Dads and Technology

The birth of your first child certainly marks a new chapter in your life. There’ll be no more sleeping until noon on a weekend, no more avoiding your mother-in-law, and certainly no more spontaneous sex on the kitchen table. However, the arrival of your little bundle of diarrhoea-dripping joy does not necessarily herald the end of buying expensive gadgets. In fact, fatherhood turns out to provide some pretty special opportunities for purchasing cool technologies or the cheapest tablets, and wife-approval is surprisingly easy to secure.

What better time to start loading up on the goodies than during the birth itself? In the spirit of the best politicians you just need to bury the bad news amongst even worse news: “Darling, I’m afraid the anaesthetist can’t give you an epidural for at least another half an hour. Oh, and I’ve just ordered a new full-HD 3D camcorder so we can capture every amazing moment of our newborn’s first years. Now, let’s focus on your breathing ...”

Camcorders and cameras are actually some of the easiest tech to gain approval for, as their benefits are so obvious, even to your wife. You can also bundle smart phones into that category, as the ability to take pictures of your little ones and instantly e-mail them to your family is truly useful – if only to ensure that your mother-in-law feels sufficiently connected to her grandchildren that she doesn’t have to visit quite so often. Of course, you will already have all the baby paraphernalia that is often battery or mains powered, but somehow it won’t quite satisfy your thirst for cutting-edge machinery. Sure, I’ve ended up with a steriliser, some baby monitors, a musical cot mobile, and even a digital thermometer, but none of those purchases gave me even the mildest stirring in my underwear. Now, when my boy is ready for his first Scalextric track, however, I’ll be a hundred different kinds of aroused.

As well as enhancing your experience as a father, technology also has the potential to enhance your sexperience as a husband. For example, when all communications break down following a particularly heated debate about who’s had the least sleep, I often find my wife’s Facebook status updates to be particularly useful. Once the “I’m sooooooooo tired” updates have been replaced by “I’ve nearly lost all my baby weight and I’ve just bought some new shoes!”, that’s my signal to begin social intercourse once more. Sadly, Facebook rarely informs me when any other kinds of intercourse can recommence.

But for all the joys and benefits these wonderful inventions can bring, we do need to guard against them negatively affecting our family lives. The day that you begin paying more attention to your laptop than your child is the day that you are destined to discover just how difficult it is to extract a slice of buttered toast from your Blu-ray player. The same can be said for your wife, although she’ll find slightly less expensive ways to make her point such as hiding your PS3 game controllers. The important lesson here is that, no matter how cool or compelling the gadget, the primary purpose at the very top of our job description is to pay attention to our children and listen to our wives.

While that message has held true since the beginning of time, I certainly do feel very fortunate to be a father in this era of affordable gadgetry. When our parents were raising us they only had a few rocks and a piece of old cloth to keep us entertained – The Stone Age was certainly a rough time to be a parent. But just imagine what incredible technologies our kids will have available when they are raising their own children. Please accept this as my wish list:

1. A self-cleaning nappy system that rapidly decomposes collected waste and uses the biproducts to recharge your child’s wearable computer;
2. The Reprimander, a robot discipline machine with a built in naughty step and child-strength taser capability;
3. A no-spill cup that actually works for more than a month.

I know, I know, that last one was a bit far-fetched, but you’ve got to aim high.

Fatherhood will clearly always be a fertile ground for continuing man’s primeval need to lovingly stroke metal boxes containing circuit boards and batteries. Sure, our wives won’t always understand it, but that’s also true of complicated movies and instruction manuals. But when did you ever think you’d get wife-permission to buy an intercom with built-in night vision camera? When did you ever dream that she would sign-off on an in-car DVD player? And when, in your wildest dreams, did you ever imagine that she would actually ask you to buy a mains-powered device that connects directly to her breasts? We’re 21st century dads and we’re living the dream.

By Craig Alan Williamson
As published in KiwiParent - online version by DIYFather with kind permission from Parents Centre.