On Parenting

It’s often said that having a child changes a man irrevocably. As soon as your baby is born, this tremendous responsibility looms, and more importantly, you feel an immense love and gratitude for something so precious. If you’re lucky enough, you cut their umbilical cord, hold them against your chest, and feel tears escape before you can stop them. It’s an awe-inspiring experience, one worth writing about, but it isn’t a particularly original observation. Fatherhood is a blessing, a privilege, and an honor—all true, and all familiar.

What interests me more is something subtler.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard repeated in different forms: The older I get, the more I realize my parents were right. I’ve felt this before as a teacher, learning why boundaries matter, why lines must sometimes be rigid, and why enforcing them isn’t cruelty but care. I’ve felt it in adulthood, too, when milestones like paying a mortgage or managing a household suddenly reframed the choices my parents once made. Yet, when your child is born, that realization intensifies into something sharper: empathy.

It’s not just empathy for your parents, however. You suddenly start to see every person as someone’s child. It’s an obvious fact, yet one that carries more weight once you’ve created a life yourself. You suddenly consider your parents’ actions in a far different light. Past grievances soften. Old inconveniences look different. I had an inkling before, a shallow understanding of their reasons, but it’s only now that I truly understand.

I understand now why unfinished chores weren’t trivial, and why dreams were encouraged cautiously, never recklessly. I knew the logic back then, at least intellectually, but understanding without experience is far too thin. To fully chase a dream is to accept years of uncertainty and struggle, and that feels different when your instinct is to shield your child from both.

That empathy doesn’t stop there. It turns inward.

I’ve begun revisiting my own youth: the late nights, the stubborn arguments over insignificant issues, the financial carelessness that comes easily when the money isn’t yours. With that reflection comes a sobering realization—not only of what I put my parents through, but of what potentially awaits me.

One day, it will be my phone ringing late at night. I’ll be the one listening to slurred words, weighing frustration against concern. I’ll be the one fielding indignation over reasonable requests, after a long day in an even longer week, and I’ll somehow need to find it in me to respond with patience.

Fatherhood is a blessing, a privilege, and an honor. More than that, it is a lens that recontextualizes your past in a way that you can only feel once you’ve experienced it. It forces you to revisit your past, to reckon with your mistakes, and to understand the people who raised you in ways you never could before. The words of your youth keep changing as you get older, and then one day, it’s your child’s turn.

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