Tag Archives: fatherhood

Why Being A Single Father Isn’t Generally A Dealbreaker

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Now she SAID to wash the kid, but she DID NOT say DON'T put him in the washing machine. Smart! This daddy thing is EAAAAASY. I got this!

It’s almost Father’s Day, so let’s talk about pappies.

For the longest time, I’ve been planning on making a t-shirt that says, “I Make Pretty Babies”. While I realize how ridiculous that seems on its face, its not only true (there will be no photo evidence of PanaMontana here at VSB), but I’m ridiculous enough to pull that off. I mentioned that to a homegirl of mine once and she was like, “well couldn’t her mother get the same t-shirt?”

Yes, she could. But you know what? It wouldn’t have the same effect. Not only would me wearing a tshirt that says “I Make Pretty Babies” be a nod to my personality and fun loving spirit, it would also pique the interest of various random women who may or may not inquire to see if it was true. Effectively, its a conversation starter because real talk, what women DOESN’T want to have pretty babies. My kid is my resume (more on this later). On the contrary, do you know what my ex wearing that tshirt would signal?

That she has kids. At least one. Game. Blouses.

Therein lies the interesting double standard of being a single father versus being a single mother in the dating market. Maybe it’s because we don’t get to see very man actively responsible single fathers who are happy about their children or we just assume that a child won’t hold a man back or something, but having a kid has a completely opposite affect for men and women. For women, it’s can be an actual PLUS. Most men aren’t exactly checking for a woman with a kid…because they don’t have to. You’ve seen the stats.

And if it’s not a plus, it’s definitely not a detriment eight out of ten times. Or at least hasn’t seemed like it. I understand that there are some women out there who just do not want to date a man with a child – which I completely understand. Between the potential baby mama drama and the perpetual second fiddle she will always play to the child, its not ideal obviously. But in an ironic twist of contradictoryness, I was in a conversation recently where one of my homegirls was attempting to hook a dude she knows up with one of her friends, who is another of my homegirls. When this chaps age was mentioned (over 35), her immediate reaction was…why DOESN’T he have any children? In this instance, NOT having kids was a knock on him because it signals that maybe he was gay or that no other woman would want him. One of the funniest quotes of that conversation was as follows, “I mean, he didn’t even ACCIDENTALLY knock some broad up??” Basically, women expect every man of a certain age to have kids anyway.

Odd future wolf gang…kill them all.

Granted, a large part of this is because at this point in most men’s lives where they have kids, the women they’re looking to deal with aren’t exactly trying to do jello shots off of each other in Cancun. Clearly they would if they were drunk enough, but they’re also paying attention to the future and focused on stability, marriage, and parenthood. As are the men. Who wants to date a woman who has not one maternal bone in her body? So how is it a bonus?

While everybody realizes that it takes two to tango, and you really never know what you’re going to get, having an actual kid is a living and breathing manifestation of potential. I mean, who HASN’T wondered what their kids would look like? Me? I know. I’ve had an actual woman see me out with my kid and say to me (I’d love to say I was joking but I promise you I’m not) and ask me if I thought I could make another one that looked like my daughter. And as I picked up my daughter, backed up slowly, and took off running I realized that women like cute kids. Come to close and I’m firing.

Here’s the other vital piece, do you know what you glean from a dude who’s active in his child’s life and responsible? That he’s active in his child’s life and responsible. And do you know what women like? Active fathers and responsible men. Man, that’s better than an MJ comeback to a woman. Women like stability and security. Sure that kid ain’t theres…and mama there goes that man…but you get the upfront and personal view of a man who had to handle adversity and you get to see how he did it. Usually you don’t get that until the first cheating scandal or pregnancy scare. But dude has a kid? You get it all up front!

Sidenote: A good father does not make a good boyfriend or husband. Be VERY aware of this fact. This is an entire post coming on its own one day.

And, the oddest facet of being a good and responsible single father is that effectively…women give you credit for doing what you’re supposed to do. Sure, nobody gives you a cookie because you didn’t go to jail. But let you be in your child’s life and you get all kinds of misplaced kudos and congratulations which says more about our community than it does any particular woman or man. Women love seeing a man with his child…being happy. Hell, put your kid on your shoulders and every woman within a 50 mile radius is going to smile at you as long as she doesn’t hate life. And a smile is all it takes. I’m being hyperbolic but you get the point.

