If we aren’t careful. If we aren’t intentional. We lose the chance to frame the conversation about fatherhood, the conversation about being a parent. If we don’t have those conversations on purpose, we let the next generation learn by accident. And given the state of masculinity in 21st Century America, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And this comes at a time when we need to be asking new questions about masculinity. Well, overdue questions finally breaking through in today’s America. The public face of what it means to be a man, the public face of masculinity at this moment, is one of aggression, of violence, of abdication of moral responsibility, of the minimizing women’s voices, of concern for perpetrators of degradation while ignoring the impact on those who suffer…this is not the masculinity I want to raise my son into.
And today is the day when we peer into our souls, evaluate who we’ve been, and consider if we have met the mark. I have a new challenge, to evaluate this brand new identity as a father. And I wonder how to do my chesbon nefesh, an accounting of my soul, as a parent and a partner , as I enter into this new stage in life? I’ve never had to do this before. What is my assessment tool?
The rabbis teach that a parent has five obligations to a child. To welcome them into covenant with the Jewish people, to redeem or to give gifts of gratitude for a new life, to teach Torah, to guide the child toward sacred relationships, and to teach a trade (Kiddushin 29a).
And then, our tradition adds one more obligation, one that I find to be distinct and particularly relevant to this moment and this season. Our tradition says that we have to teach our kids to swim.
On the one hand, it’s practical. If you are on a boat, and it tips over, knowing how to swim could potentially save your life and the lives of the people around you. There’s a Goldfish Swim School, a JCC, and a YMCA in close proximity to us. Once it’s time, we’ll sign him up for swim lessons. Check. But, also, teaching our kids to swim is not just about swimming.
Benjamin hasn’t figured it out yet, someday soon, we hope, he will learn how to walk. It’s natural. It’s built into our physiology. Swimming is something else. It requires putting ourselves outside of our comfort zones, seeing the way the world works and challenging ourselves to do something different.
At times, parenting has felt a lot like getting tossed into the deep end. Of course, there are those early days (and many days since) where we are treading water, just trying to stay above the surface until the sea settles. Sometimes we float along, adjusting as the current moves us. Noticing how he changes and changing our routine as we go. Sometimes we pull and propel through the water, offering the new toy, the new experience so he can grow and be strengthened. And sometimes, sometimes we have to fight against the current. To see what is happening and adjust course. To look at our world and strive in the other direction.
If we work at it, if we are brave enough to take the plunge, we can train ourselves and we can help other do things that are hard. We can enter into moments where we might not be ready, swim against the current.
I’ve never been a particularly adept swimmer. More than doggie paddle, less than swimming laps. I was more of a “hang out in the shallow end and throw a ball back and forth” type of pool-goer. But as I’ve entered into fatherhood, I’ve been dissatisfied with the current I see flowing around what it means to be a father. I need to learn to swim.
While on paternity leave, I took Benjamin to CostCo to get two of the most important staples in our house: baby wipes and hummus. While strolling over to get a sample of a cracker, or pasta, or some new fiber bar…too much food talk for Yom Kippur?...Anyway, the person handing out my would-be CostCo lunch said: “Oh, how nice to see a dad babysitting!” My skin crawled. I wanted to shout, “I’m not babysitting. I’m parenting! I am taking care of my child. I am not engaged in some revolutionary, boundary breaking deed by being a person in a male body walking through CostCo with a baby.” Instead, I mumbled some unintelligible pleasantries through the paper cup of my snack.
In all of the baby books and new parent books we read (yes, we’re first time parents and read the books. I know the veterans among you scoff at our new-parent neurosis), but in the books and classes it seems that there is an expectation that dads are at best, aloof and uninformed, or, at worst, actively chauvinist, unhelpful, unkind, and emotionally unavailable. There are moments were I get celebrated for changing a diaper or for doing the basics of parenting.
On the one hand, I am disappointed that this is the embarrassingly low standard we set for fathers. And on the other hand, it accentuates the problematics we have around motherhood. The astronomical expectations placed on women.
In talking with friends who are in a similar life-stage, it feels like no matter what, women are judged harshly for their choices. If they choose to work (or if family finances necessitate that they work), they feel like they are neglecting motherly responsibility for caregiving. And if they choose to stay at home with the baby, they feel judged for not working. Let alone those who choose to wait to have children, not have children at all, are not partnered, are in same-sex relationships, or are single-parents. And all the while, male partners get soaring accolades for the time they spend with their children.
How do we step back, see the way this current flows, and swim in the other direction? How do we reframe the conversation about fatherhood? About parenting?
I ask these questions as I wade into the waters of a new identity. I’m a cis-gendered, straight, male, new-father. And I can only speak in an honest and authentic way from my lived experience. And I know that I need a different conversation about what it means to be a parent. For my family. For my friends. What we have now does not set us up for success, and instead diminishes our aspirations. It seems to me that moms are set us up to feel like they are failing, even while they strive to meet a host of expectations and obligations. And on the other hand, so little is asked of dads. And, for those dads who choose a different path, there are not societal models or structures to offer support and encouragement.
