Guardian Australia
When I’m seen changing a nappy, surprise on people’s faces tells me the bar isn’t just set low, in many contexts it doesn’t exist The slow, weeks-long reckoning that followed my son’s birth three months ago was something no book had prepared me for. What crept up on me was a dawning existential realisation, somewhere between one overnight feed and the next, that everything had quietly reorganised itself while I was too exhausted to notice. For nearly a decade I’ve been building my identity as a men’s health psychologist and researcher – testing it, recalibrating, working out how I want to operate. By the time my son, Arty, arrived, I knew that version of myself reasonably well. What I hadn’t reckoned with was the second identity that came with him: one that needed to find its place inside a life that was already fully furnished. This one didn’t come with a mentor, a peer group who’d been through it or years of iteration to draw on. It just arrived, and I was expected to know what to do with it. Continue reading...
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