Being a single pappy doesn’t necessarily dry up any panties.

Forgive me, I’ve been longwinded. Good ladies of VSB, what’s your take on single fathers on the dating scene? Are they winning or losing? I know you run into plenty. And fellas, either you have one or know some dude with one, has being a single father affected yours or their dating lives?

Talk to me.

-VSB P aka YOUNG P THA FUNKY THUG aka lower.case.p. aka SLIM P.A.N.A.M.A. THA SLIM PANAMANIAN aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3

Grainy Pictures: Me, My Dad, and Measuring Up To “Maturity”

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Last weekend, a few relatives and I gathered at my great aunt’s house to eat dinner and spend seven hours telling the exact same stories we told the last time we saw each other. As the youngest person in the room, my job was to do what any youngest person in a room full of loved and respected elders is usually supposed to do: listen, fetch cans of Pepsi, fact check in the most non-condescending way possible, and get teased for my reliance on my phone.

Anyway, midway through one of my dad’s inappropriately (but intentionally) hilarious recollections about New Castle, Pa (where most of my dad’s side of the family is from), something dawned on me:

“I’ve finally been here more than half as long as he has.”

You see, my last birthday officially made me more than half of my dad’s current age. Why is this important? Well, this means that I’m now officially older than he was when he had me, and this realization was quite jarring. Now, when I look at those grainy photo albums where my afro-clad dad is holding a three-day-old me in his arms, I’m looking at a man a few months younger than me. The man who looked so big, so proud, and so, well, so how a man is supposed to look hadn’t been on the planet as long as I have now, but I don’t think I measure up.

This particular brand of age-related angst is far from unique, though. In the last two weeks, both the Wall Street Journal — Kay S. Hymowitz’s “Where Have The Good Men Gone?” — and Slate — Mark Regnerus’s “Sex Is Cheap: Why young men have the upper hand in bed, even when they’re failing in life” — published widely read and discussed pieces that each contained the same latent premise: Men just aren’t growing up the way they used to.

From “The Extended Adolescence of (Some) American Men” –  Sister Toldja’s examination of “Where Have The Good Men Gone”:

…I think Hymowitz’s examples of the boyish cultural tastes of pre-adult males, the “Animal House”, extended college lifestyle and dating behaviors (using women as “estrogen play things”) make a stronger statement. The longer these young men extend their boyhoods, the less prepared they will be when they do choose to enter adult romances, marriages and when they become parents.

Although I don’t possess most of the characteristics each of these articles cite as synonymous with “extended adolescence,” I do believe my singleness (“singleness” in the census sense, at least) and childlessness contributes to my feeling, well, less manly than I think I’m supposed to, and there’s no remedy waiting for me over the horizon. I still consider marriage and fatherhood to be the most prominent markers of adulthood, but “professional and creative success” remains at the top of my personal needs hierarchy.

I know this isn’t an “either or” proposition. It’s quite possible to have both the traditional “grown” marker and the contemporary ideal at the same time. But while I’d like to eventually have a family, it just isn’t a deep-rooted need for me in the same way it was for my father, my grandfather, and other men like them.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I don’t know what was going through my dad’s head the day before he found out my mom was pregnant with me. In fact, I don’t even know what was in his head the day he took those grainy pictures. While I’ve assigned a certain nobility, a certain maturity to him, this is a presumptuous act. For all I know, he could have been experiencing the same age-related angst; wondering if he was ready to be an adult and doubting whether he’ll ever be able to be grown in the same way his father was. Who knows?

I do know, though, that I’ve been more places on Earth at this point in my life than my dad had when he took those grainy pictures. I have more experiences. More memories. More embarrassments. More anecdotes. More stories. More pains. More time. And, while I’m not taller (My dad and I are the exact same height), when you add weight to the equation, I’m definitely bigger than he was.

But, I just don’t feel as grown as he looked, and I’m beginning to wonder if I ever will.

—The Champ

Women Are Always The Victim…Right?

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If he gets your daughter pregnant, I'm blaming her. And you. Not him. He looks like he would get your daugther pregnant.

