A Week on the Wagon

Isn't Ted a handsome fellow?

Isn't Ted a handsome fellow?

The Wagon rolls on, documenting the trials, tribulations, and all-around amity that characterizes our blogging relationships with each other. Here’s a rundown of the travesties:

Christopher easily wins the “Best Headline of the Week” prize with his “Joy of Lex.” Don’t get too excited, though: as reward he gets to do this. His post on the impact of listening to classical music in utero, however, reads merely an attempt to intimidate our readers. A Schoenberg-says-what?.

Matt advocated for paternal figures who drink their own urine (I prefer coffee). He is also, as I suspected, a cat lover, and by cat lover, I mean this. I jest, of course; what I really want to say about Matt is, all reports to the contrary, he is not frugal. No kidding. Spend ten minutes with the guy and you’ll know it. He blows his money, your money, the baby’s college fund, the whole jim-jam. Sad really.

Nathan, as usual, missed the point of this blogging gig. Now, Nathan, listen carefully: actually writing something cogent and informative about birth classes is silly. Remember–we’re not getting paid! (Or are we? I saw Matt flashing some serious coin the other night) Save the good stuff for reportage in which the main purpose is to exploit popular anger against an undeserving public figure and to victimize her family.

As for me? Well, it’s been a rough week in my particular slice of the blogosphere. I passed the week moping about work, debating whether or not mothers talk about sex more than fathers, and referencing exceedingly obscure actresses from the Hollywood Golden Era. I didn’t even have the strength of will to make fun of Christopher for using the term “wuss” in a headline (real men call it the silken butterfly).

Children Are the New Dogs Are the New Children

nymcoverEarlier this week, I wrote about the ways in which, without entirely meaning to, I treat my daughter, Sasha, like a dog. Turns out I had that backwards. According to my beloved alma mater, dogs are the new children. In a New York Magazine cover story that ranges over a variety of topics—from how urban environments are changing a dog’s life to animal-rights issues—John Homans writes how this resulted from centuries of breeding:

What was created was not, precisely, a human child, but it certainly was able to push some of the same buttons. According to one study, 84 percent of dog owners consider their animals akin to children—not a surprise, given all the baby talk.

Besides giving dog owners the opportunity to spend millions of dollars on “dog bakeries, and haberdashers, and luxury kennels …  a vast and ever-growing junkyard full of kitsch,” this has provided them with some unusual benefits, according to the research studies Homans digs up:

Pet owners recover at a substantially faster rate from heart problems than do non–dog owners. … A child raised with a pet is more empathetic than one who isn’t. The dog—no secret here—is an excellent wingman. A 2008 study found that a man with a dog had a much better chance of getting a woman’s phone number than one without. And the dog can even tell you whether or not you’re a good person. A 1999 study found that people who strongly dislike dogs score significantly higher on the measure of anal character and lower on the empathy scale of the California Psychological Inventory, indicating “that people who liked dogs have less difficulty relating to people.”

Okay, so maybe I’m a bit anal-compulsive (I did, after all, edit the crossword at New York), but there’s a strenuousness to all these facts that I find unconvincing. It’s like the guy at the office who raves about the juice cleanse he just experienced, or the Truther/Birther with his intricately Sharpie’d placard in Times Square. In other words, who cares if you and your dog-owning human child are more empathetic than me? Or maybe I’m just having trouble relating?

Not maybe—definitely. Dogs are okay, but I’ve never really understood them. But at least now I know why Homans and his ilk do: Dogs, he writes, are “camp followers of our microtribes, the only beings that fully understand the customs. And unlike children, they’ll never reject them.” In other words, dog owners want loyalty—they breed it, they nurture it, they own dogs (and possibly raise children) specifically hoping for that inexplicable, unconditional love.

But me, I don’t want unconditional love, whether from a pet or from a child. I want Sasha to grow up to think of me not as a father to be loved without thought but as a human being as capable of screwing up his family as the next guy. I want her to love me out of experience and consideration, not blind instinct. I want her to reject the customs of our little microtribe if those customs fail to fulfill her. She may act like a puppy right now, but she should end up a cogitating homo sapiens.

If that makes me a cat person, so be it. But just remember this: The Internet is made of cats.

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The Tantrum: Should Dads Go to Birthing Class? Part 4

Birthin' Babies!

Birthin' Babies!

Well, sure—but know, going in, that you, Dad, are mostly window-dressing.

We did go to birthing classes, my wife and I. They weren’t bad. The only thing I actively disliked was that we all sat on the floor, on thin mats, and after the fourth hour of our five-hour sessions, my glutes were howling at me, and I wasn’t the one with my pelvis all stretched out. (Was this intended to hint at the pain my wife was about to endure? If so, okay. Otherwise, would picking up a couple of folding chairs at Target kill you, folks?)

The rest was perfectly okay. I learned a few things, bits of which came in handy when my wife was well into her FORTY-TWO HOURS of labor. But honestly? It seemed like a one-page handout, read and digested in ten minutes, could’ve done as much for me as a fifteen-hour series of classes did. I’d flipped through a couple of books and Websites by the time we signed up, and not much of the dad-knowledge being imparted was new to me.

Whereas my wife, at least theoretically, had plenty of reasons to be there and things to learn. Pain-management strategies. Terminology. Adroit use of pillows during the birth. Yes, she too had already picked up a lot of this because of her laudably voracious preterm reading, but if she hadn’t, it would’ve been vital. Particularly toward the end of her FORTY-TWO HOURS of labor. Besides, as she explained to me, the terrifying enormity of being about to give birth is softened by the shared experience of the class, by talking to other women and getting a sense that this event will, somehow, be manageable. (A similar but more personal level of support can be found by way of a doula, and when the last of those FORTY-TWO HOURS started to get very hairy, I was extremely glad that we had a talented and soothing one there with us. Her name’s Jennifer Kroll, and I’d throw her some link-love here, but she’s not doula-ing these days, because she’s gone back to school.)

I will also add this: I can’t say whether I was the smartest guy in the classroom on those days, but I am absolutely sure I wasn’t the dumbest. About a couple of the other parents in our group—well, good lord, I’m glad those people got a class in, because I would not trust them to keep a potted cactus alive, let alone an infant.