What 27 Years, Four Kids, One Grandchild, and a Whole Lot of Trial and Error Taught Me About Being a Dad
The Best Job in the World – There are jobs that come with impressive titles, expense accounts, corner offices, and business cards printed on paper thick enough to stop a small-caliber round. Fatherhood comes with none of those perks. There is no salary, no annual bonus, no retirement package, and absolutely no HR department to complain to when one of your subordinates throws food at you, wakes you up six times in one night, or eventually becomes a teenager who is convinced you’ve somehow become the dumbest human being alive. And yet, after 27 years of doing this job, I can say without hesitation that being a father is the best job I’ve ever had.
My perspective on fatherhood is a little unusual because I’m currently experiencing several chapters of it at the same time. I have four children spread across dramatically different stages of life. Three are adults. My oldest daughter is 27 and has now made me a grandfather. And just when most men my age might reasonably expect to have retired from diapers, bottles, diaper bags, and discovering mysterious substances on their shirts, I have an infant son. While some guys my age are researching golf resorts, motorcycles, and whether they can justify finally buying that Corvette, I’m comparing bottle warmers and trying to determine whether the noise coming from the nursery requires immediate intervention or whether I can finish my coffee first.
And I wouldn’t trade it.
Raising children across nearly three decades has given me an opportunity to see fatherhood from perspectives I couldn’t possibly have understood when I first became a dad. I’ve been the nervous young father trying desperately not to screw everything up, the dad juggling work and family while raising growing children, the father trying to guide teenagers without strangling them, the father learning how to relate to adult children, and now the grandfather watching another generation begin. Meanwhile, I’m back at the beginning with a baby boy in my arms. Somewhere along that journey, I realized something that would have sounded strange to my younger self: we spend years believing we’re raising our children, only to eventually discover that they’re raising us too.
When They Actually Let You Leave the Hospital With One
When I became a father 27 years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Of course, like most young men, I probably thought I did. Youth provides us with that remarkable combination of confidence and ignorance that allows a man to be absolutely certain about subjects he has never personally experienced. Then somebody hands you a newborn, and suddenly all that confidence disappears.
I still think one of the strangest moments in a man’s life is leaving the hospital with his first child. You spend several days surrounded by nurses, doctors, monitors, equipment, and people who apparently know what they’re doing. Then someone says congratulations, wheels Mom to the door, and basically sends you home with a brand-new human being. There’s no certification exam, no owner’s manual, no experienced adult following behind you in another car. It’s essentially: Here’s your baby. Good luck. Try not to screw this up.
Those first years were filled with everything most fathers experience—exhaustion, worry, pride, frustration, laughter, mistakes, small victories, and plenty of moments when I wondered whether I was doing any of it correctly. Eventually you discover the great secret of parenting: nobody completely knows what they’re doing. We’re all improvising. Experience doesn’t necessarily give you all the answers; it simply makes you a better improviser.
Research into father-child relationships suggests that positive involvement can carry across generations, with patterns of father involvement and relationship quality influencing later parenting. That makes intuitive sense to me now because nearly three decades of raising children have forged something in me that no parenting book could have provided: perspective.
The Great Gift of Perspective
Perspective may be the most underrated parenting skill there is. When you’re a young father and your first child develops a fever, you’re mentally preparing for a helicopter evacuation while simultaneously searching the internet for rare tropical diseases. By the fourth child, you grab the thermometer, administer whatever appropriate medicine your pediatrician recommends, keep an eye on him, and continue making coffee. Experience teaches you the difference between an actual emergency and Tuesday.
That isn’t indifference; it’s confidence earned through repetition. I’ve watched children struggle, succeed, get hurt, recover, make mistakes, surprise me, disappoint themselves, overcome things I worried would crush them, and eventually become adults with personalities and lives entirely their own. I’ve learned that most crises pass, most mistakes can be corrected, and children are considerably more resilient than nervous parents sometimes give them credit for.
