May’s Dad of the Month

May's Dad of the Month is Dan (@danmatthew71)! He is a dad and a husband, living in the United States of America with his wife and 7 month old son. A self described family man, he enjoys woodworking and building things. He and his wife are in the process of buying their first hou

By Your Bro · Mon May 25 2020 · Guy Stuff

Every month we spotlight a father who's quietly doing the job right — no fanfare, no marketing spin, just a man building a family with his hands and his time. This month it's Dan (@danmatthew71): husband, dad to a seven-month-old son, part-time woodworker, full-time family man, and — as of this year — first-time homeowner of a fixer-upper that is testing every ounce of patience he has. Here's what makes Dan the kind of father worth writing about.

Meet Dan

Dan lives in the United States with his wife and their seven-month-old son, who — as of this writing — has just figured out crawling, which means Dan has just figured out that his life is officially over as he knew it. He's a self-described family man who spends his non-work hours in the garage, cutting wood, sanding, staining, and building. He and his wife just closed on their first house — a fixer-upper that came with equal parts opportunity and homework. Between diapers, night feeds, and drywall dust, it's a full life.

Like a lot of young men his age, Dan remembers turning 20 and realizing how backwards the modern script had become. The cultural messaging was: rack up debt, delay marriage, delay kids, delay adulthood, chase status, apologize for being a man. Dan, paying attention, did the opposite. He packed his bags, moved across the country, married his wife, and started a family.

Why He Did It Anyway

Ask a lot of men in their late twenties why they're not married yet and you get some version of "the timing isn't right." Dan's answer for why he did it early is simpler: the timing is never right, and that's the point. You choose the person. You lean into the sacrifice. You figure it out.

He'll tell you the first year of fatherhood taught him more about himself than the previous decade. About patience. About what actually matters versus what he thought mattered. About the surprisingly small size of what he needs to be happy. Cultural data keeps confirming what men like Dan already know: marriage and fatherhood, done seriously, correlate with better health, better income, and higher life satisfaction — and no amount of hustle-culture noise can substitute for either.

What is the best way to raise a child with good character?

Dan believes the best way to raise a child with good character is to actively teach hard work, perseverance, generosity, and kindness — not to hope those things osmose in from a screen. That means parents have to stay diligent about correcting bad behavior early, before it becomes personality. Consistent discipline and consistent modeling are the two tools. There isn't a third.

"Teach them the value of hard work, perseverance, generosity, kindness and graciousness. Most of this will come naturally, but it's important you don't let them misbehave and become a terror. I think we can all agree there's enough selfishness, competitiveness, and disrespect in the world; it comes back down on parents raising their kids to be kind, instead of having an entire childhood of bad behavior." — Dan

The Peterson Reference

Dan cites a lecture by Dr. Jordan Peterson about the neglected portrayal of little boys and girls as capable of being brave and noble — that our culture has largely stopped believing kids can be small heroes, and so it stopped writing stories that treat them that way. Dan notes the two exceptions that got it right: The Polar Express and Harry Potter. Both trust their young protagonists to face fear, take responsibility, and become better people. Dan wants those stories in his son's life. He'll be the one reading them out loud at bedtime.

His view: correcting a two-year-old's tantrum today is what prevents a fifteen-year-old's contempt tomorrow. It's easier and it works. Skip it and you inherit the version of your child that other people raised.

The Favorite Part

Dan's favorite part of being a father, so far, is rocking his son to sleep. Anyone who's had an infant knows the ritual: babies will cry, sometimes hysterically, when you set them down on their own. Every family finds its own version of the wind-down. For Dan, the moment he lives for is the one where his son closes his eyes because dad is holding him. No money buys that transaction. He knows it. He's paying attention.

What Dan Would Tell a Guy Considering Fatherhood

1. It's not as hard as internet catastrophists claim. Don't let strangers online talk you out of the best thing you'll ever do.

2. It's harder than you think in ways you can't imagine yet. The stakes are real. Prepare accordingly — physically, financially, emotionally.

3. Your marriage is the foundation. Feed it. If your wife is your teammate, everything else is manageable. If she's your opponent, nothing else will be.

4. Get the boring stuff right — sleep, savings, a will, life insurance, a solid crib. Then stop worrying and start enjoying.

FAQ

How do I know I'm "ready" to be a father? You don't. Nobody does. The ones who do it well are the ones who accept that and go anyway.

What's the one thing new dads underestimate most? How much of the job is showing up when you're tired. Fatherhood is a long test of unglamorous consistency, not a highlight reel.

Any advice for a guy raising a son right now? Play with him in the yard. Tear up the grass. You're not raising grass — you're raising a boy.

We salute you for being a great dad, Dan. Congrats on the house, the son, and doing the hard, quiet work.

— Your Bro