How to fail as a father

Spectator, The, Nov 27, 1999 by Reid, Stuart

It's not difficult, says Stuart Reid, who like Mr Blair found himself with child in middle age

MY advice to Tony is: act your age. I know I didn't. When in my middle years I found that I was to become a father again, I thought I was the dog's bollocks. Like the Prime Minister, I already had three strapping children - the oldest pushing 16 and I'd thought that my child-bearing days were over. Then bang! The next thing you know you're in an antenatal class in Hammersmith with a lot of gormless young men in their twenties who treat you with the deference due to age. When you are 45 it is hard to remember how old that seems to a man of 25. `Gather in groups of four,' said the nurse, `and share your thoughts on why you are here.' We looked at one another shyly. `I'm here because I'm scared of my wife,' I said to a couple of self-employed plumbers and an Indian accountant. I never returned.

Still, at least I had shown willing. I'd matured a bit since my twenties. Unlike Tony, I was not present at the birth of any of my first three children. I was living in Sydney at the time, and it was a pretty rough-and-ready place in those days. Even if they'd been allowed to, real men would not have attended the birth of a child, and I was more than happy to go along with the prevailing prejudice. (It is perhaps odd that Sydney was so attached to real manhood; it was after all the gay capital of the world after San Francisco. There was plenty of denial, though. When the British government legalised homosexual acts between consulting male adults in private, an evil, red-headed drunk in a Sydney pub was to be seen shouting in the face of anyone who came near him, `How can you respect a country that allows fucking pooftahs to walk the streets?') But nothing excuses my behaviour when my first child was born.

One morning in June 1968 my then wife, a practical Australian girl, said that her contractions had begun and she was going to pack her bag and get a cab to the hospital. I stared into her eyes. `Are you sure you can manage on your own?' I asked. She said she was sure. `OK, then,' I said. `Best of luck.' I went to work, leaving her in an armchair in the sitting-room with the telephone on her lap. Next day I turned up at the hospital with a hangover and a drinking companion, and made bad jokes about the baby. Was it supposed to be that colour? It didn't seem to be moving much. How could you be sure it could see? My wife seemed a bit upset. It was a caddish performance, and I record it here simply to add to Claire Rayner's case histories.

Perhaps I was immature. While my wife was in hospital, our car was stolen and our dog was run over. I was under such pressure that my mother-in-law had to come round and look after me. The dog had its leg in plaster, and its temper was a bit short. One evening when mother-in-law was cooking rabbit for me, the dog savaged her hand, and when she went to see her daughter in hospital the next day she was heavily bandaged. This is not a fate likely to befall the Blairs, though Tony Booth may have some tricks left in his locker.

Sixteen years later, however, I was in at the birth. My second wife, a practical American woman, was not going to take any fogey stuff about the division of labour. We were in this together. The contractions began on a hideously hot day in July, and the hospital was not airconditioned. (Tony, Cherie: do yourselves a favour - cancel your plans to have the baby in an NHS hospital; Tony's got the election in the bag, honestly. If you must go NHS, however, if it's a matter of conscience, try to pull some strings and get some preferential treatment.) On that July day it was clear that it was going to be a difficult birth. After an hour or two of doing breathing exercises with my wife, I was quite dizzy, but there was still no sign of a baby. The surgeon said my wife had to have a Caesarean. I tried not to let my relief show. I was going to be spared the thing I had dreaded most: the moment of birth. I've never been able to watch a delivery on television, even of a calf, and I'd certainly have passed out if I'd seen it in the flesh. My wife was frightened at the thought of going under the knife. I said there was nothing to worry about, and thought: rather you than me.

With baby back home, though, I was a new man; a retread anyway. I thought I was 25 again. I did all the right things. I changed nappies, tested the heat of the milk by squirting it on my wrist, fed the baby in the small hours, cootchie, cootchie cooed. I tried to stop it eating cat food. One Sunday night I even cycled from Fulham to Earls Court in a rainstorm to buy some disposable nappies. I rode back with the bag - a 50-pack, I think - under my arm, without lights, and came off the bike outside Fulham Town Hall. I think I was a pretty good father, better than first time round anyway, which, of course, isn't saying much. Before long I had learned (or remembered) how to prop the boy up in front of the television, using cushions so that he did not slump forwards or sideways and break his neck. He's never looked back.