I was out for lunch one day with a friend of mine who has many hilarious and actually spot on opinions about dating and relationships. I always joke with him that if he’d let me put him on camera that we’d make millions because of the outlandish things he says. We’d get more hate mail, but more press than a little bit. He’d effectively become the most hated Black man in America in under ten minutes. Flat.

Mind you, I don’t ever actually think he’s wrong.

Anyway, one particular day last week, he asked me if I’d ever read the article where (much like everybody else – it’s from December 2009 so forgive my late pass) Attorney General Eric Holder called on Black fathers to take more responsibility for their children. It’s the same message Obama preached some months before and slightly rings true to what Bill Cosby said some years ago when he pissed off all of Black America and a few Samoans.

To wit:

“Too many men in the black community have created children and left them to be raised by caring mothers. These women do a wonderful job, but we ask too much of them and too little of our men,” Holder told the congregation, which included members of his family, according to Newsday. “It should simply be unacceptable for a man to have a child and then not play an integral part in the raising and nurturing of the child.” – Eric Holder

Of course, as Black men, we hate hearing these statements over and over again. Mostly because it paints a very one sided picture. And of course, men and women ALWAYS applaud at these statements like its the first they’ve ever heard them. Keep in mind, neither of us disagree with the spirit of it, but its more about why Black men are constantly the punching bag for all of the problems in the Black community. Then my boy made an observation (I’m paraphrasing):

“How come you never hear anybody say, ‘Too many of our women in the Black community are letting any and every man get them pregnant. We have too many women sleeping with men recklessly and getting pregnant by men who have no business being fathers or boyfriends. We need to hold some of our women more responsible for their decisions.’”

Of course my response was, “well, you just can’t do that. It’s not women’s fault that these men leave them alone and without help after they get pregnant.”

But then I started thinking…why can’t you ever hold women accountable for the demise of the community the same way we continuously hold men accountable. It’s pretty much the party line that (many) men aren’t living up to their ends of the bargain. They get these women pregnant and roll out leaving another fatherless child to fend for his or herself through life with only a mother who can’t teach a boy how to be a man or a girl how to be loved by a man.

The truth is though, aside from the snide comments made about the baby mama with seven children on welfare, nobody ever does lay any blame on the women involved in those situations, almost as if its taboo. At least not publicly. Sure, behind closed doors we all think the women with all those children probably needed to be locked up in a room with a copy of O Magazine and Chicken Soup for The Soul, but pretty quickly we start talking about the fact that their daddy’s probably aren’t any good. It’s so easy we do it by default. From churches to public podiums, if there’s a conversation about the community and its problems, its pretty much starting with the lack of fathers in the home. Or the lack of a father presence, etc. Nobody EVER says, publicly, “While the fathers aren’t there somebody needs to figure out how to stop these women from sleeping around with all these men too. Lord almighty, we might not have a father problem if we didn’t have some of these girls giving it up without protection.”

The assumption is that evil men dupe all of these women into becoming mothers and are the reason every cat in hood doesn’t have a yacht. But how come the accountability doesn’t go both ways?

Riddle me that one Batman…should women be held accountable…at all? Public Blackness seems to indicate no. But I’m not sure that’s right.

Are women really always victims in these situation? Or do all the talking heads have it right?

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka VITAMIN P aka 40 P aka TANGLE JIG P aka GO KING BEEF aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3


10 Things I’ve Learned Since Becoming A Daddy

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Here at VSB.com, we pride ourselves in providing that real and honest commentary.  Plus, since we’re brothas, we’re prone to keeping it real.  Well, the past two weeks have been the realest weeks of my life.  And since I know that most of us on this site plan on having kids someday — if you don’t have them already — I figure that thru my tragedy and triumph, everybody can gain.  What’s the point of education if you can’t share it?

So without further ado:

1)  When people say that you won’t get anymore sleep, they’re not lying.

I got a total of 6 hours of sleep yesterday, and since the birth of my daughter, that’s the most sleep I’ve gotten in a single day.  I’ve also managed to make it thru a day getting something like 2 hours of sleep.  At this rate, delirium should set in very shortly and I’ll be writing posts about leprechauns running across highways in Birmingham, Alabama.

2)  Girls projectile pee too.

