Parenting Tips From a Dad

This is one father's advice, with my name on it. I have four children and I've done the first year four times. If parts of it are wrong, that's on me. Tommy is twelve. Erica is nine. Susan and Mary are two and arrived together. Four children, across two quite different eras of advice.

What's the best thing a father can do early?

Own something outright. Don't just help with it. Own it.

Sounds like a small difference. It isn't. Owning a job means you know how it works, you notice when it needs doing, and nobody has to ask. Helping means you're a willing pair of hands on somebody else's plan. That keeps you at arm's length for months, while everyone tells you what a good father you are.

Bath time. The bedtime routine. The night wake that isn't a feed. Nappies at a fixed hour. One outing a week on your own with no handover briefing. Pick one and take it completely, from the first week, before it's settled who knows what.

I got this wrong with Tommy and spent six months as an enthusiastic assistant. The twins corrected it, because two babies and one adult leaves nobody free to wait for instructions. That's the hard way to learn it. Pick your job in week one instead.

How do you handle the night shift without losing the week?

Split it by block, not by turn. Decide in advance, while you're both calm.

Alternating wakings sounds fair. But it means neither of you gets an unbroken stretch, and an unbroken stretch is what restores a person. Far better: one covers until two, the other from two until morning. Each gets four or five hours in one piece. Whoever is off duty sleeps somewhere else with the door shut and doesn't surface out of guilt.

If feeding is by breast, the non-feeding parent still has plenty to do. The change. The winding. The resettling. Bringing the water. Do those and the feeding parent is awake for eight minutes instead of thirty.

Count both jobs fairly. Driving to a site at six in the morning is a real constraint. So is being alone with a newborn all day. Neither is the harder job. Pretending otherwise is how the argument starts.

What I'd ignore if I did it again

This list is only my own view.

• Every schedule promising a baby who sleeps through by twelve weeks. Two of mine did roughly what the book said and two treated it as fiction. The difference was temperament, not technique.
• Advice to leave a very young baby to cry it out. Whatever your view on sleep training later, it doesn't apply to newborns, and it made me feel dreadful for no benefit.
• The idea that you shouldn't hold a baby too much. You can't. This one was still circulating when Tommy was born and it's simply not true.
• Anything starting with "in my day". Some of it was sound and a lot of it has been advised against since. Sorting one from the other over Christmas dinner is a poor use of anybody's evening.
• Comparing your baby with other people's, which is a reliable way to feel bad about a child who's completely fine.

What about the part nobody warns you about

A lot of fathers feel very little at first and decide something is wrong with them.

Feeling very little at six weeks is ordinary, and for most men it changes somewhere around three to six months. I've covered that properly in the bonding post. What belongs here is the version that doesn't change.

Around one in ten fathers gets depressed in the year after a birth. A meta-analysis of forty-three studies put it at roughly 10 per cent, highest at three to six months. It's badly under-recognised, because nobody asks fathers and it doesn't look like sadness. It looks like irritability, withdrawal and a sudden enthusiasm for staying late at work.

Still numb, angry or disconnected after several months? Finding reasons not to come home? Take it to a doctor. It's common, it's treatable, and it responds a lot better early. I know men don't tend to bring this up. Bring it up anyway.

How to stay helpful when the baby only wants the other parent

By continuing to turn up. Duller than you wanted. Also correct.

A strong preference for one parent is ordinary. It peaks around eight months to a year, with separation anxiety. It isn't a verdict on you and it isn't permanent. Withdrawing makes it permanent, because withdrawal cuts the contact, and contact is the only thing that shifts it.

Keep your job even when she protests. Do the parts of the day that aren't about distress: the bath, the walk, the floor time, the nonsense. Then you aren't only the one she gets when she wanted somebody else. When she's upset, hand her over gracefully. Nobody's keeping score.

What's the advice that held up best

Three things. I'd keep all three if I lost everything else.

First, presence beats technique. Involved fathering in the first year shows up in children's outcomes years later. The mechanism is dull. You turn up, you respond, you do it again the next evening.

Second, a slightly different way isn't a worse way. A father who's corrected constantly stops doing the thing, which suits nobody. Say so out loud while you're both calm. A nappy fastened slightly wrong isn't a problem. A father who has stopped doing nappies is.

Third, it's much longer than it feels. The first year is brutal and it's also about two per cent of the job. Erica is nine and I'm still working out what she wants from me, which isn't what Tommy wanted at nine. Nobody arrives competent. You keep turning up while the requirements change underneath you.

Sources: Paulson & Bazemore (2010), JAMA 303(19):1961-1969, Prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers and its association with maternal depression: a meta-analysis · NHS. Mental health support for dads and partners

This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.

Read next: How Dads Can Bond With Their Baby · Do You Grieve the Woman You Were Before You Became a Mom?

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