We brought a bunch of dads together to talk about their experiences of raising children in Dublin today. Some left more freaked out than they had come in, but at least they got some free tea and biscuits... Paul Trainer chaired.
- Shane Dunphy, journalist.
His latest book, Hush, Little Baby, was released in August. He has two kids, Marnie, 9, and Richard, 22 - Adam Brophy, writes for the Irish Times.
His book, Bad Dad, will be published next spring. He has two daughters, Nell, six, and Mia, three - Colm Ó Riagáin, Senior account manager for Slattery Communications.
He has one boy, Lughán, three- and-a-half months - Saïd El Bauzari, social care worker.
He has two girls, Leena, 17 months, and Selma, three weeks - Aillil O’Reilly, barrister.
He has three girls, twins Ailbhe and Honor, four, and Lauren, one - Conor Horgan, film maker who will be directing his first feature film, One Hundred Mornings, in November.
He has one son, Sam, aged 20.
What did your father teach you about being a father?
Shane: One of the things he taught me was that there are different aspects to masculinity. Other dads were into sports. He was into opera music. He ran away as a teenager to work in Glyndebourne. Do I look upon him as a role model for fathering? I suppose not. As a parental role model I’d have looked more towards my mother. I had a strong relationship with my father, but my mother was the more active parent.
What type of dad did you want to be before you became a parent?
Adam: When my first kid was born, to me, it was the first kid ever born. I completely disregarded everybody else’s experience. The baby was brand new, I was brand new, and I thought I had to learn it from the ground up. A month before the child was born, my dad said to me, “Prepare yourself to be overwhelmed.” I didn’t get it until the moment and the hours following Nell’s birth. It was like a sledgehammer to the head. I didn’t realise that there were people I could go to for help. I thought I had to do it all by myself.
Colm: I looked at my friends and peers when I found out I was going to have a baby, and I thought to myself, ‘I won’t do that’ more than ‘I’d like to do that.’ For example, I wanted to be a laid-back dad. I didn’t want to be too serious, I didn’t want to be mollycoddling the child. He’s just had a great weekend at Electric Picnic, aged three months. I think he liked the Sex Pistols the most. Everyone else thought they were shit.
Aillil: I couldn’t relate to the notion of being a parent right until the very day the twins arrived. I understood things were going to change, but I just couldn’t connect with it.
Were your own parents role models?
Aillil: My parents are kind, loving people. I wasn’t consciously thinking of them as role models, other than knowing I had no particular problem with the way I had been reared. Similar to Colm, I wanted to be a straight-forward dad. There would be sport and no messing around, and none of that princess lifestyle. None of that slightly mollycoddled, south-Dublin teenager you see on the Luas. Extraordinarily their character comes out very early on. My girls are only four, so my experience is very limited, but I can see certain traits there and I wonder, ‘Will that carry on?’ It’s also slightly daunting because you can see that absolutely everything you do has an effect. You really do have a profound impact on children.
Said: The way I thought of my Dad was that I didn’t want to be anything like him. He tried to teach us things via discipline and using fear. I love my dad, but when I found out I was going to have a child I thought to myself, ‘No way am I going to treat my child the way my dad treated us.’ We’re fine, me and my brothers and sisters, but I didn’t really like his approach. He was a man who was into his discipline, he was into karate and was an intellectual in Morocco. I’m quite a laid-back sort of person, and now when I see my child do something I am not pleased with, I try not to use discipline at all.
Are mothers more important than fathers?
Shane: There’s the whole issue of maternal instinct, that women have a drive to have children, and as soon as the baby is born there’s this automatic bonding. The birth of my daughter was extremely difficult, as a result of which I was the first one to hold her and I was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. I was worried that my wife wasn’t going to be okay, then they handed this little thing to me and I was there with my daughter, just looking at her, and one little eye peeled open and she looked at me with this very quizzical expression on her face. It was just an explosion of emotion. From that moment on I was completely besotted with her. I’ve spoken to fathers who haven’t felt that bond until their child was a little older, maybe two or three.
Talking about kids following your footsteps: my son isn’t my biological son, he’s my stepson. As far as I’m concerned though, he is my son, there’s no two ways about it. So there’s no biological or genetic connection there, but he really follows me in what he’s doing. It’s the whole nature versus nurture thing. He’s starting on a similar career path and he’s into music. Even physically we’re very alike. Even though genetically his family have small feet, he’s got huge feet, which run on my side of the family. So I do believe that it’s equal, that the influence of both parents is crucial. In terms of nurturing and caring and forming the personality, both parents are equal.
