My First Father's Day

I like being a dad. Who wouldn’t? I get the fun and perks of horsing around with my little boy yet leave all of the dirty little details up to my wife! Sure it was a long time coming but waiting 7½ years to have our first was worth the wait. As a matter of fact I am a far better father now than I would have been had Henry joined this world shortly after our marriage.

Being a dad is hard enough, even if Heidi is the one keeping Henry happy in the middle of the night. However, had Henry come before 2005 we would have had him during one of the most trying experiences of my life. After Heidi was diagnosed with cancer over the next year she had three surgeries, spent about 45 days in the hospital, and had fourteen near fatal treatments of chemotherapy. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown on more than several occasions. Point is if we had Henry at the time…well, frankly I don’t know how I could have been a good dad during that ordeal and thankfully I did not have to find out.

So that brings me to my first father’s day. It is a good time in the world to be a dad. As psychologist Aaron Rochlen wrote, “It’s cool now to be an active, involved father. Overall, men being more active fathers is starting to become more of the norm and less of the anomaly.” I have taken Henry all by myself to doctor’s appointments, the store, library, and meetings at work and have been told on more than one occasion that people like seeing the a “new” dad doing his duty.

Then I bumped into a Boston College study that looked at parental influence on teenage sexual behavior. Frighteningly the study found that one in four American teens have had sex and by the age of eighteen two-thirds have now had intercourse. This dangerous behavior has resulted in the spread of STDs and three out of ten girls becoming pregnant by age twenty.

However, a father that is actively participating in his teen’s life has twice the impact on a teen’s sexual behavior than an active mother. Why? According to the study this is hard to determine. But it probably has something to do with the fact that dads, “vary markedly in their roles as caretakers from not there at all to really helping moms,” according to the author. “The greater impact of dads might be that moms are more of a constant and when dads are there their impact is magnified.”

The power in mine! But there is more a family can do. “The impact of family time overall was even more striking,” the study found. “One additional family activity per week predicted a 9 percent drop in sexual activity.” So in other words in addition to being an active father, Heidi and I better start planning some fun things to do.