Daddy Cool Part 2: This Time It's Personal

Dear Friends,

If your memories hark back far enough you might recall Part 1 of Daddy Cool, wherein I charted, rather hastily, the history of children and child rearing. It was an emotionally traumatic piece of research, spurred initially by a desire to comprehend the vastly differing opinions on child rearing.

In Part 2 (of 3 (I Hope)) I will be detailing the effects of preparation for parenthood on myself. I make no apologies if what I write has no particular reference to you, though I hope at least some of it will. I can only write from the perspective of a heterosexual male fathering his own biological offspring, because that is my experience. If you feel that my portrayal of fatherhood is too narrow, please feel free to respond and broaden the topic to include your own experience. After all, it is only through the sharing of experience and discovering commonality that we learn from one another.

Anyone who tells you fatherhood is the greatest thing that can happen to you, they are understating it. - Mike Myers

In the beginning there was the fear...

When my wife and I decided to try to have children it signalled a change in our relationship that was only partly foreseen. Despite my medical background, I knew little about parenting from conception to birth, beyond the scientific. I naively thought that perhaps that would be enough. When my wife told me she was pregnant, even though I should have been expecting it, I was surprised.

For the preceeding months I had tried my hardest not to dwell on all the worries I had regarding just the conception. I found myself, in my quieter moments, trying to rationalise every possible outcome of our attempts to conceive. When I was younger I had always told myself it wouldn't matter to me if I was infertile, because there are so many options. I had settled on the idea that I would adopt. Simple as that. I would play the hand I was given and rather than lament it. I would give a child the home it deserves. How very altruistic of me.

This was, of course, before I was married. Before it was a potential reality rather than a hypothetical situation. What I had failed to account for was the feelings of the other person. The potential mother of a child. A child she would like to have with me. How about how she felt? Would she be so keen on my altruistic world view? Chances are if there was an infertility problem, it would be on one side of the partnership alone. It would be hard to not feel like you are somehow letting the other person down. That maybe they would be better off being with someone who can give them the family they desire? These are just some of the thoughts that ran through my head from time to time.

Once the pregnancy was confirmed though, these thoughts dissipated, as you'd expect. However I do know that there are many people who have to deal with these questions in reality. I wish I could be more comforting, but it seems anything I say would ring hollow.

Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch. - Jon Stewart

The pregnancy from the point of view of a new father to be, brings about ambivalent feelings. It's amazing to see a woman's body change and seemingly out of nowhere produce a baby. Up until the first ultrasound scan at 12 weeks, everything about the pregnancy seemed somewhat tiresome. (I can literally feel the mothers reading this start to hate me, but hear me out.) The joy of learning you have the potential for creation within your capability, is soon tempered with the physical symptoms of the first trimester. To the partner, all the morning sickness, aches, pains and sore breasts, are just a protracted illness. Something that they can do little about, even if they are, as I hope I was, sympathetic to the sufferer. You can learn about it, try to help out as much as possible, but no matter how much you may want to, you cannot travel the same journey as the mother. From the very outset pregnancy excludes the male from the obvious physical and emotional strains of growing another human being. Women can know it, men cannot.

However, the 12 week scan, brought into sharp focus the inescapable reality that was presented before me. In half a years time, I would become a father. Specifically to the little mass of grey pixels on the sonographer's screen. A threshold was crossed at that moment and the door behind you shut and disappeared. Like all nodal points in life, it was both exciting and terrifying. We two were responsible now. We had decided we were, before starting out. Now we would have to prove it. But we two did not have the same role to play. My wife was to be Mother, I was to be Father.

The frustrations of the first trimester made way for earnest preparation and a new found sense of responsibility for the habitat of the new person, soon to enter into existence. Things that had seemed periphery to my reality before, now occupied my thoughts. Economic, environmental, political. All of which centred at my immediate surroundings and extended outwards. It was now my responsibility to craft a space in the world fit for a baby. My baby. It is both selfless and selfish. Selfless on the part of the offspring, selfish in terms of society. I wanted the best for the child first and foremost, I'd get to helping anyone else after, if possible.

I had never experienced such a mixing of feelings. At times I felt uneasy with how my world view was changing. Yet it seemed almost biological. As though some dormant genes were suddenly awakened and a physiological change was happening. My wife's change was obvious, but mine was no less real. I found myself emotionally brittle in situations that hitherto had rendered me apathetic, if that even.

