A Father's Father’s Influence

Even before he has a baby, the average father longs to have the foolproof formula for fathering her. That desire is good news! It is nature’s way of telling a dad how important e is to raising his child. The bad news is (you guessed it), there is no sure-fire, one-size-fits-all blueprint for fathering this child, or any other child.

However, Nature provides dads with many of the instincts and tools they’ll need for the job. That eons-long heritage is not the only one at our disposal. As I explain often to fathers, we can also draw on our family heritage—no matter what it looks like:

For some of us, our parents, stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives are a mother lode—no, let’s make that a father lode—of positive parenting. For some of us, our ancestors look like a toxic stew of bad examples that we should seal over with concrete, and never look back. The vast majority of us have both good and bad examples to draw from.

Take time for an honest, detached look at how the adults in your family raised you, your siblings, and your cousins. If, at first glance, all you see is a massive mound of miserable garbage, keep looking. There are probably a few positive things for you to salvage from that pile. As my grandmother used to say, “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

Try this exercise:

• Write down five good things your father, stepfather, or grandfather did that you want to be sure you do for your child.
• Write down five things your father, stepfather, or grandfather did that you want to be sure you avoid doing to your child.
• Reflect on your years as a dad or stepdad and ask yourself if your experience makes you want to alter the lists in any way.
• Save these lists, pull them out again on in a year, and see if that year of fathering makes you want to alter the lists in any way.

Of course, it is often hard to clearly see our relationships with our parents and stepparents, since they are the adults we were closest to growing up. When something is very close to your eyes, it’s hard to see where it fits into a larger picture and context.

If you look back from your adult perspective, for example, you can probably think of some particular parental behavior that felt great to you one day; while the exact same behavior felt terrible another day.

But always remember how influential you are to your children! As former New York Governor Mario C. Cuomo put it: “I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in 1 week.”

Adapted from my book The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being an Expectant Father.