Be a real man, dad. Sing.

When my daughter was 18 months old, we took a swim class. There was a pretty even mix of fathers and mothers, boys and girls. Everybody sang the silly songs you sing in toddler swim class. It was great fun.

At 24 months, we joined the slightly older swim class. Same mix of dads and moms, maybe slightly more dads. Maybe slightly more boys than girls.

Nobody sings. It's me and two mothers that seem to carry the group of 15-odd toddlers and their parents. What happened?

Does something happen to fathers of boys between 18 and 24 months that causes them to hesitate to do anything that might smack ever so slightly of being girly? I wedged myself between two non-singing dads and their 24 month old sons and proceeded to sing along with the instructor, hoping I might be able to pressure them into actually enjoying themselves. All I got were dirty looks. I imagined these dads were thinking to themselves, "Watch out for that dad, Johnny, he sings silly songs with his kids--he might be a homo." I'm fairly certain that just be singing along I have lost any hope of befriending these ManDads.

It takes a real man to sing "Wheels on the Bus" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" in his swim trunks while surrounded by slightly more muscular men. (That said, I am very proud of the fact that I can now do all of 3 pull-ups and 3 chin-ups). I resisted singing with my daughter until I realized just how powerful a drug it is for her. Although my instinct tells me that the best hope for solving problems involving screaming infants and toddlers at 2:00 AM is to slam my face through a plaster wall, a far better thing to do is sing some silly song. Once I embraced this fact, life got a lot better.

My guess is that if my first kid were a boy, I'd fit in just great with the ManDads. I'd refuse sing-a-longs. I wouldn't hug my kids very much or say things like "I love you" to my children as often as I do. Maybe I would have caved and smashed my fists through the wall with some frequency in response to middle-of-the-night scream fests. But having a girl first has definitely softened me up, and it'll be interesting to see how ManDads react to me when I sing silly songs with my yet-to-be-born 2 year old son. I'm guessing they'll just figure I'm a pussy.