No such thing as perfect

Our backpage columnist, Rofhiwa Maneta, ponders the good and sometimes hard realities that come with being a new dad

ACCORDING TO A recent study, only 8 percent of people actually see their New Year’s resolutions through. That number shouldn’t surprise anyone: real long-lasting change is messy, timeconsuming and full of false starts.

In January 2018, I made two resolutions of my own: to quit smoking and be a perfect father. At the time, I’d been a smoker for four years and a father for all of two months. As I saw it, if any of the resolutions were going to go left, it would be my attempt at kicking the habit. I was the kind of smoker that searched for my box of cigarettes after switching my alarm clock off in the morning, and I couldn’t go to bed without having a cigarette or three to level me out.

Conversely, I saw myself as nothing but prepared to take on any of the challenges that came with fatherhood. I was broke but had the relative guarantee of freelance work to see me through some of the tougher months. I also had plenty of resolve.

I’ve never considered myself anything close to paternal; I didn’t possess any of the patience that parenthood demands, and I was dreading the long nights, nappy changes and screaming matches that characterise parenting. But for all my self-confessed deficiencies, I was willing to learn and took heart in the fact that most first-time parents before me had similar anxieties.

I was only able to keep one of the two resolutions I made in 2018 and, that’s to say, I haven’t had a cigarette since I first made my resolution.

It took will and a truckload of Wellbutrin (a smoking-cessation medication), but it’s a habit I’m glad to see the back of. Being a “perfect” father has not been easy and, in 2019,

I stopped trying altogether.

Let me explain.

My own father had established a rubric for fatherhood that I’d always promised myself to follow. He was, and still is, patient in ways that I can only wish for. He never shouts, doesn’t believe in corporal punishment and is the kind of father and grandfather that believes in spoiling his children or grandchildren with gifts almost every other day. He’s never sat me or my brothers down and told me anything profound but, then again, he’s never had to. Everything I’ve learnt about positive masculinity has been through his example. From my earliest memories, he’s been committed to both his children and his marriage and has never viewed fatherhood as being auxiliary to motherhood.

Naturally, I imagined that if I followed his example, I would yield the exact results and produce the same kind of daddy’s boy my father made of his three sons.

I was wrong!

But in parenthood, as in life, perfection is little more than a fantasy that burns with the first daylight of reality. And the reality is this: children don’t care for perfection, at least not the kind modern society demands of parents.

Today’s definition of the perfect parent is one who never gets angry, always has time for their children and possesses a limitless supply of patience and energy for the day-to-day tasks that come with parenting.

I’m none of those things. There are days when I’d prefer to sleep over a marathon of Mr Bean or Ben 10.

I never snap at my son, but there are obviously days when we both drive each other up the wall and pretending I’ve never been visibly angry at him would be a blatant lie. And, contrary to popular social convention, I don’t consider my child my “best friend” because I’m so much more than that: I’m his father.

The biggest cliché associated with parenthood is also one that contains the most truth: there’s no textbook for this. We’re all just winging it.

And like most things we tend to wing, the results are a number of things: messy, awkward, surprisingly good, but never perfect.

I’m okay with not being a perfect father. If anything, my resolution for 2020 is not to be perfect but to be present and to do the best I can every day to raise my son with love, compassion and consideration.

Flaws and all.