“Men who are not interested in or ready for fatherhood lack the vocabulary to examine their feelings or make the right choices - for them, for their partners, and for their offspring.” Compare this to the slew of high-profile books published this year alone that question or interrogate accepted wisdom on motherhood: Like a Mother by Angela Garbes, The Motherhood Affidavits from Laura Jean Baker or Meaghan O’Connell’s And Now We Have Everything. When it comes to fatherhood, most of the literature I’ve come across lately outside the parenting-advice shelves focused on letters from father to daughter or son in the context of racial discrimination: I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by Vancouver’s David Chariandy or Between the World and Me from Ta-Nehisi Coates come to mind. With that message from my ex, I was forced to confront not just the fact that having a child or not is also a man’s issue - but the dearth of books and public conversations about it. It belonged in that big pile of “feminist issues” that I’m familiar with but not directly affected by. I always thought that having to choose between parenting and career, between selflessness and self-love, was something that only women had to wrestle with. Such confidence in my life choices stems mostly from my gender identity as a man.
By the time I make it back to whatever project or book I’m immersed in, I’d forget about them and resume wondering how parents ever find the time for personal or intellectual pursuits. But these moments of wistfulness for a progeny I’ll never have are usually fleeting. Whenever I pass Mabel’s Fables, a beautiful children’s bookstore in midtown Toronto, I fantasize about the titles I would buy my unborn. I’d be lying if I said the thought of starting a family never crossed my mind. You could be the person who cured cancer and your mediocre sibling with five unruly kids would still be seen as the pillar of the community. It spoke of a worldview in which parenting is seen as a more worthwhile human endeavour than most other creative, political or scientific accomplishments.
Yet the implied equivalency between releasing a book into the world and giving life to a child rankled me for reasons that go beyond the specifics of our relationship. I never wanted to start a family with him (or anyone else) and this may well have been a factor in our eventual breakup. Naturally, I wished them all well even as I found the timing of this announcement peculiar.
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