PapaMonkey

This is a bit of a departure for PK, as I'm less interested in the science of fathering than the actual practice of fathering: the feelings and conflicts, the personal victories and defeats, the struggles to bridge the divide between the fathers we had (or the kind we wish we had), versus the kind we are, how we ended up that way, and if we're satisfied with that.

But here from my local fish wrap comes an article about a certain kind of PapaMonkey, the titi monkey of South America, who is a pretty darned-tootin' nurturer of baby titi monkeys. Conversely, the MamaMonkeys play the reluctant, only semi-interested, sometimes downright hostile caregiver, kind of like me during the World Series.

Titi babies tend to ride draped across a parent's shoulders, and when mom wants the kid off her back, her favorite strategy for shifting responsibility is to make the baby cry.

"She'll rub it up against the side of the cage, or in the wild against a tree branch, to make it cry, or nip it a little, and then daddy will come get it," Bales said.

Both parents will come running to their baby's cry if researchers place the infant on the ground, but mom will often pick it up and hand it to dad.

I'm going to send you here for the article: At UC Davis, monkey dads are nurturers. But if you have a love of registering at websites, entering your likes, dislikes, income level, phone number, and choosing yet another password, feel free to read the original here.

The Father I Carry With Me

Fred Moramarco, professor of literature at San Diego State University and editor of Poetry International, the university's annual journal of contemporary poetry, wrote in 1998 of his father, an Italian immigrant who was 50 at the author's birth. The Father I Carry With Me is a long piece, but worth spending time with, as Moramarco imagines the passionate, ambitious young man his father must have been, and the calm, elderly man - gone since 1966 - he remembers first hand. As Moramarco is 56 at the time of the writing, he finds himself at the very age his father was during the author's first memories of him. When he shaves his beard, he sees the old man hiding there.

Sooner or later men become their fathers. Here I am now six years into the time of his life and his face hovers beneath my beard, his fingers trace mine on the piano keyboard, his mouth sips at the tomato sauce I make each summer. With each year I live I feel more the Father, some archetypal provider who will take care of things. Maybe that's moving from father to grandfather, a grand father figure that knows what the right thing to do is. This is one of the illusions of male life, since both fathers and grandfathers are only men, and the patriarchal roles assigned to men are a burden as well as a pleasure

Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?

This short essay from psychologist Daniel Gilbert, published in Time Magazine on Fathers Day 2006, "Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?" is worth a read. Although being a dad is a complicated thing, I think most of us who are or were actively involved in raising our children would agree that yes, we enjoy it; it is a worthwhile and rewarding effort. But does it make us happy? Gilbert has studied the science of happiness, and has found that there is often a large chasm between the things we expect to make us happy and the things that actually do.

Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.