voice whispered: You don’t have to act like this—just stop. The kids do this sometimes.)

Indeed, this was just another day with my active, creative kids. They are avid inventors of imaginary worlds, and I love that about them. When they’re together, each amplifies the other’s energy and ideas, and though this is frequently exhausting to keep up with, it’s also riveting. And that creativity doesn’t stop during times demarcated by their mother and me for rest. Moreover, Sprout is known in our home for building sculptures from bedroom furniture and extracting materials from high places. My wife and I have marveled at this capacity, if a bit nervously at times, since Sprout was a toddler.

If I had taken a deep breath at the outset and given my steady inner voice the chance to lead the way, perhaps my sense of wonder about my kids’ creativity would have softened my heart. Instead, my heart had contracted, leaving room only to blame my kids and especially myself.

If only I’d checked the condition of their bedrooms during the afternoon, we could have cleaned Cub’s bedroom earlier, and I’d have avoided this last-minute panic.

If only I’d taken that deep breath. If only I’d listened to that soft, steady voice.

If only.

Failure.

Pain.

And yet, that steady inner voice, inviting me: You can still begin again.

Later, when the room had been cleaned up, our normal routines were back on track, and I’d found some quiet moments for my toxic churn of thought to settle and drain from mind, Sprout showed me a small, bright piece of stationary. When you feel like you are getting angry, you should remember this, Sprout said calmly.

The note.

I already knew what it said: I’d written it. Every parent who’d attended the Kindergarten overnight trip during the previous school year had written a note to their child. In radiant magenta ink, I’d written about how I’d loved sharing the trip with Sprout, and this: You inspire me to be a better man. Sprout had been surprised by that sentence, having never considered that parents are always learning, too, guided by the needs and insights of their children.

I’d always hoped that Sprout had saved and cared for the note, but I’d never been sure, until now.

I looked at my seven-year-old and took a slow breath. I settled deeper into my fatigue, that feeling of emptiness that follows ill-spent adrenaline, and accepted the truth of it.

Sprout had recognized the gulf between my behavior that evening and the higher calling embodied in the note. The note was a promise: an invitation to hold me accountable. Sprout took it seriously and was taking the risk to call me back to my own higher cause. I’ve come to expect this kind of courage and attention to kindness and justice from Sprout, and I admire it deeply.

Are you trying to say, I should remember to be a better man? I asked.

Yes, Sprout said, not missing a beat.

Fair enough.

* * * * *

For me, fatherhood means the courage to reflect and learn what kind of man my kids need me to be, so I can respond to them fully as they are—and as they wish to become.

My proudest moments as a parent answer to this cause, albeit imperfectly. And when I fall short, this cause invites me to take a hard