Chest-born Baby Carriers: Dashing or Douchey?

     As virtually everybody knows, or should know by now, a father with his infant daughter on a “date” is just about the cutest thing ever. Women, apparently, of all ages, creeds, and socioeconomic statuses, find this adorable. But the Recent Paterfamilias is not interested, today, in exploring why, exactly, this is so. Instead, the Recent Paterfamilias wishes to determine, when he’s out on the town and ‘round the neighborhood and off to the grocery store, with his kid strapped to his chest in one of the several chest-born baby carriers he’s got lying around the house, whether or not he, the Recent Paterfamilias, looks like a jackass.

     A little movie called The Hangover has done much to paint us child-wearing male caregivers as ridiculous looking douche bags. And who could argue after watching the husky Zach Galifianakis waddle about awkwardly while having a baby strapped to his prodigious man teats? Do all Recent Paterfamiliases look this ridiculous?

     Probably.

     So this Recent Paterfamilias would like to suggest the following to all the other Recent Paterfamiliases on the planet: Own it. Stick your baby-bearing chest out. Strut with confidence. Attempt valiantly to avoid being kicked in the junk by your maniacally flailing offspring’s maniacally flailing feet and boldly, proudly, arrogantly move down the street like that kid on your front is your very own (which, of course, she is). Certainly, it’s not attractive. How could it be? It’s a frontward-facing Swedish-designed backpack-like-device with an automatic drooling machine shoved in its gaping front. Certainly, it’s not dashing. Certainly, it’s an act of pure douche-baggery. But that’s your kid you got out front there, that squirming, squealing thing tied beneath your collarbones, and this Recent Paterfamilias has found that having his offspring on his person has actually proven to make him more testosterone-filled, more protective, more aggressive than he ever was before, causing him to take on a sort of mama bear mentality—for example: I’m just trying to run into Midtown and pick up some spray paint at Lee’s Art Shop with my baby strapped to my chest, bringing her along for the ride, and then there are people who want to try and shoulder check me on the sidewalk in an outlandish effort to convey their annoyance about congested Manhattan walkways, or simply to exert some kind of misguided self-confidence in an otherwise hostile universe, and, well, this makes the Recent Paterfamilias just about ready to murder someone before he’ll let his baby girl get bruised. And understandable mindset, I am sure, to the everyday American human, but probably not one that makes you all that attractive to many of those around you (particularly given what is probably a frightening, if inadvertent, sneer on the R.P.’s face, situated directly above the giggling gob of that four-month-old who couldn’t care less one way or the other what she looks like in this ridiculous, uncomfortable, chest-born infant-carrying contraption that transports her from one place to the next).

Douche bag or daddy?

Really, when it comes down it, what’s the difference?