On the one hand, we'll never experience childbirth. On the other hand, we can open all our own jars. - Bruce Willis

It's hard to express the wonder of watching the woman you are with transforming into a Mother. The girl you once knew, fulfilling a potential power so mundane yet utterly astounding. The rational mind tells you to understand it from a dispassionate perspective, a "Chemical Reaction" as Bill Hicks once put it. Yet to be privy to it, to be watching it first hand, fully in the knowledge that this has happened several billion times over, was almost magical. The plasticity of the human body will never cease to amaze me, neither will its frailty.

The date which seemed an age away rapidly approached. The reckoning was upon us. It will be no surprise to tell you, that for the purposes of story telling, TV and movies have lied to you. (Aside: If you develop your reality from what you see on a screen alone, your life will be an endless series of disappointment and confusion.) Labour is not a fifteen minute job. I had never really considered it, but it's called Labour for a reason. It's not called Idleness, Inactivity or Indolence for similarly appropriate reasons. It was exhausting just being present, I would not like to even imagine what it is like to actually experience. If men were truthful with themselves, once witnessing Labour first hand and considering all the trevails we, as a gender put them through, they still live longer than us. Women really are the stronger sex. Sorry fellas.

Think about it this way: a woman can grow a baby inside her body. Then a woman can deliver the baby through her body. Then, by some miracle, a woman can feed a baby with her body. When you compare that to a male’s contribution to life, it’s kind of embarrassing, really. The father is always like, “Hey, I helped, too. For like five seconds. Doing the one thing I think about twenty-four hours a day." - Jim Gaffigan

Then, after all the waiting, the tears, the worry and excitement, there he was. My son. I learnt in that instant I was to be father to a son. The images of his first moments in this world will forever be etched in my mind. I never thought that my soul could bear such an excess of joy. I thought I had known what love was, but truly I had only seen one facet. All of a sudden, a new dimension of love was exposed to view and was almost overwhelming in its immensity. I cannot overemphasise this, but will stop now before I spill out the countless clichés which I am in danger of spouting.

An unexpected tranquillity fell upon the room. This utterly defenceless, little person, that only an hour ago was merely imaginary, was in my arms. A small bundle of potential energy. His course in life would be eternally entwined with my own, yet the world he will know, would be very different to the one I knew.

I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow,
They'll learn much more,
Than I'll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world. - Louis Armstrong

In those twilight moments, it felt as though the fruits of labour had finally been harvested. Yet I was soon to realise, the truly hard work had not yet begun.

In the next part of Daddy Cool, I will exploring what it really means to be a Cool Daddy.

Yours always,

The Filosofer


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I know, I know. You don't need to tell me I've been gone too long. I can feel it. Let's just say, life got in the way. Now life has decided to be cool, I can resume more regular blogging.

You can contact the Filosofer on:
Email: xmphilosophy@gmail.com
Twitter: @xmphilosophy
Facebook: www.facebook.com/xmphilosophyblog

Daddy Cool Part 1

My dear friends,

It has been nearly one year since I became a parent. It has been a rewarding and emotional experience for me and my wife. I'm sure that many of you who have children can relate to that. 

Ever since I've been a parent though, one thing has struck me as unusual. I don't know why I didn't expect it, perhaps I never really thought about it until I was made to. Why is there still so much disagreement on how to raise children? I was genuinely astonished. Think of any aspect of child rearing and I can find you at least two if not more, conflicting ways to do it. From breast-feeding to schooling and everything in between. It is a source of continued and sometimes quite vicious debate.

Surely, I thought, there must be some consensus? Something we must all agree on? I suppose it depends how you define "all." As nation states we have laws governing the minimum standard we expect for our children's treatment, but I don't need to tell you that the "minimum standard" is also highly variable across the globe.

As someone who is very much interested in history, I thought I'd delve there and see if I could make at least some sense of it. Not an easy task, because there is a genuine dearth of information re children in history, when compared to adult men and women. Children genuinely are the silent players in history, rarely mentioned but just as effected by historical events.

