”That’s all I wanted for you, young’un…like father, like son…”
Sometimes I find myself trapped in feelings of jealousy. I explain this envy to close friends & they all reply with puzzled looks.
”Fam, you’re 23, lol”
No, it isn’t a sudden need to settle down or anything. But I sometimes talk to guys I’ve grown up with & it’s amazing to me that these guys are fathers. The same guys I went to secondary school with, same college, played Pro Evolution together, lol. It’s crazy.
On the one hand, they can’t ‘run riot’ like the rest us. In a lot of cases, unfortunately they still do. But there’s something about fatherhood that’s always intrigued me & is something I look forward to. Parents, fathers especially always have this motivation that you should surpass their own achievements. Bigger & better. And I wonder to what extent will that be the case for me & my children. How hard will I push them? And not only that, will I push them in a direction I desire? I’ve never resented my own parents for this, but I do wish that they would’ve identified my early passion for football & had made an effort to get me involved in the sport on an organised level from a young age. I always joke with friends that the moment my child, boy or girl makes the slightest contact with their foot to a ball, their path to international superstardom has begins…
A lot of young men who do become fathers, were fatherless themselves & tend to use that as motivation to be a constant presence in their children’s life. Most young fathers that I know of are that way. Very few carry on the tradition of their absentee dads. I’m fortunate. I can say at no point in my life I didn’t have a father. But I still feel that I lacked something. We always mention that it’s crucial to have fathers in the home, but rarely do we place emphasis on the QUALITY of him. Without soiling my deceased stepfather’s name, he had his lesser moments. There were many occasions I resented him & whatnot but I can say I’ve learned a lot about being a man from him. What does irk me though is the fact I learned mostly from his weaknesses whilst he was still here, but it wasn’t till he died, I began learning from his strengths.
Which makes me ponder. If I had a kid now, what could he or she learn from me? What values, principles, morals, etc could I pass on? It seems premature to me, but I often believe that a lot of my character-building as of right now, is in preparation for fatherhood. I was lucky, I’ve been practising from the age of 7. Mama Kane had me changing nappies, feeding, babysitting & all sorts. Taught me well. Maybe she was just lazy, I dunno. Come to think it, a 10-11yr old kid shouldn’t be babysitting should she? Lol, lemme take it easy on the dry-snitching…
But back to my point, I’ve always believed in this idea of ‘dynasty’. Maybe it stems from inherent, male concerns of mortality & a wish to leave a long-lasting mark on this world. But I want to be a ‘forefather’. So I gotta lay foundations down. And you don’t lay foundations when you’re about to become a father. You start, well in advance of that.
Which is fucked up, because there’s another piece to the puzzle you gotta consider. The mother. Ahh yes. Again, it does seem a bit eager to start thinking about it already, but I do kinda think about what sort of mother the lady in question could be, when getting to know someone past a purely sexual level. I was talking to this girl recently & she told me she hated children. To be honest, she was never going to make it past the sex buddy rank anyway & had already said a lot of things to throw up red flags, but that really made me think, ”Arggghhh, yeah. No thanks…”.
You’ve also got to think about how you are with women too, and how your actions towards the potential mother of your child could affect HER parenting. If for whatever reason you don’t make it as a couple, will whatever energy left between you may leave her bitter, depressed, etc? Not only can this take a toll on your child, but also on the child’s perception of you.
This brings up another issue. You’ve got to think about what your approach to relationships will be & how it may affect your children if you choose to have any. Which is a dilemma a lot of adults find themselves in. We’ve been taught that a household with two married people is the ideal scenario to raise children in. But with divorce rates so high & the concept of traditional, monogamous relationships being challenged, tweaked, etc in this day & age, you find men & women starting families, when everything isn’t right between the 2 individuals in the first place? C’mon son…
I guess I’m writing this because fatherhood has always been an important issue to me. On a personal level & a societal one. I feel not enough young men discuss this, (openly anyway) & their isn’t enough ‘pride’ in being one. Which makes sense I guess. The ‘nurturer role’ is seen as an innate female quality & men, young ones especially still want to hold on to that, ‘New Jack’ essence of theirs. Hard to do when you’ve got to pick up a pack of Huggies before you go watch the game at your boy’s house. LOL.
Peace.
Mickey Kane Says... 
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s refreshing to read a young man’s perspective. I think having children should not something that happens to one, it oughta be planned and thought out. Of course that is unrealistic and this the real word.
One thing that struck a chord with me though, is that I have learned from my own father what kinda father it is I would want for my children.
Dude, you were not the only looking after your siblings at a mad young age, I was hand washing my siblings school shirts at the age of 12, as well as cooking and cleaning.
Being a parent is the hardest job one will ever have, it’s a learning process, even if our parent did an all around decent job and we turn out all right, there is no guarantee that we’d be able to nurture another human into a good person.