Father’s Day 2017

Father’s Day Celebrations Table

This article should have been posted on fathers day in the Netherlands but due to kids whom kept disturbing me, I couldn’t finish it. 🙂

Being a father is a strange feeling. Having a special day as a father is an even stranger feeling.

When I was younger I can’t remember anymore if we really celebrated Father’s Day for our father. it and I can’t be arsed actually to find it out. If we’ve done it, we shouldn’t have done it.

Since I’m a father myself it always feels very strange. Those are just the day’s where I’m like: Why should they celebrate me as a father? It’s basically my job to take care of them. We wanted to have the kids, not necessarily the other way around.

In the raising of the kids I try to make as few errors possible and let them grow up to discover the world in a safe and adventurous way (They’re basically opposites by the way).

But this year I tried something new, actually to reflect on me as being a father and how I can improve myself.

All the steps necessarily for this I’ll discuss with my therapist but I did notice a few things different this year compared to other years.

This to numerous reasons but the main 2 reasons are:

  1. I feel I’m closer to my kids then before.
  2. It’s the first fathers day since I’ve separated from their mother.

The second point actually made sure that I got the 1st point.

As part of the separation I’m 50% of the time fully responsible for the kids.

That has some very interesting results:

  • There are no house hold chores roles anymore. Before I would do a separate part of the household and their mother another part. This is not anymore the case.
  • They see this and it makes it easier to get rid of the stereotypical roles. Dad can do the laundry as well, every time I have cleanish clothes.
  • If I’m hurt or not feeling well, he will take care of me.
  • About the food they say: Even the food he cooks is improving, very slightly but ok, it’s eatable.
  • They see their mother doing all the things I was doing before and even better.
  • We spend more time together and we’re getting more used to each other. Even though before I’ve spend plenty of time with the kids, it was never 50% of all the time. This was not only in terms of time spent but as well on actually the mental load of having to take care for them.

All the above mentioned things should be normal actually.

Like I said in the beginning, it was my decision to actually have kids. But unfortunately, still in our society it’s strange to have the physical AND mental load divided by 50% between the mother and the father.

And I’m more then happy and actually honored to be able to take it.

So this year I’ve enjoyed it more and we had a great day all together.

And it’s always a great moment for me to think about the never ending question: How can I be a better father to my kids and help them to remain a great, creative, unique and independent human being.

I love my kids and I want to thank them for all the lessons they teach me on a daily basis to become a better father. And will my opinion change about Father’s Day? No, not really. But I’m thankful to be able to be the father of my 2 kids.