I feel it is important at this point to warn you. Some of what I will be presenting in this weblog post is uncomfortable in the very least and downright sickening at it's worst. That is my experience at least and I have a strong stomach and a healthy perspective. I will try and leave out the gratuitousness as much as I can. Yet I feel it is important that we examine our history fully, including the truly perturbing aspects, if we are to understand where we are today and the direction we are heading in the future.


There is a professor of history in an American University, that each year challenges his students to find him evidence of parenting techniques prior to 1850, that if practiced today, would NOT end in prosecution for the parent. To date not one student has managed this. Quite remarkable when you first hear it, but as soon as anyone picks up a book relating the story of children throughout human history, it becomes evident to see why. 

Let's start near the beginning...


Anthropologists that study the very earliest modern humans have been quite forthright about their findings and theories about how children were treated by their palaeolithic and neolithic elders. Infanticide was a common practice. Sometimes the tribe could not sustain another one of their number due to environmental reasons and usually the children were the first to suffer rejection from the collective. The youngest would go first and if necessary the next youngest and so on until the tribe was left with only sexually mature adults. It made sense to them. Children weren't useful and actually reduced overall survival, in times of hardship. It was a brutish, harsh existence.

Cannibalism seems to feature quite a lot also in the fossil record. People ate people. Kids are people too and easier to catch from opposing tribes. And it would seem that the vast majority of those eaten would have been children.


Fast forward to the ancient Mediterranean. It is a matter of historical fact that the civilisations of and around the Mediterranean used children for sexual gratification, some younger than my son is now. Reading the primary sources for this era makes one question the humanity of these people. It's easier to see them as somehow alien and unrelated to us today. It's much more difficult to try and understand their reasoning and psychology. It makes one ask deeply disturbing questions about themselves and humankind in general. It's also easy to forget that the adults that would do these things to children, were once children themselves and almost certainly were treated in a similar fashion.

There was no religion that prohibited such behaviour, no damnation culturally for it. To all at the time, it was normal. So normal in fact that when one reads the primary sources describing these behaviours it's as if they are talking about the weather. The history of General, then later Emperor Tiberius is full of sickeningly graphic accounts of what today would be considered paedophilia of the worst kind, but in the history is related as if he's a mild alcoholic. Or the works of Petronius Arbiter, a friend to Emperor Nero and satirist whose "Satyricon" is a romance featuring young boys.

I'm not picking on the Romans either, because there is plenty of evidence that such practices were widespread, from Carthage to Iona, Assyria and Greece. 


So what of the the Christian world? Surely the introduction of an increasingly moralistic world view coupled with a fear of eternal damnation if not at least being a pariah, would stem the suffering of children?

Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 19:14

So Christ was for children being included in society and taught that one must be innocent and childlike in the presence of God to understand and be incorporated into the Kingdom of Heaven. That's my interpretation anyway, based on this and several other aspects of Christ's words as recorded in the New Testament. But the realities of Christian Europe in the Dark to Middle Ages, much as some would argue today, were far removed from Christ's message.

From around 300 - 1300 AD the spread of the Christian message did little to dissuade the practice of infanticide. It did however make vogue the custom of abandonment, often at the steps to a church or monastery. Children became subject to new dogmas and so in addition to the murders and rapes and regular beatings, came religiously inspired violence. 

Children were described as "changelings" if they were somehow physically deformed or mentally deficient. Physical and mental disability aside, St. Augustine said some children as "suffer a demon," and are "changelings" if they merely cried too much and needed to have "the devil beaten out of them." Death was not an uncommon occurrence during these of demonic exorcisms

Babies were swaddled and bound for years. The belief being that children's limbs could potentially become evil-shaped if left loose, or they could tear off their ears, scratch out their eyes, break their limbs or touch their genitals. The infants were often tied to chairs all day, lest they crawl on the floor "like an animal."

Aside from the physical aspect of the children's treatment at the hands of their guardians, is the plethora of psychological tricks and strategies for creating the kind of behaviour deemed necessary for the development of a good person. Stories from eastern Europe to the colonies in the Americas are abound with such practices. Children were sometimes literally scared to death.

In Europe, when a public execution was to occur, a special area right at the front of the crowd watching, was reserved specifically for children. They were made to stand and watch the condemned as the various charges were read and the appropriate punishment meted out. Once the execution was ended, the children were then beaten, severely. This was not a punishment, but a lesson. That lesson was, "Remember this day."