Those lessons serve me particularly well with my youngest son. When he’s crying inconsolably at three in the morning, I’m far less likely to assume something catastrophic is happening. Granted, at approximately 3:17 a.m. I may briefly consider selling everything and moving to a monastery, but mostly I understand that this too shall pass. I don’t obsess over every developmental milestone because I’ve already watched three children grow up and learned that kids aren’t products rolling down an assembly line. They develop differently, discover things at their own pace, and become who they’re going to become according to schedules that rarely correspond perfectly with whatever parenting book currently occupies the bestseller list.
Studies of later-life fatherhood have similarly described how age and accumulated experience can make parenting feel richer and more profound. That’s certainly been my experience. I’m calmer than I was 27 years ago, more patient, and considerably less interested in sweating the small stuff. My back, unfortunately, has not benefited from the additional wisdom.
Rediscovering the Baby Years
There’s nothing quite like having a baby in the house, particularly when you haven’t had one around in decades. There’s also nothing quite like finally getting that baby to sleep and suddenly feeling a sneeze coming on. Few moments in a man’s life generate greater terror. You find yourself desperately trying to suppress a basic biological function because you know one poorly timed achoo could reset the entire evening.
With my youngest, I’m experiencing moments I haven’t experienced in years: tiny fingers wrapping around mine, the first smile I’m absolutely convinced was intentional despite being informed it was probably gas, belly laughs that seem to erupt from nowhere, and the wonderful weight of a sleeping baby against my chest. I can sit and watch him discover his own feet with the concentration of a scientist splitting the atom. To him, everything is new. Watching that reminds you how extraordinary ordinary life actually is.
When I was younger, I sometimes found myself anticipating the next stage. When will she walk? When will she talk? When will she start school? When will she drive? When will she become independent? What you don’t understand when you’re a young parent is the cruel trick hiding inside those questions: eventually they do all of those things. Then one day you’d give almost anything to have one completely ordinary Tuesday afternoon back when they were four years old.
That’s one of the greatest differences between fatherhood then and fatherhood now. I’m in less of a hurry. I sit a little longer, watch a little closer, and appreciate the mundane moments because I’ve learned that the mundane moments eventually become the memories you treasure most. Research into early fatherhood consistently emphasizes the importance of those seemingly ordinary interactions—the holding, talking, playing, comforting, and simply being present. Science may give those behaviors impressive developmental terminology. Dads know them by another name: being there.
When Your Children Become Adults
One of the great misconceptions about parenting is that the job ends when your children turn 18. That’s adorable. The job doesn’t end; the job description changes. You can’t parent a 27-year-old the same way you parent a seven-year-old, at least not if you’d like your adult children to continue answering your phone calls.
Adult children don’t need a commanding officer. They need a father. Sometimes that means giving advice. Sometimes it means encouragement. Occasionally it means telling them something they don’t particularly want to hear. More often than most fathers probably care to admit, it means shutting your mouth and listening. For men accustomed to solving problems, this may be one of the most advanced fatherhood techniques ever devised.
When our children are young, we’re constantly doing things for them. We’re teaching, protecting, correcting, driving, coaching, feeding, fixing, paying, worrying, and occasionally wondering whether they will ever learn to replace an empty toilet-paper roll. As they become adults, fatherhood becomes less about directing their lives and more about being available when they need direction. You’re still Dad; you’ve simply moved from management into consulting.
And there is tremendous satisfaction in that transition. Watching your children become independent adults—seeing them develop careers, relationships, families, values, opinions, and lives of their own—is one of fatherhood’s greatest rewards. You eventually realize that the goal was never to create miniature versions of yourself. It was to help produce capable human beings who could eventually navigate the world without you standing beside them every minute.
Then Your Kid Has a Kid
Becoming a grandfather introduced an entirely new dimension to fatherhood. Watching my daughter become a mother has been one of life’s great privileges because there’s something almost surreal about seeing the little girl you once carried become the person carrying her own child. Suddenly, you’re watching family history move forward another generation.
Research into father involvement suggests that relationship patterns can carry across generations, and I occasionally see hints of that happening right in front of me. I’ll hear my daughter say something to her child that sounds suspiciously familiar and think, Well, I’ll be damned. She actually was listening.
