My friend and colleague Margaret Wheatley says,

“Warriors appear at certain historic moments, when something valuable is being threatened and needs protection. It could be clans, communities, kings, lands—something is being imperiled by outside forces. This situation of extreme threat demands exceptional protectors. This is when the Warriors arise.”

                In my book, The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet, I said that we must separate the life of the warrior from the destruction of war and quoted meditation master Chögyam Trungpa.

“Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others,” says Trungpa. “Aggression is the source of our problems not the solution. Here the word ‘warrior’ is taken from the Tibetan pawo which literally means ‘one who is brave.’  Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness.” Trungpa concludes by saying, “Warriorship is not being afraid of who you are.”

                I experienced my first warrior calling on November 21, 1969. My wife was pregnant with our first child and I had spent the last nine hours coaching her through the Lamaze breathing techniques we had been taught in the child-birth classes with other expectant parents to be. When we began the classes, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be part of the birth process, even if I was allowed, afraid I might pass out at the sight of blood or become overly concerned with my wife’s pain and be more of a hindrance than a help.

                When the time had arrived for her to go to the delivery room, the nurse said,

“Well, your job is done here Mr. Diamond. You can go to the waiting room now.”

                I felt a mixture of sadness and relief. We had been given the rules of Kaiser hospital at the outset. Whichever doctor was there when the baby was ready to be born would decide if the father would be allowed in the delivery room. So I kissed my wife goodbye and wished her well. She was wheeled through the doors toward the delivery room and I walked down the long hallway toward the exit sign leading to the waiting room to sit with the other expectant fathers.

                Yet, in the eternity of those few moments it took to make the short walk, something shifted in me. I felt a call from my unborn child that could not be denied telling me I don’t want a waiting-room father. Your place is here with us.

                I turned around and walked back into the delivery room and took my place at the head of the table. There was no question of asking permission, no chance I would leave if directed. I was simply there. I felt a wonderful sense of calm come over me and quite soon, amid tears of joy, my son, Jemal, arrived in the world. He was handed to me and as I looked into his eyes, I made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to do everything I could to create a world where fathers were fully involved with their children throughout their lives.

                When my wife and I were in college after we had met and fallen in love, we agreed we both wanted children. But we also felt that there were children already born who needed loving parents. We decided we would have a child then adopt a child. After Jemal was born, we began the adoption process for a little girl. Two years later we adopted a two-and-a-half-month old African-American little girl who we named Angela.

                As I write this our son Jemal, is 54 and has a child of his own. Angela is 52 and has four children. My wife, Carlin, and I now have six grown children, seventeen grandchildren, three great grandchildren, and one on the way. Before I had children, I thought my purpose as a man was centered outside the home, with the work I did in the world. I still do work outside the home, but over the years I have come to see my most important role has been as a hands-on caregiver.

Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies

                Dr. Sarah Hrdy is an anthropologist and primatologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates. She has recently turned her attention to men.

“It has long seemed self-evident that women care for babies and men do other things,” says Hrdy. “When evolutionary science came along, it rubber-stamped this venerable division of labor: mammalian males evolved to compete for status and mates, while females were purpose-built to gestate, suckle, and otherwise nurture the victors’ offspring.”

                In her recent book, Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies, Hrdy set out to trace the deep history of male nurturing and explain a surprising departure from everything she had assumed to be “normal.” She offers a sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies.

                “Under the right circumstances,” she says, “males of our species are as well-equipped as women to tenderly nurture babies and develop caring priorities. Gestation, giving birth, and breast-feeding are not nature’s sole pathways to parental involvement and intense devotion.”

                This was certainly my experience when Jemal and Angela were babies. Once I brought my wife and new-born son home from the hospital, I took three weeks off from work to help with the immediate caregiving. I assumed that mothers were born with some genetically driven knowledge of how to care for babies but soon learned that was not the case. She had breasts for the baby, but breastfeeding was an art she and the baby had to learn together.

                I knew that changing diapers was not a sex-specific skill and I soon learned to get as good at it as was my wife. After three weeks I went back to work and my wife soon moved into the role of full-time caregiver, with me as the support team. That lasted a year until my wife announced one day that she needed a break and was doing to take a three-week trip with a girlfriend and that I would assume full-time care duties while she was away.

                The idea sounded reasonable. I could tell she was exhausted even with the help I supplied when I came home from work. But the truth was I was scared as hell. All my fears came to the surface. What will I do when I don’t know what to do? What if he starts crying and I can’t make him stop? We didn’t have any other family who lived close to us and most of our friends were either single or were overwhelmed with their own family challenges.

                My wife was reassuring and said I could call her if I needed advice. She kissed me goodbye and off she went. I’m a long way from those fearful days, but the truth was it was one of the greatest gifts of my life. Jemal and I worked things out together. Each hour of each day we were together, I gained confidence. My wife had left enough breast milk (using one of those handpumps popular at the time) and I learned how to heat and serve. We played together and I carried him around on my back.

                My wife got worried when I hadn’t called and when she phoned me she was relieved to learn that we were going well. My confidence as a man has grown through the years as I learned new skills in caring for our daughter.

                Dr. Hrdy discovered some of the reasons that men can become as good at nurturing infants as women.

“Early in my career, back in the 1970s while still focused on infanticide, the antithesis of nurturing,” says Hrdy, “I learned about a phenomenon called ‘sensitization.’ Even in species of animals whose males ordinarily ignore, attack, or cannibalize pups they encounter, males might, given the right circumstances, switch to gently tending them instead. What it took was repeated exposure. Time in intimate proximity somehow ‘flipped a switch’ in the deepest recesses of the male brain, whether a rodent’s or a monkey’s.”

                Dr. Hrdy went on to say,

“Time in intimate proximity to babies could have surprising effects on males including surges in oxytocin (known as a ‘bonding’ hormone).”  

                I didn’t know it at the time, but being in intimate contact with my children triggered the brain chemicals that are present in both males and females and can be stimulated if given enough time together. Dr. Hrdy concludes,

“For men, it turns out, have a different birthright from the one that I and many of my evolutionary colleagues have so long assigned them.”

                In standing up to a system that would deny fathers in the delivery room, I learned that it takes strength with heart, as my colleague Dr. Daniel Ellenberg describes it or being a compassionate warrior as another friend, Sean Harvey discusses in his book, Warrior Compassion: Unleashing the Healing Power of Men. It’s time for more men to stand up and embrace our birthright. We are needed now more than ever.

                I look forward to hearing from you. What are you own experiences nurturing young children? What support have your received? What resistance have you found from others or from your own early conditioning about what is “natural” for men?

                If you would like to read more articles like these, please visit me at www.MenAlive.com. You can subscribe to my free weekly newsletter here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.