Mothers obviously have what might be called the ‘maternal instinct’. Is there such a thing as the paternal instinct? It has been traditionally assumed that ‘raising children’ is not really in the cards for men - at least, not to the same degree. But now having been the father of my second child, I’ve been noticing certain ‘instincts’ within myself (which I must confess were there even with my first child but didn’t make me think about it at the time). I’m wondering if it could be said that these instincts are quintessentially ‘paternal’ or simply ‘masculine’. What’s the difference? ‘Paternal’ would insinuate an approach taken by fathers towards their children specifically whereas ‘masculine’ would insinuate an approach taken by men in general towards people in general.
The specific incident that made me think of this was when my daughter (2 yrs old) was finishing her lunch and, just to spoil her, I decided to break the rules and give her a chocolate. By ‘the rules’ I mean that we generally try to avoid giving her junk food if possible (if she asks for it, we usually make it dependent on something - like finishing her food and cleaning her toys), but on occasion (usually when her mother is not around) I love to break the rules and spoil here. My wife would never do this (or at least be way more resistent to doing so).
Now, for some reason I can’t quite justify at the moment, it strikes me as typical of fathers to want to spoil their kids - especially their daughters. This is very true of me - I love the thought of treating my kids to things above and beyond ‘the rules’ - once in a while - and I think this is true of fathers in general; not that mothers don’t, but in my general (and perhaps biased) impression, not as much as fathers.
Is this a ‘male’ instinct or a ‘father’s’? It seems somewhat counterintuitive that it would be a ‘male’ instinct - men, or so our reputation would have it, are much more self-serving and opportunistic. But it makes a lot more sense, again intuitively, to say that fathers, at least towards their children (and especially, as I said, their daughters), are inclined to spoil. Now as I said above, part of the appeal of this is ‘breaking the rules’, which I would say is a kind of masculine characteristic in general, but so is being a dead-beat and negligent father, or someone who just doesn’t give a damn about anyone but himself - so why, I’m inclined to ask, would treating someone else in a special way be the preferred way to break the rules?
On the other hand, this can work in the opposite direction. As a father, although I love to spoil my kids, I’m also way more strong willed than my wife to resist the urge to give in to their wining and crying and their tantrum throwing. I’m quite convinced that to give in to their every whim and demand (like bawling when they can’t have a cookie) is only going to teach them that all they have to do to get their way is scream and cry long and loud enough. I find that I’m much more capable of practicing this rule than my wife. My wife’s heart is rended when she hears our daughter crying, and this I’m sure is a motherly instinct, but could it be said that my ability to resist the urge is, by the same token, a fatherly instinct? This one’s a bit harder to tease apart from masculinity in general. Masculinity in general is considered to be a bit more ‘cold hearted’ than femininity, and therefore a bit more suited to sticking to rigid schedules or plans despite any emotional sway working against it. So is this a case of masculinity devoid of any ‘fatherly’ instinct, or is it a fatherly instinct in the sense that, when it comes to raising kids, it works (supposedly).
To complicate the matter, these two examples do seem to contradict each other. I like to spoil my daughter on the one hand, but on the other, I can be so much more the disciplinarian - so as not to spoil her. If they’re both cases of the ‘fatherly instinct’, can we say that the fatherly instinct can manifest in paradoxical ways depending on the context? I spoil her when it seems to me that it won’t do any harm (and in fact makes her happy) but I resist the urge to do so when I think it will do some harm? Or is it that my ‘fatherly instinct’ comes out when I want to spoil her on my own accord but when it comes to giving in to someone else’s demands (i.e. compromising my control of the situation, compromising my ‘ego’), it’s my masculinity that comes out? Or is it the case that neither are ‘fatherly instincts’ and the reasons I do this are more a matter of lack - that is, a lack of motherly instinct (or parental instinct more generally)?
It has been typically assumed that the mother is the one with the ‘instinct’, and that the father knows nothing (or significantly less) about raising kids. But my question here goes against this grain: I question whether it is a matter of having ‘less’ instinct, or actually a matter of having different instincts. After all, it would be asburd to suppose that fathers are not at all involved in their children’s lives (some are, of course, but these are the exceptions to the rule). So if we can assume that generally fathers are involved in their children’s lives, and have been since the dawning of our species, it would make sense, not only that they have a ‘paternal instinct’, but that this instinct is most likely different in some ways from the maternal instinct (and perhaps, on that basis, not readily recognized as a parental instinct at least at all).