You are all at an age where you’d still have single friends or friends who haven’t joined the father’s club. Do you feel disconnected from them?
Colm: A lot of dads can only talk about their kids. I remember making a conscious decision that I would be able to go out and enjoy a pint and not continuously talk about my son.
Aillil: The fact is that you do change. You immediately have a duty and obligation of love of a person. It’s also a logistical change, in that you’re now providing for someone else. You still remain interested in and able to talk about other things. But there’s no doubt you’re a different person.
Shane: I remember my best mate saying to me, “You have done nothing for the last six months but talk about your child troubles.” I really didn’t realise I was doing it.
How does your life change with a new-born?
Adam: I had a eureka moment. I was walking into town, on my first solo buggy excursion. I’m feeling very conscious of the nappy bag, toys hanging off it, sweating. At the lights, a guy pulls up. This is a guy I only ever see at 3am on a Saturday night. We knew each others’ first names, those kinds of friends. He pulled up in an M3, music blaring. I gave him a wave. He just pointed at the buggy, then me, and mouthed “That yours?” I nodded. He just laughed and pulled away. That was a divisive moment, although I’m very happy with what I am now.
Conor: When I was in the stages of wheeling my child about in the buggy on Grafton Street, I had a happily single friend who would borrow the buggy and go up and down with it because he’d get some attention.
The world your kids are growing up in is very different to the one you grew up in. Is that something you worry about?
Conor: Not really. If you look back to the Dublin of years ago, children were growing up a lot earlier. They could have been out working at 14. Children now have a better lifestyle, better food, better sanitary conditions. Everything is better.
Said: I grew up in a small, traditional Moroccan village. I grew up trying to hold onto traditional values, but having lived in Ireland for the last 10 years I’ve changed myself. But still there’s something within you that’s trying to resist the change. My child is going to grow up in a totally different environment and there’s no point resisting the change.
Conor, your son is 20 now, and Shane, you have a 22-year-old. When they get to that age does it get easier?
Conor: Well when my own child was born I became acutely aware of my own mortality. But I was also acutely aware of this person that needed protection and whatever else he needed was my responsibility. I don’t think that feeling of care and responsibility will ever leave me.
Shane: The things you worry about change. At the moment my daughter is nine. I know who she’s with, what she’s doing. My son, however, recently moved out and even though he lives within walking distance, I don’t know who he’s with, what he’s doing, and that’s a worry. He’s a very sensible and intelligent guy but he’s still only 22. As far as I’m concerned he’s still a kid.
Conor: You don’t look at them and see this hulking great 20-something, you see all the ages in between birth and now.
Shane: The dynamic changed completely when [my 22-year-old] moved out. When he left school he was just at home, making a mess and felt he didn’t have to help around the house or clean up. I remember at one stage there was a crop of fungus growing in the corner of his cupboard. Even though you’d love him, you could be so pissed off at something he had done.
I also wonder about the male thing. Is there an alpha male aspect to it? It’s like he was saying, ‘This is my territory as well, I can leave my mark on it.’ Also he was getting taller than me, and he could say, “Well now I know things you don’t know.” There’s a line in The Simpsons where Homer says, “It’s a sad day when a son can beat his father at most things.”
Conor: I still remember the day my son picked me up for the first time. I thought, ‘Okay, this guy gets a little more respect now.’
So what other considerations are there if your child’s a girl?
Adam: I have become very aware of my daughter becoming sexualised. She’s seven at the end of the month and she dances in the Britney Spears style. She’s forever singing things like ‘Ooh I’m sexy.’ She has no idea what these words are, but they’re in her vocabulary.
Shane: The whole MTV culture is really exposing the kids to a lot more sexualised images and themes nowadays.
Adam: There’s a channel we get at home called Pop Girl. It’s clean by our standards, but what happens is you wind up with six-year-olds gyrating like go-go dancers and thinking that’s perfectly normal. It’s very uncomfortable watching your daughter transform her shirt into a bellytop and hitch her skirt up before shaking her booty. She should be making things with pipe cleaners.
Is TV damaging for a child?
