Our 725th Dad in the Limelight is United Nations Senior Advisor, author and father, James McGowan. I want to thank James McGowan for being a part of this series. It has been great getting connected with him and now sharing James McGowan with all of you.
1) Tell me about yourself, (as well as how you are in the limelight for my readers knowledge)
My name is James McGowan and if you saw that zombie flick World War Z, you kind of know me already. Unfortunately I don’t look like Brad Pitt, but my life is exactly like the character he portrayed. I worked for the United Nations for years in all sorts of situations before getting fed up with, well, let’s just say a lot of things, and I decided to stay home and take care of my kids instead. I still get dragged back into the UN for the rare consultancy now and then, because, really, the world is such a mess, but my focus has permanently changed. My mistake was thinking that the resourcefulness I had shown in my professional career would translate over to the child-raising job, but nothing can prepare you for it. Hence, all hell and comedy broke out. I guess I’m somewhat in the limelight because I wrote a comic memoir called “The Baby Wrestler” that charts my scary journey through the land of the little people.
2) Tell me about your family
I’m from a family of 8 kids from Brooklyn. My Dad was an NYPD Detective in charge of the organized crime task force in Manhattan–an even crazier job than I had. My upbringing was what they now call “free range,” which was common in the days before Eton Patz disappeared. I see his murder as a landmark in the way we raise kids in America. Everything tightened way up. Much of the change was for the better, but definitely not all of it.
Here at home, I have a boy and a girl, who might be better described as a destroyer and a creator. It’s like having the whole Hindu worldview operating in microcosm right here in my house. My girl is a maker and a creative powerhouse. My son is a destroyer and a star athlete. I guess the universe seeks balance after all. In another example, I married a smart woman to counteract my stupidity. She’s a research clinician at a nonprofit foundation. Her steady salary meant that we had a choice: we didn’t have to outsource the job of raising our children—as long as I had the blind nerve to think that I could do it. This turned out to be one of those rare times when my overconfidence paid off. I’m grateful everyday that both kids are healthy, happy, and grudgingly grateful in turn that I am the one trying to counter the contemporary culture that seems bent on turning them into consumer zombies. I hope that doesn’t sound too strident, because we aren’t. We indulge in the full range of fun activities and then some, but we try to be aware of the influences, distractions, and soul-stealing programming that constantly bombard people these days.
3) What has been the largest challenge you have had in being a father?
For me, the single biggest trick was finding the patience to deal with all the fabulous nonsense, unnecessary messes, and seemingly dead time that comes along with the job. I had been a go-go guy, always riveted on achieving goals toward success on an important project. It was a linear process. Some of these skills translate, but raising kids often requires the opposite mentality. I had to accept being part of a circular process whereby success meant nothing more than a sleeping child at the end of the day, albeit one who was well fed, clean, appropriately disciplined, and inching safely along a developmental pathway that’s totally unique to that individual. You have to gain the patience of Job to even think about doing it right. Remember, we’re talking about 3,000 diaper changes per kid, and that’s just one small aspect of the overall picture. Patience, my friend.
4) What advice would you give to other fathers?
A key thing to finding the necessary patience, I think, is to find humility first. If you take on this job, you are a maintenance man and you’d better get used to it. Which is a beautiful thing, really, because if we’d all only realize that we are maintenance men first and foremost, we’d actually think about maintaining the planet, maintaining peace, maintaining community. Once you get to the point of being a servant/leader, you’ll realize that there are no women’s roles or men’s roles or women’s work or men’s work. There is only work. So do it. You’ll then become comfortable being a man on this job, with no need to imitate the way that women approach it. For example, if you are in walking proximity to school, walk with the kids no matter what the weather, and I mean, no matter what, year round. Get them used to employing the appropriate gear outside, and get them out as often as possible. Severely limit screen time. I have friends whose kids had nervous breakdowns after years of imbibing Minecraft or whatever insidious game or app has their the attention of their friends. They’re poisonous. Refuse anyone who tells you that your child needs psychoactive drugs to sit still in class. That whole bit is a scandal waiting to happen. Get them to try a variety of sports and for God’s sake make sure they can swim as early as possible. Hey–we live on a water planet so why cordon off the majority of it. And when the time comes, don’t tell them to not smoke pot, which will only make them smoke pot. Tell them to put it off, and explain that they are in the process of developing a sensitive navigational system that will direct them toward doing the thing they love in life, and pot will scramble that ability. Let them know there is plenty of time for that and all the other substances they might wish to try once they are adults and on track toward a happy adult life. Try to show them glimpses of the incredible mystery surrounding them in the natural world, and the pleasures to be had in exploring it. So use the competitive advantage of being a man when approaching the job of child-raising. Be tougher than the Moms. Children raised by a man should never act entitled, spoiled, or engage in the exclusionary behavior that I see so rampant today. Be forewarned that you will be acting contrary to the popular culture in trying to raise such kids, but there has never been a better or more important time to try. Climate change, and possibly even worse events, will turn their world upside down. They should be at least somewhat ready to respond in helpful ways.
5) How have you come to balance parenthood and outside life?
At first, not very well! I’d scramble to try to fulfill missions with the UN and also take care of my kids, but then I began to see that my involvement in the developmental lives of my children far outweighed anything else I could do.
I discovered the paradox at the heart of this job: there is no future in childcare, except the future itself.
If you raise them right, they have a shot at contributing more to a better world than I ever could. Now that my kids are a little older, (7th and 10th grades), and my parents are both dead, whom I helped to care for in their final years, I’m starting to dig myself out. I’m going to try shifting focus back toward my own projects and interests in the coming years. But don’t be fooled. Middle and high schoolers need A LOT of help, especially if they show any gifts that will not be nurtured in the antiquated educational system.
6) What have you learned from the fathers that you have interacted with?
One of my most important mentors was the writer and translator, Alastair Reid, who wrote for the New Yorker for 40 years and was close friends with the Latin American writers Borges, Neruda, and Marquez. Although he was 35 years older than me, we were great friends. Alastair raised his son by himself, and he always supported my efforts to be a full time father. When I was starting to consider myself a terrible fit for the job and ready to throw up my hands, he said, “keeping house can be lots of fun.” That gave me the energy to try to change my perception of the work. I can’t say that I ever came to fully accept his point of view, but I came close enough to continue with my sanity intact.
I also could not have done it without my father’s constant encouragement. If you ever want confirmation that staying home to take care of your kids is the right thing to do, ask anyone who has been grievously wounded in combat, earned two purple hearts, and faced death head on multiple times. Funny how that cuts through the bullshit that society might heap on you as a man doing a “woman’s” job. These folks know that it’s all over in the blink of an eye, and that there is no better way to have spent your time here on Earth than taking care of your family.
7) What else would you share regarding your experiences as a father thus far?
I could go on, and I do, in my book, “The Baby Wrestler” which was compiled from notes I took along the way. Try to keep a notebook, one for each kid, so you can capture all the funny, confounding, and perplexing moments that would otherwise be forgotten. Journaling will also help you to expurgate the demons of the day and allow you to get up and do it all over again the next day. In rereading the entries, you might glimpse the fact that you aren’t so much caught up in an endless crazy loop, as you are caught up in a crazy ascending spiral—something more like a tornado, if you will. If that sounds more hopeful, then you, too, must be a Baby Wrestler.
If you have any questions for James McGowan, please leave a comment here and I will make sure that he gets them so that he may be able to respond!
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