Tips for Being the Best Dad You Can Be

by Cathi Hanauer and Daniel Jones

Wrong. Maintaining a happy, balanced marriage is more art than science, and often appearances count more than rationale.

In short: Get up anyway. Go fetch the squawking, open-mouthed, bundle of wonder. Act happy about it. Be grateful for this relatively painless opportunity to share your wife’s pain. After all, you couldn’t experience the joy of contractions, ripped skin in your genital region, and, perhaps, major surgery. Sure, you coached and consoled and are justifiably
proud of the gold star on your forehead. But your support doesn’t end there. Presumably you’re in it for the long haul, so you’d better do whatever you can to generate a few scraps of appreciation from your wife early on.

Because you know what will exhaust you more than all of the sleeplessness, grocery shopping, and diaper-changing in the world? A resentful spouse.

(P.S. If you, like many men, are somehow biologically incapable of hearing your own baby cry at night, and your wife has to pinch your nose and mouth shut to wake you up, and even then you’re not conscious enough to be trusted with a human life, you’ll need to make up for it with extra duty during daylight hours. In other words, prepare to get intimate with your Diaper Genie.)