This sort behaviour, as well as countless other forms of what can only today be described as torture, persisted as necessary for well over a thousand years. Generation upon generation meeting out the same brutal judgements upon the next.

From 1500 AD until 1750 AD, children were given a slight reprieve from the physical punishments, but sexual exploitation was still rife. To understand how widespread this was, one must know that even the royal princes and princesses, heirs to the throne, were not exempt from this. The practices that occured are so utterly repellent I don't want to describe them here, but for those who are curious what makes me so squeamish, I will link to various historical source websites at the end.

Around 1750 came the newly formed study of Child Psychology. One of the earliest proponents of this new field was a German writer called J. Sulzer wrote in one of the first books dedicated to child-rearing,

These first years have, among other things, the advantage that one can use force and compulsion. With age children forget everything they encountrerd in their early childhood. Thus if one can take away children’s will, they will not remember afterward that they had a will…[sic]

[it is necessary] to drive out willfullness from the very beginning by means of scoding and the rod…

[it must begin] in the child’s first year.

Versuch von der Erziehung und Unerweising der Kinder (Attempt at the education and instruction of children) 1748

This was generally the mindset for most of the child psychologist that were adhered to by parents from across Europe. Even today there are high profile proponents of such forms of child-rearing, maybe not so much the physical aspect, but the psychological aspect certainly.

Change in attitudes on how to raise children has been exceedingly slow over the past few thousand years. The idea of parental "love" for the child seems to really be an invention of modern times and not in ingrained, hard-wired, immutable and inalienable feeling that I and many others today experience.

But before we start judging our ancestors too harshly, we must remember that context is easily lost with hindsight. Not that I'm making excuses, but it is important to keep context in mind whenever history is discussed, especially such a bleak and sinister aspect of it. We must never forget that these people, in the most part, did not consider their behaviour as abhorrent, but actually beneficial.

It should also be considered that, despite the deaths meted out by adults on children, for whatever reason, the greatest killer of children, even today, is disease. Thousands of pathogens, unchecked by antimicrobials and immunisations, took the vast majority of infants and children before they were five years old. The average ages of our ancestors is so low, not because people died at 25, it's because so many died before 5. If you were one of the lucky ones to survive up to your fifth birthday, chances were you'd live a good few decades after that.

Imagine the psychological strain that would put on a parent. There are many stories recounting the devastation that disease wrought on individual families. One that always wrenches my soul when I think of it, is the story of a pilgrim family in Maine, late 17th Century, where a husband and wife had thirteen children, not one of which survived beyond adolescence. Imagine having to bury every child. Imagine thirteen pregnancies, thirteen labours, thirteen illnesses, thirteen last rites and thirteen funerals, all for your own children.

That is just one family, in the history of humanity there are many more whose stories go untold.


Is it any wonder that perhaps parents didn't attach too strongly to their children? It is considered today that one of the most soul-destroying events for a parent, is the loss of a child. Imagine if almost every parent you knew had lost one if not multiple children to death and disease. How different would your outlook be then?

It is also worth remembering that all of the terrible things done to children throughout history, still occur to this day. Rape, torture, kidnapping, slavery and murder. We may be much more advanced technologically speaking, but there are those who are still very much mired in the darkest corners of the human psyche.


So, the fact that there is no concensus on child-rearing is because raising children without fear of death and with genuine parental love, is a relatively new phenomenon in the human experience. And it is still not universal amongst humans, the reasons for which we will discuss in Part 2 of Daddy Cool. It won't be the next blog post I do. I think I'll need a little breather after this one.

I'd love to hear what you think on this and any other subject,

Yours in thought,

the Filosofer

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Thank you for making it through that, I commend your sticktoitivness. Here are some links for you, should you wish to look deeper into todays subject matter.

1. History of Children
2. Children and Youth in History
3. The Association for Psychohistory - the science of historical motivation

Suggested reading:

1. The History of Childhood by Lloyd deMause (Can be found in HTML format on link 3)
2. A History of Childhood by Colin Heywood
3. Childhood in the Middle Ages by Shulamith Shahar

You can contact the Filosofer at: xmphilosophy@gmail.com or twitter @xmphilosophy