To be a successful father... there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To me, having kids is the ultimate job in life. I want to be most successful at being a good father.
People say you don't need a father to be successful. I take offense to that.
It is much easier to become a father than to be one.
When one has not had a good father, one must create one.
For years before I became a father, I would try to spend as much time as I could with my friends who were parents and their kids. And I was really impressed. They all sort of managed to do it, and do it gracefully.
Becoming a parent gives you access to a whole world of feeling. It gives you a much stronger sense of life and death: becoming a father made me realise my own mortality.
Becoming a father increases your capacity for love and your level of patience. It opens up another door in a person - a door which you may not even have known was there. That's what I feel with my son. There's suddenly another level of love that expands. My son is my greatest joy, out of everything in my life.
Being a father can 'unreason' your worldview, or at least make it very flexible, and that can create all sorts of fun and insights. It's sad that children's open-eyed wonder and sense of play begin to fade as they approach adolescence. One grand function of fathering is to keep the fading to a minimum.
The best thing about being a dad? Well, I think it's just the thing that every man wants - to have a son and heir.
Becoming a dad means you have to be a role model for your son and be someone he can look up to.