And I know that I am person who, by no merit of my own, by the accident of birth and gender, am in a position of privilege. I believe that those privileges necessitate responsibility. If men are open and forthright about the blessings and difficulties of being parents and about their needs, that we might be more effective in destigmatizing pregnancy, parenthood, and family leave in the workplace.
If we aren’t careful. If we aren’t intentional. We lose the chance to frame the conversation about fatherhood, the conversation about being a parent. If we don’t have those conversations on purpose, we let the next generation learn by accident. And given the state of masculinity in 21st Century America, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And this comes at a time when we need to be asking new questions about masculinity. Well, overdue questions finally breaking through in today’s America. The public face of what it means to be a man, the public face of masculinity at this moment, is one of aggression, of violence, of abdication of moral responsibility, of the minimizing women’s voices, of concern for perpetrators of degradation while ignoring the impact on those who suffer…this is not the masculinity I want to raise my son into.
For sure, neither he nor I are the primary victims of a regressive, patriarchal social structure. And, to a different degree, we are also affected by it. And, we have a responsibility to swim against that current.
And then I look at this sweet little boy. I look at him and I see innocence and potential. He doesn’t know…anything. He isn’t responsible for the violence and pain that exist in the world. He doesn’t know how our society constructs gender. He doesn’t know about toxic masculinity or #metoo. But by virtue of the fact that he was born into a male body, there will be an assumption that he will like sports, that he will be aggressive, that he will not be in touch with his emotions. He will expected to be strong and stoic. He will expected not to cry.
Without a reevaluation, if he doesn’t learn how to swim, the current will take him away.
I want to teach him to swim. I want to teach him that he is not better or more deserving than anyone else just because he was born with an X and a Y chromosome. I want to teach him that his masculinity is not a weapon. I want to teach him that true strength, as our sages teach, is controlling the power you have and redirecting it for purposes beneficial to the community. That he can create without having to destroy. That he can try something and fail. That he can express doubt and that he can compromise. I want him to use his voice to lift up the voices of those who would otherwise be unheard. I want him to know that he only wins when everyone around him wins too. I want him to teach him that identity is more than the body he is born into, it is the content of soul and the spirit of the Divine that lives inside of him, as the rabbis say: אַל תִּסְתַּכֵּל בַּקַּנְקַן, אֶלָּא בְמַה שֶּׁיֶּשׁ בּוֹ (Pirkei Avot 4:20), don’t look to the container, rather to what exists within.
This past June there was an article in the Atlantic that I haven’t stopped thinking about. The author, Sarah Rich, writes, “While society is chipping away at giving girls broader access to life’s possibilities, it isn’t presenting boys with a full continuum of how they can be in the world. To carve out a masculine identity requires whittling away everything that falls outside the norms of boyhood.” We have started doing a better job of telling girls that they should be strong and that they should explore science and math. Girls should stride strongly into the world with confidence. But, have we offered the same to boys? Are boys safe to emote? To be creative? To love art, music, dance? To wear a dress? To reshape masculinity, to reshape gender in general, is to be “non-conformative,” to be outside the pale. Why? Why can’t our language normalize, for boys and for girls, their right, their opportunity, and their sacred responsibility to find their own path.
At the dawn of creation, as God creates the first human beings. The Torah says: זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בָּרָא אֹתָם (Genesis 1:27), male and female God created them. Male and female contained in one. A spectrum, not a dichotomy.
I don’t know who he will be. But I want him to feel safe and confident to swim. I don’t want him to be pulled by destructive, uncompassionate currents. I want him to do whatever is right for him.
I don’t want that experience to be hard, and I know that it will be. It breaks my heart that we accept as a given that children will be ridiculed for finding their own way. So, I will teach him to swim. I will teach him to strive against the current, and all while I will try to change the direction of the flow.
That flow, wherever we find ourselves in life, it can overwhelm us. You don’t have to be a parent to know this. We all have to learn how to swim. It’s human. We learn to walk, and then we get tossed into the river with the current jostling us this way and that. Each time we go to a new school, start a new job, move to a new city, start a new hobby, join a new community, experience a new lifecycle moment. Each time we do something new, we bravely step forward into that moment knowing that before we have even had a chance to dip in a toe, the current is already there to pull us away.
Other people decide who we are before we have had a chance to say hello. Decisions are made about what we can or cannot do before we get a chance to prove ourselves. And so, we hope that when we were young, someone taught us to swim. Someone taught us to be brave. Someone taught us to sidestep other people’s expectations and assumptions. Someone taught us that we get to define our own future.
This year, let’s go swimming together. Let’s bravely step outside of our comforts zones. Let’s listen, even when listening can be hard. Let’s start long overdue conversations. Let’s reject narratives and assumptions that diminish and destroy. Let’s open doors that have been closed. From narrow places, let us call out to God and find openness, opportunity, and expanse.
יהי רצין מלפניך יי, may it be your will Adonai that we hold ourselves to lofty sacred standards. That we use our power to lift up voices that need to be heard. That we tell all our people, young and old that they can be confident. That they can flourish. That they are loved. And, please, Dear God, may we through word and deed merit a year of goodness and a year of blessing.
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