Nobody really knows how or when it started, but one of the most widespread—and most cherished—myths about child-rearing is that women are naturally more nurturing than men, that they are instinctively better at the parenting thing, and that men are nearly incompetent.

The facts, however, tell a very different story. A significant amount of research has proven that men are inherently just as nurturing and responsive to their children’s needs as women. What too many men (and women) don’t realize is that to the extent that women are “better” parents, it’s simply because they’ve had more practice. In fact, the single most important factor in determining the depth of long-term father-child relationships is opportunity.

Basically, it comes down to this: “Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist,” writes author Michael Levine in Lessons at the Halfway Point.

Men and women parent differently in a wide variety of ways:

• Dads tend to play more with their children than mothers do, and that play tends to be more rough-and-tumble and more unpredictable than mothers’. In other words, dads are more likely than moms to become human jungle gyms.

• Dads tend to emphasize independence more than moms and give children more freedom to explore. If a baby is struggling to grab a toy that’s just out of reach, mothers are more likely to move the toy closer, while dads are more likely to wait a little longer, seeing whether the baby will be able to get it. Moms are more likely to pick up a toddler who’s fallen, while dads are more likely to encourage the child to get up on his own.

• Dads tend to use more complex speech patterns than mothers, who tend to simplify what they’re saying and slow it down. Dads also tend to ask their babies more open-ended questions (who, what, where, when, why) than moms, an approach that helps kids expand their vocabulary.

• Dads tend to think more about how a child will fare in the world as he or she grows; moms tend to think more about the child’s emotional development. When reacting to a test score, for example, a dad might be concerned about how the score will affect the child’s future plans and ability to be self-sufficient, while a mom is more likely to be concerned about how the score makes the child feel.

• Dads tend to represent the outside world while mothers represent the home. You can see this almost anyplace where parents are out with their babies: dads tend to hold their children face out, while mothers hold them face in.

Please keep in mind here that I’m talking about general tendencies. Plenty of moms wrestle with their kids and use big words, and many dads rush to pick up fallen toddlers and hold their babies facing inward. The point is that they parent differently—not better or worse, just differently. And children benefit greatly from having plenty of exposure to both styles.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then, that fathers have very different needs from mothers when it comes to parenting information and resources. But more than a decade into the twenty-first century, the vast majority of books, videos, seminars, and magazine articles on raising kids are still aimed primarily at women and focus on helping them acquire the skills they need to be better parents. Fathers have been essentially ignored—until now.

HOW THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT

Because babies develop so quickly, most resources aimed at parents of infants (babies from birth through twelve months) are broken down by month and focus mostly on how babies develop during this period. That’s pretty important stuff, so we spend a little time covering similar territory. However, the primary focus of The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year is on how dads change, grow, and develop over the first twelve months of fatherhood. That’s an approach that has rarely, if ever, been tried.

Going from man to father is one of the most dramatic changes you’ll ever experience. It’ll force you to rethink who you are, what you do, and what it means to be a man. Your relationships—with your partner,

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