"Fatherhood" and "Failure" Both Start Out the Same Way

But what is "failure"?

Am I ready for fatherhood? That’s an odd question in light of the fact that men have been falling ass-backwards into fatherhood since time immemorial. Most cultures probably had words to express “She’s WHAT? You’re kidding” before they had words for “fire” or “moon”. It’s ridiculous that sex can produce the lifetime commitment of fatherhood; nowhere else in life does simple fun lead to such huge responsibility. Nobody gets on a roller coaster and ends up with a 30-year mortgage. Jumping in a bouncy castle doesn't put you at risk of becoming a Benedictine monk. Mother Nature is playing dirty; she’s roping people into lifelong commitments using tactics that make Audible's “sign up for a trial that you'll forget about in three months and then we’ll quietly bill you forever” maneuver seem above-board.

And yet: I wonder if I’m ready for fatherhood. This despite the fact that I’m 41, already old enough that “big weekend plans” means “watching a ballgame and eating an apple.” The commitment is just so huge – am I ready to care for another human being? To be a provider, mentor, and role model? I’ve never had a pair of sunglasses for more than three months — is that a bad sign? If I sit on a baby or leave it in a cab, I can't exactly pop into Walgreens and buy a new one for $10. And even if I could, I suspect my wife wouldn’t be okay with that.

I want to be a good dad. There's a mountain of research showing that having a father present correlates with good outcomes for kids. Of course, a dad isn’t required for success; Barack Obama's dad wasn’t around, and now he has a major deal with Netflix, so he did okay. But having a dad clearly helps. In fact, Obama captured my fears when he said “Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.” Which is the problem: Lacking that courage might be in my DNA.

My paternal great-grandfather left his family. Even in an era in which sending your child to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was considered an acceptable character builder, this was a classless move. But that's what he did; after the birth of his fourth child — my grandpa — he apparently thought “this is getting serious” and split. I’m told that he started a new family in Central Oregon, which means that I’m probably related to half of the townies in Wild Wild Country.

My grandpa, having witnessed a model of fatherhood that makes the Titanic look like the Disney Cruise, did slightly better. He was there; my dad could have picked him out of a lineup. Of course, Grandpa was of the school that considered child rearing to be decidedly in the woman's domain; his portfolio was car repair and lawn maintenance, my grandma’s was housework and kids. I once asked my dad if he did stuff with his father; the question clearly caught him off-guard. He stared into the distance as if I had asked if Jesus liked tacos. Finally, he said: “Bolts. He got bolts from work that he would sell to other construction sites, but they had to be sorted. So, we would go into the shed and sort bolts.” So, I guess sorting bolts in an unheated shed in Spokane, Washington was my dad’s family’s version of Six Flags.

I did stuff with my dad. Those outings helped me get to know his quirks and failings in an intimate way. It started with clothes: Though he was neither a basketball player nor living in the '70s, my dad sported the ABA-approved look of knee-high socks and shorts so short they would embarrass a go-go dancer throughout my childhood. In 1982, DeWalt tools gave Dad a free hat with the purchase of a miter saw, and he wore that hat like it was the Helm Of Odin. Even at my sartorial low point – sixth grade, when sweat pants and Mossimo shirts were the order of the day – I was mortified by my dad’s standard look of “Dr. J meets Daisy Duke, brought to you by DeWalt.” 

Dad was so cheap he made the Amish look like cocaine barons. His unwillingness to pay for parking bordered on a religious conviction, and he convinced Golden Corral that I qualified for the “seven and under'' buffet up until about the time I was taking the SATs. In the late ‘80s, he bought a crate of razor blades from Costco, and at the rate of one blade every two weeks, he was set until July 9, 2022. After that: beard time. Dad never forgot when a company screwed him; he had jihads against U-Haul and Comfort Inn that burned with the intensity of a billion suns. If I had been gay, Dad wouldn't have cared, but if I had married someone who worked for Alamo Rent-a-Car, he would have lost his mind. That would have been beyond the pale; I can imagine him pointing at my spouse across the Thanksgiving table and yelling “A Ford Focus is not a mid-size!”

Of course, laughing at your dad's foibles is a luxury you have when your needs are provided for. And they were; my dad had enough career success to endow his son with the blithe narcissism that’s the true marker of privilege. Not that Dad loved his job – he definitely did not. Which, in a way, is more admirable than runaway career success; anyone can make themselves go to the Hand Jobs And Ice Cream Factory five days a week, but my dad dragged himself into a job that he considered about as fun as getting hit in the groin with a nunchuck. He did that so that his kids wouldn’t have to work as hard as he did, and I once took a sick day because I thought my hair looked weird, so it’s fair to say that he succeeded.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my dad’s adventures in fatherhood. That’s partly because my wife and I are thinking about having kids, but mostly because my dad recently passed away. He had been sick for a very long time, and last week, the day finally came. I’m sad, of course, though I’m taking solace in the fact that Dad was surely pleased that his 1980s Costco razor blade purchase ended up meeting his needs pretty much bang on the nose. 

I was angry with my dad a lot growing up. Most of that is on me; I was the type of angsty teen who considers getting asked to mow the lawn to be FASCISM. Still, it’s accurate to say that my Dad didn’t always cover himself in parenting glory. He certainly did better than his dad, who found his kids to be about as interesting as a bowl full of sand, or his dad’s dad, who ditched his family for the palm tree-strewn beaches of Central Oregon. But, he made mistakes. Of course, whatever faults my dad had as a father were surely largely the product of having never seen fatherhood be tried.

And trying is key. The research that makes social scientists so enthusiastic about fatherhood does little to assess the quality of the fathering being performed. The big question is simply: Was Dad around? If the answer is “yes”, that’s a win. It’s like Woody Allen once said: “80 percent of success is showing up.” Which I find to be true, and in fact so true that I’m quoting Woody Allen in a column about fatherhood, which is perhaps not ideal.

Evolution has likely equipped kids with strong immunity to generically inept fathering; if it hadn’t, the human species never would have survived. It stands to reason that nature would protect us from run-of-the-mill fatherly dumbassery much the way it protects mongeese from snake venom. Fathering of seemingly any sort appears to have a positive effect probably because humans have adapted to make the most of whatever ham-fisted efforts some dolt of a dad has to offer.

My dad’s legacy is that – as far as I can tell – he is the first Maurer to have attempted fatherhood. He never saw it done, but he gave it a go anyway. As with any innovator, there were bumps along the way; at times, my dad’s fatherly efforts resembled early attempts at flight. A few moments that I can recall were basically the parenting equivalent of strapping balsa wood wings onto a bike and riding it off of a bridge. But that metaphor doesn’t totally work, because with parenting, it seems that the mere attempt confers a level of success. And my dad had the courage to try. 

My wife and I might have kids soon. If we do, those kids will be the product of a long-term plan that, quite frankly, makes the Invasion of Normandy seem slapped together. But my fears about failing as a father are no longer a stumbling block. I have seen fatherhood done, and I know that virtuosity isn’t required. I’m not going to perpetually delay parenthood while hoping to achieve some Danny Tanner-esque state of perfection that will never arrive. At some point, I’ll accept the challenge of fatherhood, drawing on the courage that I saw from my dad.