This Can Be Our Dad

Is caring for a child really the mother's sole prerogative? How to help a new father get into the role?

The main functions of a dad are to personify masculinity, to be able to perform all kinds of male duties (chopping wood, repairing a car), and to teach his son or daughter about life. As for care, tenderness, constant activities with the baby, dad cannot do this. This is the prevailing stereotype. But isn't it outdated?

Breadwinner and Protector

According to experts, the first three months of a baby’s life, mother and child should form a kind of symbiosis, as during pregnancy. After all, at this time, the baby needs no one as much as mommy. She is warmth, comfort, a sense of security, she is a familiar smell, delicious food, she understands the baby like no one else.

This is why prolonged separation from mother in the first months (not to be confused with several hours or even a whole day) can cause neurotic disorders for the child.

What functions should dad perform at this time? Provide family support - material, social, emotional. It is he who will now have to not only earn enough for three, but also take upon himself the preparation of various documents, payment of bills, purchase of necessary things and products. And besides, also protect your family from careless words, uninvited guests, help your wife feel loved and confident.

How to become a Father?

There is already a lot of everything listed. But at the same time, the head of the family still has very important and difficult work to do - to become a real Pope. Unlike a woman, who by nature itself prepares for motherhood, a man often becomes a father not at all on the day of the birth of his child, and certainly not during the pregnancy of his beloved woman. And this is a fact that all mothers have to put up with.

However, there is some good news: relatively recently, biochemists have proven the presence in male nature of the hormone oxytocin, which is responsible for the paternal instinct!

What does it mean? And the fact is that men are not at all harsh bachelor-hermits who almost by force have to be drawn into family relationships that are alien to them, home life, the flickering of bottles and diapers. It turns out that men WANT to become dads.

But firstly, they do not feel ready until the amount of the mentioned hormone reaches a critical point, material well-being seems precarious, and free life begins to resemble loneliness - that is, closer to forty years. Secondly, representatives of the stronger sex do not know how to treat children and feel helpless, which is unbearable for a man.

Therefore, for a dad to become a Pope, time and the skillful help of his wife are needed. What is she supposed to do? What they teach in courses for future parents, and what her own intuition tells her. The main task is to help your two loved ones - your husband and child - get closer. And do this as early as possible, because it has already been proven that it is difficult for a father to find a common language with his child without establishing close emotional contact with him from the very beginning.

There is contact!

The best thing to do is to introduce daddy to his future baby during pregnancy. In this case, caution is needed, because the male reaction is often very different from the female one. For example, not every man will look with emotion at naturalistic images of a fetus at different stages of development. It’s just that for now this big-headed something will remind him more of the Alien characters than his own continuation.

Well, let! Don't persist and be offended. It is better to find the right moment and share with your husband the amazing information that already six weeks after fertilization, the unborn baby has a brain and a central nervous system, and that a tiny heart soon begins to beat. Or that by the end of the third month the baby can already clench its fists, swallow and even write. Or that at twenty-four weeks an unborn baby can distinguish