Like Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind, Inkwell “don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!”
Still, I want to highly recommend a hilarious Father’s Day piece by Rick Marin (“Count Me Out for the Hard Labor”) in the New York Times.
Mr. Marin — an erstwhile colleague of both the Charlottes at the Washington Times — writes of his paternal desire NOT to be in the delivery room when his wife gives birth, an “option” that is nowadays forced upon nervous fathers with Stalinist rigidity.
Writes Marin:
“The instructor [of a Lamaze class] asked the husbands, ‘Who better to coach a mother through this ordeal than the one who knows her best, who she’s closest to?’ Ilene and I — who feel like the oldest and most immature couple in the room — looked at each other and agreed there was only one person for the job: her yoga teacher.
“Surely the last person a woman wants relaxing her in the throes of childbirth is her husband. Isn’t he the one she’s cursing out like a sailor for getting her into this in the first place?”