I think my cat is traumatized right now.  One day, I attemped to change my daughter’s diaper.  She had a clean diaper.  How disappointed was I.  Until all of a sudden she started pissing and a rainbow of golden liquid cleared at least 8 feet in my room.  I pulled a George Bush and narrowly missed being the target and my cat followed my lead but not in time.  Poor thing.  THEN, she pooped at me (yes, AT ME).  Let’s just say, this little lady is having a ball.

3)  Freaking out is inevitable, especially if you aren’t getting enough sleep.

I fell asleep on the couch one day and then woke up two hours later ONLY TO THINK THAT I’D FALLEN ASLEEP ON MY CHILD AND SMOTHERED HER.  Nevermind that she was upstairs with mommy all safe and sound.  To complete the murder, I fell asleep on a blanket and woke up trying to unfold the blanket to find my baby.

Get some sleep, people.

4)  Relatives are a Godsend.

I don’t know how people do this on their own.  Having all the grandparents in town has been nothing short of a miracle.  For one, I really have no clue what the f*ck I’m doing.  And as a new parent, I tend to over think everything and panic when things aren’t going right – read:  the baby’s screaming uncontrollably.  Then my mother swoops in, grabs the baby and calms her in like 2.5 seconds.  Plus, they keep kicking us out of the living room so that we’ll go get some sleep.

5)  Time is a very fluid concept.

I’ve honestly lost track of what day it is.  We had a doctor’s appointment on this past Monday.  It feels like it happened 2 weeks ago.  Not to mention that my daughter seems to be a total night owl, basically she’s got her days and nights confused right now, so she gets all her jollies between midnight and 8am.  Yes, she’s kicking my a** right now.

6)  I don’t mind not breastfeeding.

I’ve read some books about men feeling left out of the process because they can’t breastfeed.  F*ck them cats.  I’m SO cool on that one.  For one, it looks painful.  Like getting your Johnson caught in a door and nobody can pry it open.  For 30 minutes every 3 hours.  That’s a lot of badwood.

7)  There really is nothing on television between the hours of 12 and 8am.

Trust me.  Television is no solace.

8)  Your house will become sterile.

I’ve never had to sterilize so much sh*t in my entire life.  It’s gotten so bad I tried to throw my shoes into a pot and boil them just to make sure they wouldn’t negatively affect my daughter.

9)  Static cling is a motherf*cker.

For some reason, either by myth or literature, my girlfriend has forbid the use of fabric softener.  It’s bad enough I have to use odorless detergent so my clothes don’t smell like an arctic tundra, now I’m walking around like a human lightning rod.  I’ve been shocked more than a 22 year old Black male athlete who let’s all of his women buy his condoms.

10)   I don’t remember NEARLY as many nursery rhymes as I thought I did.

I’ve come up with and sang more remixes to old songs than has to be legal.  Right now I’m waiting on R.Kelly to call me so we can do the nursery rhyme remix album.  I’ve resorted to making up my own songs and dubbing myself Dinosaur Daddy.

And yes, I’ve gotten that corny.

Good people of VSB.com, welcome to Panama’s World.

-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P

The Second Shortest Post You’ll Ever Read From Me

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Admin note: Sorry for the delay.  A brotha’s traveling down the East Coast.

Panama Fact#1: My favorite rap group of all time is N.W.A.

Panama Fact #2: I think DJ Quik’s song “Sweet Black P***y” is a masterpiece of American musicalism.

Best song on Dr. Dre’s The Chronic?

“B*tches Ain’t Sh*t”. Without a doubt.

Most innovative, yet totally misogynistic song of the past decade?

Ying-Yang Twins.

“The Whisper Song.”

Which leads me to this -

Panama Fact#3: If due dates and science hold true, in just under 3 months, I’m about to be a daddy.

It’s a girl.

Panama Jackson is responsible for shaping a woman’s outlook on life, love, and relationships.

Lord.

Help.

Me.

Thank you and goodnight.

-VSB P aka TANGLE JIG P aka THE ARSONIST

FYI – I’m in Atlanta this weekend. If you see a random uber-awesome, sexxy dude wearing a verysmartbrothas.com t-shirt on Saturday, it’s me. Love me. And take a shot with me to help me prepare for my new charge in life – raising a woman.