In a similar vein to this essay, I want to be a father so badly. I love being a woman, and am satisfied with the machinery I have been given.

But having to be the incubator means I am saddle with the full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born. I go from woman to mother. And with it comes judgement and duties, and goes freedom and care-free living.

I want to be a father so I can raise a kid, provide, teach and impart to a little slice of my own genes. And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.

But alas I was born with a womb, a sexual attraction to men, and the drive for a high-impact career. The three seem incompatible.

I just love how you assume being a father is easy. Grass is always greener and what not.

Being a father comes with its own responsibilities and subjection to judgment by the community. The phrase "deadbeat dad" is in the common vernacular, but you rarely hear about "deadbeat moms" (trust me, they exist).

> full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born

This is simply not true. If this were true, child support laws and requirements would not exist.

You actually don't have full responsibility once the child is born. Even then, you can give the child up for adoption.

You do have something that men don't have, which is full control over whether a birth happens in the first place. Men don't have this.

I'm a father, have had sole custody of my five children for 8 nearly 9 years.

Both parents have the same responsibility to their kids, to do the absolute best for them, and we should fight back against outdated cultural norms that assume that mothers are the default parent, and that fathers "babysit" their own children.

> and expectation once the baby is born.

This can be resolved by choosing a better man as a partner, one that is supportive and willing to be an equal partner. I understand finding someone that fulfills that as well as this person also being someone you're attracted to and compatible with socially is challenging, but I have seen relationships like this before so I know it's possible.

This belittles men, especially those who are single fathers and have similar career struggles as single mothers. Our perceptions create our reality and if we constantly think we've been given the short end of the stick then we'll look for evidence around us to prove this perception. There's a whole other side to motherhood that comes with fulfillment, meaning, and growth.

I think what you seek is a great companion to truly share the responsibilities with.

I am a father of two wonderful kids. I do more drop offs than my wife, I changed just as many diapers / handled sick care, I handle more of the nighttime routines and give each kid a 10 minute back rub every night while my wife lays in bed (9 years and counting for my eldest) and cook more than my wife. She does clean more than me, folds more laundry, prepare their lunches, organizes their after care and play dates and babysitters more. She also worked harder when the kids were 0-6 months than I did for sure.

I begrudge her for none of what I do “more”. It’s hard work but I love being with my kids and my wife works her tail off running her business. We have a great balance and I feel lucky. And yet life isn’t perfect and, it being hard work, it’s easy to point fingers instead of focusing on gratitude and real world trade offs (two things the paper and feminism generally lack).

I think it comes down to ambitions. Do you have ambitions to be financially successful, to have a wonderful career or marriage or to be a great parent? Although feminists are loathe to talk of hierarchies for obvious reasons, they nevertheless have their use. So let me hierarchize: I truly have greater ambitions around being a parent than anything else. We also happen to be financially successful (more so because of my wife) but she has greater ambitions around that than I do.

So anyway, I think we are the counter example to your last statement and show that it can be compatible. And many of my friends are similar.

I'm a house-husband to a wife with a womb who birthed our daughter. She's a software dev at a major software company. I did most of the diapers (little one is soon 7 and out of them for a while now), I do all the cooking. We had daycare partially to give breaks, but also so the little one would get good social exposure at a young age. I sadly can't drive due to a mix of anxiety and sedating medication for other health stuff, so she does before-school appointments most of the time (so she can go to the office after without me having to bus home), but for the most part I come along with appointments and I'm the one to go along on school trips and do the before and after school bus times. I do almost all the away playdates, with playdates at home being a joint endeavor.

Her carefree living has gone, but she can still go to work parties while I stay home and look after our daughter. She's never told me she experienced any overt judgement about being the sole breadwinner (there was a male manager who asked her after mat leave how her vacation was. I wonder how much he was involved in the early years of raising his kids‽). I will admit I do get more praise than I should be for doing my role, but really that praise is pretty empty, the bar is so low for men. The praise I do get mainly comes from women older than us. I've only once gotten a "Mr. Mom" comment and that was from an older American acquaintance.

She took about 4 months off if I recall correctly for mat leave after our daughter was born. She was going crazy at home.

She has some limitations for sure, she feels like she's as far as she'll get at least while our daughter is young, in terms of the promo-game. But she and the company are content with where she's at, though she is a bit envious at times about how some of her colleagues have been promoted to higher levels despite starting at the same time or after her.

