By 
Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer. This is his column for Esquire.
BY THE TIME you read this column, I will have become a father for the second time. Having only just gotten into the rhythm of how to properly raise one kid, it’s a daunting prospect to be plunged back into it all over again.
There is, of course, a ton of literature and online advice out there for new dads. But there is substantially less advice for those going through it a second (or third, or fourth!) time. Maybe I’m supposed to remember what happened when my daughter arrived a few years ago, but much like my wife, who, as with many women, has been genetically programmed to forget the pain of giving birth so that she can do it again, the experience has been wiped from my memory, Men In Black style.
This dearth of knowledge has been explained to me as normal, because the real coherency gap for men is 0 – 1. That is, going from having no kids and booking spontaneous trips to Tokyo to having a newborn and booking spontaneous visits from the sleep consultant. Levelling up to the second is like taking the training wheels off a bike you already know how to ride, apparently.
What changes is the balancing act, but not the intrinsic concept.
Ever the Louis Theroux of my local government area, I have canvassed every father I know, which in my pram-filled hood, seems to be every second guy. I am keenly interested in those my age that have more than one child. I ask them straight-up questions: how have their lives changed? Has their marriage simply devolved into a gigantic scheduling calendar? When was the last time they had a nice dinner, saw a film, had a second to read a book? (This last point is especially pertinent to me as someone that writes them.) Have they given up all their nice hoodies and sneakers because the kids just puke milk all over them? You know, the real stuff.
I also consult the Internet, a resource that’s famous for never providing bad or off-colour answers. Interestingly, when I typed in ‘advice for dads second child’, the most overwhelmingly popular result was a Reddit thread that’s been live for over a year, nestled inside a channel called – you guessed it – ‘/Daddit’, which has over 1.5 million members. Dads of two or more from around the world responded to this thread by an anxious poster, who sounded an awful lot like my internal monologue, as he asked about how to prepare himself for the seismic life change of balancing two kids.
“Think of all the diseases brought home from daycare, now double them. Think of all the doctors appointments, now double them,” read one. “The only real break we get is when they’re both sleeping,” added another. But then, between the angst, there were glimmers of beauty: “[All that] being said, I love both the boys more than I can understand. The older one adores his baby brother. In a couple of years it’s going to be absolute chaos here in the best of ways.” Perhaps the most honest I saw was this: “The bad stuff is not forever, and then you get to see them live their lives.”
Despite some of its offensive, borderline illegal dark corners, I’d argue Reddit is one of the purest forms of social media we have left. There is none of the showboating you see on more visual mediums like TikTok or Instagram, just anonymous (in this case) young dads behind a little avatar, looking for like-minded advice. It remains the closest thing to a late 1990s messageboard, which if you do a rough age calculation, is what many of the fathers in this group grew up on; where we first began to crowdsource information. Not all of it is glamorous or uplifting, but then, neither is raising a child.
My very first column for Esquire, back when I only had one daughter and all she did was sleep, asked the question as to why men were so bad at keeping in touch. I had found myself in an entirely new world, estranged from my younger friends, disconnected or on different schedules from those who were already parents. From reader feedback, I discovered that many others were feeling the same way, but hadn’t yet had that feeling articulated for them. There may be no overwhelming consensus on second children, but I hope that a few men like me will come out of the woodwork after reading this, just as they did on that /Daddit thread.
Yes, I’m scared. But ultimately, I’m with the Redditer who can’t wait to see his kids live their lives. What a ride.
Jonathan Seidler is an Australian writer, father and nu-metal apologist. He is the author of a memoir called It’s A Shame About Ray and a novel titled All the Beautiful Things You Love, which is out now. Jonno has some interesting things to say about music, fatherhood, Aussie culture, mental health, problematic faves and the social gymnastics of group chats. This is his column for Esquire. You can see all of his previous columns here.
Related:
Is a young dad allowed to have a Brat summer . . . in winter?
