Stop telling me how my life will change because I have a child | Jeb Lund

People seem to expect irresponsibility or idiocy from me as a father, even after they learn I’m my son’s primary caregiver

There are many horrible lies you tell yourself when you become a parent. The first, if you’re a writer, is: “I will not write about being a parent.” What a pathetic charade. The second is this: “I will never stop listening to advice.” Riiiiight. After a few months, some older parent starts talking, and almost instantaneously your head turns their noises turn into wordless notes, like Mozart’s mother-in-law in Amadeus chirping the Queen of the Night’s Aria.

You won’t even do that out of arrogance. For me, it’s a form of protection against the urge to be rude. Because if there is one piece of advice everyone has felt it necessary to tell me over nine months of my wife’s pregnancy and five of my parenting, it is this: “It is going to change your life.” This truth is revealed to me on a tone scale from lecture to gloating, and it is almost impossible not to wonder if people think I’m too stupid to understand this, genetically incapable of doing so or if they’re just luxuriating in the thought that some part of my life is over. Finding an appropriate, polite response is almost impossible.

“What was the lesson of Three Men and a Baby, Jeb?”

“Uh, I think it’s pretty obviously that when you get three white guys in the same apartment, they have to sing doo-wop together before they can go to sleep.”

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Parents and parenting | The Guardian

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