She's very involved and a great mom.

I hope that didn't come off as a brag (I'm terrible at keeping the place clean and tidy, we hire help for that), my point is that you probably can have a high-impact career, be sexually attracted to men, and have a womb, and have a child. The freedom and care-free living will go regardless of one's gender, that's just part of being a good parent. There are plenty of men out there up for a majority parenting role.

For some context I'm around 40, and in my age group there's a lot more involved fathers (we see lone fathers with children at the park all the time, including with solely presenting-female children) and working mothers than when I was a child. Living in a major city in Ontario, Canada.

My wife has some severe challenges (hormonal and otherwise), so I have changed almost all diapers, and work part time/nights as a software developer purely for the fact that I need to be available to take our child regularly throughout the day, at one point I was full time childcare and job. My wife has a free pass to go on day trips and climbing excursions for her mental health. I guess the point is, to find someone who genuinely wants to help and participate, and find something that works for you. It's such a huge part of life, it's important to get the balance right. That's a difficult thing to do, but knowing what someone's core beliefs about family, responsibility, and expectations is important.

Yes, there are no solutions, only trade offs.

I believe procreation is the highest impact a human can achieve.

The result of 14 billion years of cosmic evolution, a thermodynamic miracle, the waking universe looking back on itself.

Imagine what we can achieve when robots can do the laundry and dishes.

Where I live, no Dad is being praised for changing a diaper. And golf clubs suffer.

hm.

I don't know why you couldn't be a great father. In the sense you're talking about. I know it would come with the physical baggage (or not, if you adopt?)

A friend I love dearly is raising a 3 year old little girl... she never expected to get pregnant at 42... and she is as much a father as a mother. She lets the girl play in mud puddles while other parents stare, and collect bugs, and go look at art in museums. Absolutely unconcerned with how the world thinks a mom with a 3 year old should behave.

[edit] it did slow my friend's career over the past few years, but, didn't kill it. And she's back to it now. But more importantly... I've never seen anyone love anything as much, even when she says she's frustrated out of her mind. And me, not having kids, I'm a little jealous of that feeling.

[edit2] I'm an uncle, so maybe that's more my speed ... just jumping in for the easy fun parts and teaching the kids new things and being the visiting fireman. But that's not what being a father is, at least as far as my brother's day to day driving them to and from school and taking care of them.

What an interesting comment. Do you feel that the aspects of fatherhood that you are most jealous of are relatively lower expectations of time commitment directly watching after the kid and encouragement of professional success?

And if it’s not too prying to ask what are your ideal expectations for your partner? How important is their career? What is their ideal role in childrearing?

Start with the Dad jokes. That's the gateway to gender freedom in parenting!

> ... And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.

I may be calling names now, but maybe this is an unnecessary "oldschool" meme that should already be forgotten. In my country (Estonia), I don't see dads actually being praised for every small childcare chore they courageously complete. Nobody does that, really. It's more like a meme that e.g. feminists love to bring about and keep alive in Facebook or elsewehere, thus showing an ongoing conflict between men and women (or -- being a man vs being a woman, with women actually as the superior sex or side). Let it fade away finally, for god's sake, and let dads quietly do their thing.

Source: first-hand experience as a primary caregiver for our children for several years, while the mom was working full time. It was not really an optimal scenario in terms of sharing economical responsibility within a family (it did raise conflicts at times), but I liked "doing stuff" with both children, and never expected any direct admiration from society, etc. Luckily, I also didn't get almost any of this. :) I just did my thing as a dad, got children to kindergarten and then back home, etc, and those were some beautiful times in this sense.

You can hire a nanny. I know there's stigma there, too, but I know some "career women" who do this and it works fine. If you're that motivated (and your interests are lucrative enough), you can pull it off.

I don't know how much this would change things, expectations in particular, but there are guys like me who would like to be stay at home fathers.

I'd like to have my cake and eat it too. It's your choice whether you want to spend your life being envious about cherry-picked parts of other people's lives, or whether you learn to appreciate and enjoy the things you do have. This cherry picking is the exact poison that social media delivers, making people depressed the world over. I guess men and women have always felt it about each other. The big difference is that men cannot have what women have, but women can have at least some of what men have.

Get a surrogate maybe? Should tick many of the boxes you have listed.