Moms have it easy*

Being a dad can be a miserable job. For at least three months in the early child’s life, you’re plain useless, no matter how hard you try. The child will not acknowledge your existence, except in the form of unstoppable baby cries that are heartbreaking and adorable at the same time. And at various times in the year that follows, it will be made clear by the child: You don’t have what it takes! Some dads remain useless much longer, for some it comes in phases, and some – like mine – never find their use, and hence remain useless throughout life. Apparently for some dads this job is so unbearable that they take extended sabbaticals, or downright quit.

It’s not easy being a dad, you know.

Dads are so lame, that they cannot seem to do anything right.

Moms on the other hand, have it pretty easy. Babies love them to death pretty much from the moment they’re born into this world, and it seems impossible to shake this most sacred of bonds. So there’s that. Admittedly, this can be overwhelming for the mothers. Too much awesome is difficult to bear, but it often seems that literally everything is easier for moms. It’s a long list, so obviously it does keep moms quite busy, which is of course mostly so because they have to make up for their poor, useless partners.

Why does parenting come so natural to moms, but not to dads? Who invented this bloody weird system? After all these millions of years of evolution, the dad is what we came up with? If failure is the route through which we learn, why are dads not some kind of superhuman being yet? I don’t trust it will happen anytime soon. We’re only not better as a species, because dads slowed us down…

This is the story of my life as a dad. Trying hard, but failing so often that it’s starting to hurt.

But now I have finally discovered something parental that I’m really good at.

I don’t know if it’s my deadly bodily odeur after the end of a long day at work, or my boring presence that does the trick, but hand me our two kids land a bed, and something about me will just knock them right out.

This is a synergy between the two of them, that I only discovered last week and only I can tap into..

I can put two kids to sleep faster than either of them individually.

My wife can try this, too, but we both know the answer. She cannot achieve this level of success on this particular subject. She wins at everything else, but the raw love that both kids feel for here spawns a form of jealousy that keeps everyone up at night.

It’s completely different with me.

As if these two monkeys think: “What’s there to love about dad, sis? You can have him, I’ll go to sleep.” “Yeah, excellent point there, bro. I don’t need him either, so I’ll do the same. Goodnight.”

And this is how mom – who of course already had it so easy – now has it even easier!

And I finally found a purpose in life.

* This title is clickbait in its purest form. But it worked, didn’t it? Admit it, it lured you right in! Triggered you a bit? I hope you’re not mad or disappointed.