That experience makes you think differently about legacy. Men tend to associate legacy with things that can be counted—businesses built, money accumulated, championships won, houses owned, books written, trophies sitting on shelves. Those things can certainly matter, but fatherhood introduces another measurement. How did you treat their mother? Did you keep your word? How did you behave when you were angry? Did you work hard? Could you admit when you were wrong? Did you treat people with respect? Did your children know that when life knocked them down, Dad was still standing in their corner?
Children absorb far more from watching us than we realize. Eventually, some of those lessons may reach grandchildren we haven’t even met. The love you give your children influences the love they know how to give. The standards you establish become part of the standards they carry into their own homes. That’s legacy in its most meaningful form—not something engraved on a plaque, but something alive in another person.
Fatherhood Changes Men
Fatherhood changes you, or at least it should. I’m not the same man who held his first daughter 27 years ago. I’m more patient, more compassionate, less certain that I know everything, more willing to admit mistakes, and considerably more aware of how quickly time passes. I’m also probably less impressed by many of the things society tells men we’re supposed to find impressive.
Career matters. Achievement matters. Money matters. Competition matters. There is nothing wrong with a man wanting to build something, succeed, win, provide, and accomplish difficult things. But fatherhood has an interesting way of reorganizing the scoreboard. That promotion that once seemed absolutely critical becomes slightly less earth-shattering when you’re sitting in a dark room with your baby sleeping on your chest.
Research consistently associates engaged fatherhood with children’s emotional, social, and developmental well-being. Stable, nurturing fathers can contribute to security, resilience, guidance, and healthy development. I’ve had the privilege of watching those principles play out across four very different children, each with different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, struggles, and paths through life.
None of them needed a perfect father, which is fortunate because they certainly didn’t get one. What they needed was a present one.
Presence Beats Perfection
Modern parenting culture sometimes makes raising children sound like an Olympic event. Parents are told to buy the perfect food, choose the perfect school, embrace the perfect parenting philosophy, schedule the perfect activities, monitor precisely the correct amount of screen time, and purchase educational toys handcrafted from sustainable Scandinavian timber blessed by a developmental psychologist.
Relax.
Children have survived fathers for thousands of years.
Your kids don’t need perfection. They need you. They need you sitting in the stands. They need you helping with homework, listening to their problems, teaching them how to throw a ball or make breakfast or change a tire. They need someone to teach them how to shake another man’s hand, look people in the eye, defend themselves, apologize sincerely, lose without making excuses, and win without becoming an ass.
They need boundaries and affection, discipline and laughter. Most of all, they need the security of knowing that when the world eventually knocks them down—and it will—Dad remains in their corner. You won’t always say the right thing or make the right decision. Sometimes you’ll lose your temper. Sometimes you’ll work too much. Sometimes you’ll look backward and realize you should have handled something differently. That’s fatherhood. The standard was never perfection. The standard was showing up.
The Best Job I’ve Ever Had
Today I find myself occupying three different worlds simultaneously. I’m raising an infant, I’m the father of adult children, and I’m a grandfather. Somewhere between changing diapers and discussing grown-up problems with my older kids, I’ve gotten a rare glimpse of almost the entire arc of fatherhood at once.
It’s beautiful, exhausting, occasionally ridiculous, and unbelievably fast.
The patience I learned from raising my older children makes me a better father to my youngest. The wonder I’m rediscovering with my baby reminds me not to become too serious with my adult children. Becoming a grandfather has shown me that fatherhood doesn’t end with our own children because whatever influence we’ve had on them continues forward into lives we may never fully see.
That’s why fatherhood is the best job I’ve ever had. Not because it’s easy—the things most worth doing rarely are—but because it demands something from a man that few other things can: become better because somebody else is depending on you. Become more patient, disciplined, dependable, forgiving, and capable of being strong when strength is required and gentle when gentleness is needed.
I’ve been a father for 27 years, and I’m still learning how to do the job. Maybe that’s the final lesson. You never really finish raising your children, and if you’re fortunate, they never quite finish raising you either.
One day you’re holding your daughter for the first time, wondering how in God’s name you’re supposed to keep this tiny human alive. Then you blink. She’s holding her own baby, and you’re standing there with another infant son in your arms, looking at three generations of your family and wondering where all those years went.
Man, what a ride.
I wouldn’t trade the job for anything.
