by Hugh Mann

Created on: July 08, 2008   Last Updated: March 07, 2009

Could there be a more inopportune time in a woman's life than when she gives birth only to discover that her husband is not an adult, but an adolescent also demanding some form of nurture? Husband left out? What husband and father could call himself a man if he is the partner in need of support and compassion at precisely the time in life when not only is the complete opposite true, but it is he who must take the initiative to ensure that it is the mother who does not feel abandoned by him in the face of what is both parents' responsibility?

I can only speak for myself, but would venture that many men could find the premise of the title quite patronizing. God help the woman that has so spineless a husband as to have to then add the burden of considering his feelings at such a time when she cannot help but to naturally divert all her attention to any needs the baby has foremost. Especially considering that she will scarcely find the time to tend even to her own needs during the first few years of a child's life, raising the issue of a husband's feelings can only weigh upon and torment her. Since it is a woman's nature to react sympathetically, feeling that she must somehow satisfy both him and the baby is to her and the baby's detriment, if her kindness were exploited by a weak man.

However ridiculous, I would not marginalize even this pernicious notion, for however inapplicable, hopefully to the vast majority of men, and in violation of natural order; the better a husband can support his wife, the better his wife can nurture their child, the better the child is reared; it is the nature of such ideological weeds that they are fertilized by ignorance. Not called out for the lie that they are, untended, unrejected, or through indifference they have ways of mutating into aberrational rules and standards that one day eventually obscure, cripple, paralyze, and leave societal structure disoriented and difficult to negotiate. Men should be approached with the assumption that they are emotionally and intellectually mature, otherwise they are not men, but boys, and boys do need parenting to guide them to adulthood, which is not a wife's role or responsibility, not when no baby is involved, and especially not when one is.

Accord no pity for the emotional adolescent trapped inside an adult male body. To the scarce few fathers to whom the sordid premise of the question does pertain, the time has come to grow a spine. Your wife and child need an adult male at their side.

The

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