My husband grew up without a dad, and now we’re expecting a son—how we’re handling it
The crib arrived on a Tuesday, still in its flat box, and my husband spent the evening building it while I sorted baby clothes on the living room floor. I held up a pair of tiny socks and laughed, but he didn’t look up. He kept turning the Allen wrench, tightening the same screw for longer than necessary. When I asked if he wanted to see the onesies, he said, “In a minute,” and didn’t.
It wasn’t anger. It was something quieter. I’d seen it before—when we found out the sex, when his mom sent a box of my husband’s old baby things, when someone at work asked if we had a name picked out. He’d go still, not withdrawn exactly, but like he was listening to a conversation happening somewhere else in the house.
I knew what it was. My husband doesn’t have a father. His dad left before he turned two, and there were no visits, no birthday cards, no phone calls. It was something he’d always talked about factually, like a weather pattern he’d grown up with. But now we’re having a boy, and I think the weather has changed.
That first evening with the crib, I didn’t push it. We finished our tasks and went to bed. But the next day, we went to his mom’s for Sunday dinner, and she brought out an old photo album. She pointed to a picture of my husband at four years old, sitting on a tricycle in the driveway, grinning at the camera. “Your father took that,” she said, then caught herself and looked at me.
My husband’s face didn’t move. He just nodded and turned the page.
On the drive home, I was quiet too. I wanted to ask, “Are you thinking about your dad?” but I knew that would land like a boulder in a small pool. So I waited until we were in the kitchen unpacking leftovers. I said, “I was reading something today about how guys feel when they first find out they’re having a son. How it makes them think about their own childhood. It made me think about you.”
He didn’t answer right away. He put the container in the fridge and closed the door. Then he said, “I just don’t want to be like him.”
That was the most he’d said in weeks. And then we stood there, not talking, but it was okay because he’d said the thing out loud.
I think for a long time I thought my job was to fix this. To find the right article, the right therapist, the right reassuring speech. But the more I’ve watched my husband, the more I’ve realized that what he needs isn’t a solution—it’s practice. He’s never had to picture himself as a dad before because there was no template. He’s learning to build that image from scratch, and that’s a slow, mostly nonverbal process.
So we’ve started doing small things that don’t feel like Big Conversations. Every Sunday morning, we go to the hardware store together. His dad used to do that, apparently—take him to Home Depot on Sundays before he left. My husband mentioned it once, almost in passing. So I suggested we go pick out a plant for the baby’s room. It wasn’t a therapy exercise. It was just a way to walk into a memory without being trapped by it. We bought a small fern, and he held it in the car like it was fragile.
Another thing that’s helped is giving him a specific job that lets him be close to the baby without having to say anything. He reads to my belly at night—a chapter from a dog-eared fantasy novel we both loved in college. He was shy about it at first, feeling silly talking to a stomach. But I told him he didn’t have to talk. He could just read. So now he sits on the edge of the bed with his glasses on, and he reads out loud, and sometimes his hand rests on the bump while he does. He doesn’t say, “I love you, son,” or anything rehearsed. He just reads, and the sound of his voice is enough.
I’ve also tried to be careful with how I ask him questions. “Are you okay?” shuts him down. So does “Do you want to talk about it?” But questions that are specific and low-stakes open doors. Things like, “When you think about teaching our son to ride a bike, who’s in that memory?” or “What’s one thing you’d never want to repeat from your childhood?” He can answer those without feeling examined. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he says “I don’t know” and goes back to fixing something, and that’s fine.
It’s not always smooth. Last week we went to a baby store, and another family walked by—a dad carrying a toddler on his shoulders. My husband stared a little too long. Then he turned down an aisle and pretended to look at bottle warmers. I didn’t say anything. For a minute, I felt sad for him, watching a stranger do something so ordinary that my husband never got. But then he picked up a bottle warmer and said, “Do we need this?” and we laughed, because neither of us has any idea what babies actually require.
What I’m learning is that this doesn’t have a neat ending. My husband isn’t going to have a sudden breakthrough where he forgives his father or feels complete. He’s just going to become a dad, one mundane day at a time. He’ll change diapers. He’ll build more furniture. He’ll read chapters about dragons to a baby who doesn’t understand a word. And some of that will be healing, and some of it will just be life.
I don’t know what kind of father he’ll be. He doesn’t either. But last night, after he finished reading, I saw him look at the empty crib and smile—a small, private smile that wasn’t about me or anyone else. It was his own.
We still have months to go. The crib is built, the fern is on the bookshelf, and there are more memories to walk through. But that’s okay. We’re still figuring it out, one Sunday at a time, and for now, that feels like enough.
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