Thoughts on paternity pt III

Re-evaluating my priorities; nature vs nurture; a change in outlook; parenting advice

When my son was born, four years ago, I wrote two posts on my first thoughts on being a father. Four years + a daughter later, here’s the sequel.

Re-evaluating my priorities

Two of the qualities I valued the most before having children were intellect and wit (if asked, I’d list integrity as the most important virtue, though to my shame I admit that I wouldn’t avoid the company of a witty scoundrel (whereas I would avoid the company of a decent dullard)).

Now that I have children, I find that the importance of intellect and academic/professional achievement has been drastically devalued. I talk to other parents who fret over their 4 year-olds’ education, and who spend countless hours researching and visiting different schools, and I find that I just don’t care all that much: we sent our son to the nearest state school. It’s not the most academically stretching school you can find in London; it’s not prestigious; it’s not super-well organised; and it’s certainly not the kind of school you send your kid in the hope of their networking with future prime ministers or hedge fund partners. But the teachers are caring and kind, and it has done wonders for my son’s confidence, and that’s all I’m really looking for in a school.

(Don’t interpret this as meaning that genuine education does not matter to me — I want to encourage my children to learn, and to instill a sense of curiosity. I just think it’s absurd to stress over academic-achievement-on-paper at this age; and I find myself feeling more pride when my son is kind to other children, than when he does something impressive.)

Nature vs Nurture

Growing up, my mother kept talking about the importance of genes — so much in life is inherited, she’d say, from looks to personality to intelligence to everything. Like most people in my generation I’d roll my eyes — we all know we are mostly products of our environment, and allegedly inherited traits are a matter of correlation and selection bias etc.

Interestingly though, my mother tells me she also used to think nurture was more important than nature before having my brother and me. It’s having us that changed her mind — just as it has changed mine.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that when it comes to groups of people as opposed to individuals environment plays a huge role. But observing my own children, I cannot but believe that even personality traits and mannerisms and behaviours are often the expression of genetic material.

How else can I account for the drastically different characters of my children (on which I’m about to expound, despite the fear that they’ll one day read this, which will feed their teenage resentment of their parents)? How can it be that my son would never veer further than three steps away from my wife and me, while my daughter, as soon as she could walk, would head off chasing pigeons and exploring parks without even glancing behind to see whether we were following (we weren’t, we were reading our books)? How is it that my son would always share everything in his possession, from toys to victuals (to the extent that for a long time I thought he hadn’t realised that if he gave his crisps to someone else, he would have fewer for himself), whereas my daughter… not so much (she is getting better — though much like my wife, if she knows there is more supply of whatever she’s having, she’ll tell you to go get your own)?

I know, I know, their environment is not identical. But some differences seem too stark to be attributed to relatively minor differences in the way we’re bringing them up.

A change in my outlook

All my life I’ve been an optimist. When I was 16 and applying for universities, everyone urged me to apply to colleges in the US; I never bothered, because I was sure I’d get into Cambridge, so why bother? (I didn’t get into Cambridge.) That’s a minor example, but it’s illustrative — I’ve always known that things would turn out my way. Another example that drives my wife mad: she once booked me a dentist appointment. Then something came up and I could no longer make it. My wife kept asking me to reschedule — ‘I won’t do it for you this time, if you don’t do it, it won’t just happen by itself’. It happened by itself: a day before the appointment I received an SMS — ‘we are terribly sorry but we can no longer see you tomorrow. We’ll be in touch to reschedule’.

Now that I have children I’m no longer an optimist. I worry about everything. It used to be that unlike everyone else, my big fear wasn’t that AI would wipe us out, but that it’d make our lives purposeless — now, I am just terrified it will kill us. I never worried about losing my job, only about how quickly I’d be promoted. Now I ask myself what if this tech rut costs me my job (not that I’m that worried about this, but still, in the past the question would have never even popped in my mind). When a war was in the news I’d feel bad for those it affected, but it never crossed my mind it might affect me — now I worry about a nuclear holocaust.

I think it’s because in the past, the most I could lose was what I already had, and what I already had was treasured but fully savoured. But with my children, I have so much to look forward to: their growing up; their reading my favourite books and watching my favourite films; traveling, playing board games, drinking whisky, skiing together; their falling in love, staring their own families, passing on family rituals and traditions; so much that I want to experience with them. And it’s not only the future, it’s the present, too: I haven’t got the most out of it, I’m enjoying it too much, I want it to last.

I’ve always had a lot of things — not just the material, but the intangible: family, friends, support, security, love. But it’s only now that I feel it in my bones that I have too much to lose. And it’s terrifying.

(Notice, by the way, that this anxiety is irrational: having more to lose ought not to have an impact on my perceived likelihood of bad outcomes, only on my dis-utility of bad outcomes materialising.)

Parenting advice

On a more positive note, here’re some things to keep in mind based on my four years of experience (four parent years = ~25 normal years):

• Kids don’t break easily. Stop fretting every time they have a fall.

• Do sleep train early — I know this is controversial, and yes, every child is different etc, but it pays off.

• Life-saving foodstuffs: fish fingers & peas, tortellini, and sausages. Nutritious but fast to cook with 0 prep time.

• How much time you spend with your children matters less than the quality of the time you do spend with them.

• If you want to see what your parenting style looks like, get your kids baby dolls. They will assume the role of parent, modeled on you.

• Don’t play with your kids to humour them, play with them because it’s fun! Teach them games that entertain you too — both parties will be happier (we love hide and seek, though at the beginning it was hardly a challenge: my son would sit in the middle of the living room and shout ‘I’m here!!!’)

• Same with books, it’s better to read things that you enjoy too. I strongly recommend I want my hat back and the other books in the series by Jon Klassen, or Chris Haughton’s books.

• Cheap way to teach them a foreign language: change the default audio for the shows they watch.

• Invest in good godparents!

• Treat them (the kids, not the godparents) with respect. This entails: a) don’t shy away from discussing difficult topics with them (if nothing else, it’s funny: my son asked me what happens when we die. I started saying that, well, some people believe we go to a different place… ‘no we don’t. We go into the ground. Because we’re dead’). b) don’t coddle them; this doesn’t mean you have to be unkind or harsh or sharp, but do tell them if they get things wrong (in my son’s case, this applies primarily to his sartorial choices: he’d often choose to wear colours that clash worse than Hector clashed with Achilles. I always told him that in my view, the clothes he wore don’t go together — he could choose to keep them on if he liked, but I wouldn’t pretend to like them too. This backfired in this vacation: his skiing under-layer is pink, and his jumper is red, and because he now understands that red and pink clash, he refuses to wear the jumper.)

• Don’t tell your kids your tablet / phone / laptop pin in the hope they’ll forget it. There’s a good chance they won’t.

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