Dad Is a Proper Man

My kids play a lot of pretend, but pretty much only pretend in two things: school or family. My daughters are teachers and their little brother is, well, I’m not sure what he is when they play school. Sometimes he’s a student, sometimes he’s a teacher too, mostly I think he’s just there. When they play family I always find it kind of strange, because they actually are family. Sometimes they’ll try to include me and say “Pretend you’re the dad.”

“I AM the dad,” I inform them.

The other day at breakfast they were playing some kind of pretend family game, and my four year-old son was the dad. But apparently he wasn’t doing it right. “Brooks, you have to act like a dad!” I heard my daughters tell him a few times. My interest was piqued.

“How does a dad act?” I asked.

Lucy, my oldest daughter and unabashed daddy’s girl quickly answered “Like you. You’re a proper man.”

I’ve been called a few things in my time. Don’t recall ever being call a “proper man.” Didn’t exactly come from an unbiased source, but I’ll take it. But I wonder, where did my daughter get her impression of what a proper man is?

Outside of her male family members, 80% of the men she’s been exposed to are animated princes. While a cartoon prince may make for a nice character in a story, they aren’t exactly a realistic measuring stick. Plus, I’m not the prince in this family, I’m the king. And the king is almost always either a doofus or a jerk. Or dead. Either way, probably not the model for a proper man. (I’ve previously shared my thoughts on the good and the bad of Disney movie dads.)

Then have I actually been the model of a proper man? I mean, I have my moments. But proper? What even makes a proper man? Are we talking the dignified kind of proper like a Cary Grant? I’ve said “be quiet and go to bed” a couple thousand times but I’ve never said “Oh darling I do so wish you’d quiet down now and get your beauty sleep.” If you didn’t read that in a Cary Grant voice then shame on you. Go back and try again.

Or proper like an old-school Greatest Generation type man? I once watched a documentary on PBS were a guy built a log cabin in Alaska entirely by hand. Even carved the door hinges. I’m pretty sure it might have been the most proper manly thing I’ve ever seen. I am sure by daughter is very impressed by my Lego castle building abilities, but I don’t think its quite on the same level. I’ve never gone off to kill any Germans, but I did crush a German chocolate cake for my birthday. I think she had a certain level of respect for my cake eating abilities, but again, not exactly the same.

I think the more likely case is that I created her model of what a proper man is in the image of myself. I am how I am. I give her the impression that how I am is how a proper man should be. Then validate her impression by asking her what a proper man is only to reinforce her view that it is me. I’m pretty sure that’s how cult leaders get control of people.

“Who’s the best dad?”

“You are!”

“That’s right! Hey, who wants Kool-Aid?!”

It really does make me think about the idea of what a “proper man” is that I am instilling in my kids. Doing as I say and not as I do really doesn’t work. Not that I do terrible things, but even the little things that I probably shouldn’t do that have become habit (eating an entire German chocolate cake suddenly comes to mind) are leaving an impression of what a man does on my kids. Will my son think himself less of a man someday if he prefers to eat sensible portions of dessert and not fashion himself in the “proper” Henry the VIII-ian image of a man who has a “manly” appetite?

Sweet tooth aside, anything from how I talk, how I dress, what I read, what I watch, pretty much everything I do is forming their definition of a man. And I thought making sure my kids didn’t choke when they started eating grapes would be the biggest responsibility I’d have as a parent. Now here I am creating a probably life long impression for an entire gender. The kind of man my son will want to be, and the kind of man my daughters may want to marry is very well being influenced by my actions today. Current me really needs to do future me a solid so I don’t end up with a son-in-law I don’t like. Isn’t that more important than how my daughter feels about them anyway?

Given that I could define a proper man for them pretty much however I wanted to, I certainly could stick to my habits and life how I want and tell them, yep, that’s a man. But to try to skew that definition toward how I want to act anyway and not toward some kind of North Star of manly propriety would be doing them a disservice. And myself too. So while I am flattered my daughter thinks of me as proper man, I think that is still an aspirational title. Something I’ll keep in mind the next time I find myself stuck in an old habit, or catching myself not meeting my own expectations. Because it is more than meeting or not meeting my expectations of myself, it is about completely creating my kids’ expectations of a man.

Which is why we work on ourselves, right? Not just for us, but for our kids. Whether it is developing philosophy, faith, or physique, we try to make ourselves better for our kids. We want to be strong enough to lift them up in every sense of the word. But before we can do that, we need to lift ourselves up first.

So if my daughter thinks I’m a proper man, then I better be working to living up to that, even if she doesn’t know what it is.

Then again, perhaps I’ve over-thought this whole thing and she was just trying to butter me up so she could ask for ice cream later. Who’s to say?