Q:A few weeks ago, you wrote an article in which you talked about potential sibling rivalry between a four-year-old and his baby sister. I would like to tell you about our family.
When our son was 2 1/2 years old, we gave birth to our baby daughter. My cousin brought us baby gifts for our daughter and a gift for our son. She gave him a baby doll, complete with a blanket and a bottle and she told our son that when Mommy feeds his baby sister he could feed and rock his baby to sleep, just like Mommy does. Of course, we had prepared our son for his new sister and he happily tended to his doll while I looked after his little sister.
Read Also
Nutritious pork packed with vitamins, essential minerals
Recipes for pork
Today he has two children of his own and he is very involved with them. I like to think that the doll that my cousin gave him provided a valuable life experience.
Maybe the four-year-old in your article needs his own baby to look after, just as my son did.
A:Thank you so much for your letter. We hear so much about emancipated women these days, how life is better for women than it used to be, and how we can look forward to more women assuming executive functions in the future, that we forget that many men have been emancipated as well.
More dads are nurturing their children than ever before. With people like your cousin around, it is clear that more dads are being properly trained to care for their kids.
Dads have been a mystery to children for a long time. Not that long ago, a good dad was one who put food on the table, supported Mom, and kept his distance from his children.
Your son, as are many fathers, is breaking that tradition and in doing so will get to know his children better than did either his dad or his grandfather before him.
The new world is far from perfect and nurturing fathers are not always celebrated as much as they could be. But family life is better and we can look forward to even better times in the future.
All of it starts where your cousin started when she gave your son his own doll, with the expectations we set for little children.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