Shane: We didn’t want our daughter seeing all those shows – Barney and Bear in the Big Blue House and suchlike. It’s all just nonsense and really just popcorn for the brain. She hadn’t seen them when she went off to playschool for the first session. I picked her up later and drove her home. The next thing I hear from the back seat is, “I love you, You love me” etc. I asked her where she heard that and she said she was taught it in the playschool. The next day she came back and was singing ‘Teletubbies say hello’ or some rubbish. I just thought, there’s no point, we can’t protect her from this, so we let her see it then.
Aillil: Did you guys read to your kids when they were younger?
ALL: Oh yeah.
Aillil: I have this notion that some aspects of prose are an inoculation against that sort of thing. If you read enough A. A. Milne to them or whoever, they start to work out and appreciate what the beauty is in real ideas and language. Do your kids read?
Shane: My daughter does voraciously. My son did and then gave it up as he grew up and moved into other things, but he recently adopted it again.
Conor: Sam was the same. He read quite a bit and then shifted away from it completely. It’s just the prevalence of the universal media on tap. I’ve dragged my son to countless art exhibitions and that sort of thing and he was always giving out about it. But now, he has somehow developed an interest in the classics... I think so much of our children’s personalities and behaviour is made by power of example. I no longer sit there and watch crap on TV, so he no longer does.
Do your kids have a charmed life?
Conor: It depends on your definition of ‘charmed’. My memories of my childhood are in some ways more idyllic. There was a lot of running around the place and scraping your knees sort of thing, rather that sitting inside and watching TV.
Colm: My son is a lot more spoiled than I ever was. He’s got a wardrobe about ten times the size of mine and he’s only three months old.
Are there still things that are strictly for Daddy to deal with? Is there ever a case of, ‘You just wait till your father gets home’?
Adam: Well I stayed home for the first few years, and even now I am at home more than the missus is. Maybe it’s a case of “Wait until your mum comes home!” They play me. They say to me, “Dad, dad, DAD! Can we have bad cheese sandwiches?” (That’s Easi Singles in white bread.) The wife is into organic foods so I practically have to smuggle the stuff in. Half-way through the sandwich they say to me, “Don’t tell mum.” As soon as she comes home they rat me out. I can’t win.
My dad was a disciplinarian. It was a case of my mother being dead soft and my dad just treating extreme cases. So now I am like my mother, I’m the push-over, but I do have my dad’s tendency to go nuclear when pushed a little too far. I’m calm, calm, calm, BAM! It’s a bit too much and that frightens me.
Aillil: Sometimes the twins will play tag-team on us. It makes it a lot harder to cope with. So we’ve learned not to argue in front of them. My wife’s mother told us to get a word to use when you’re getting mad to diffuse the situation. When she and her husband are having a fight and she thinks that he’s acting too much like a business man, she just says, “Poetry.” It’s the control word and he steps back. So we started doing that and it works. Unless it’s something really important that endangers [the kids’] safety, getting angry is just going to hurt them.
Conor: I separated from my son’s mother when he was a year-and-a-half old, but fairly unusually, I got half custody. Which meant that he was with me for half of the week – I wasn’t just a Saturday dad. So I played the mother and father roles for half the week and so did she. Still, having said that, there are certain specialities in the role of the father and the role of the mother and I suspect there always will be.
I made an experimental film about happiness and I interviewed 300 people. One of the main questions in the film was, “What was your happiest childhood memory?” I’d say 70% of people said it was a memory concerning their father. It was saying in some ways that the mother is so much a part of normal life that she’s somehow taken for granted and becomes invisible. Mothers may not like to hear this, but it’s as if the mother is the child’s universe, and then this comet, the father, comes in. There’s less access so therefore the time with the father is more valued. Most people work now, so it’s changed to a degree.
Shane: Since [my daughter] was nine years old and adolescence started to creep in, she automatically goes to my wife. They have become a lot closer, a lot tighter. I don’t even want my wife to tell me the issues that came up. But that’s the only situation where there would be a clear-cut role. My son would talk to my wife about some things and me about others. I haven’t quite worked out the pattern yet because sometimes the stuff I would have assumed he would come to me about he would go to her and vice versa.
Conor: I had to tell my son the facts of life. We were driving and he had some friend with him in the back of the car. The pair of them started firing questions at the back of my head. I’d never offer him these things but he always knew if he asked he would get an answer. So the pair of them started asking all these very technical questions. I think the fact we weren’t face-to-face made it that much less embarrassing.
Eh hello, I come to see your comments on the Budget and nada!! Are you guys alive?
Posted by: GoldenLady | October 15, 2008 at 09:02