Fatherhood Is Learning - Frontmatter
Cover, Title Page, Copyright and Credits, Dedication, Epigraphs
Copyright & credits
Fatherhood Is Learning
Becoming the Men Our Kids Need Us To Be
a memoir in essays
Matthew S. Rosin
Copyright © 2021 Matthew S. Rosin.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.
Early versions of the following essays first appeared in STAND Magazine: “The Dad In the Room” (Issue #3, Spring 2016); “Learning To Smile” (Issue #8, Winter 2018); “Learning To Be Present” (under the title “Learning To Smell the Flowers,” online, December 4, 2017); “Learning To Connect” (Issue #10, Winter 2018); “Learning To Trust” (under the title “Learning To Meet a Need,” online, May 30, 2018); and “Learning To Forgive the Man I Don’t Want To Be” (Issue #9, Summer 2018). // An early version of “A Letter To My Toddler” first appeared on the On Being blog on June 21, 2015.
Personal acknowledgments can be found in the paperback and ebook editions of the book.
Book design by Matthew S. Rosin.
Cover image rendered from a photo by Todd Rafalovich.
Dedication
For my family.
Epigraphs
You may give [your children] your love but not your thoughts, / For they have their own thoughts. / You may house their bodies but not their souls, / For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. / . . . / You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.1
- Kahlil Gibran
But we need a clear-eyed sense of our history, even the ugly parts, because without it we are mindless actors in stories we never agreed to.2
- Thomas Page McBee
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944, pp. 21-22. Originally published in 1923.
Thomas Page McBee, Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity, and Masculinity, New York, NY: Scribner, 2018, pg. 194.