Some years ago my wife, Michelle, and I took the plunge into parenthood. We’d only been married a few months when she began agitating to start a family. I’d always figured we’d do it eventually, but, you know, just not right now. I had a few things I wanted to resolve first--like securing our financial future, once and for all. (Hey, it could happen!) Whenever I seemed hesitant, she’d smile and say, “Ok, well, let me know when you’re ready.” Eventually, I realized that if I waited until everything was All Squared Away and there was nothing left to chance or worry, we’d never become parents. So we leaped. As in, “into the unknown.”

By now it’s impossible to recreate the experience of not being a parent, but at the time we conceived our first child, and especially in the first weeks and months after she was born, I found myself adrift in an unfamiliar territory: unsure of myself, confounded by every new little challenge, anxious over every little cry, worried that I’d break the baby, certain only of my own ignorance and ineptitude. I deferred to Michelle on almost every decision and looked to her to instruct me on every parenting task. And not completely without reason: As a registered nurse with experience in obstetrics, she brought a lot of valuable knowledge to her new role as a mother, and what she didn’t already know she found out with focused research. Me, I was sort of the staff buffoon.

That wore thin in a hurry, of course, and Michelle soon let me know that, as our baby’s father, I really didn’t have the option of remaining ignorant and/or unconfident. So I needed to get with the program. Which I promptly did. And the amazing thing is, I did it not by reading a shelf full of parenting books (of which, even back then, there were a great many, although not as many as there are today). I did it by accepting my fatherhood, calming the heck down, and enjoying the ride.

I did some reading, to be sure. I compared notes with other parents. I learned through trial and error. And before long I surmised that I was not going to break the baby, that I did know (or at least, could figure out) how to care for her, that she was thriving despite my inexperience, that the love I was pouring into her was radiating back to me a hundred fold, and that the Great Adventure of My Life had begun.

In the years that followed, Michelle and I were blessed with two more children, both boys. We went through some terribly difficult times--a story for another day, perhaps--and some terrific elation. At every turn, whether faced with a mystery, a celebration, a world-engulfing crisis, or a garden-variety everyday happiness, we learned how to be a family together. Not because we were smart (although, you know, I think we were) or because we had the most clever solutions, but because we were wired for it. Just like everyone else who cares to be.

Sometime in those early days of our life as parents we got a copy of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, the granddaddy of all parenting books. It was written for a generation of parents before ours and spawned the whole parenting-advice industry. We would take issue with some of the good doctor’s recommendations, even while we relied heavily on much of his advice. But the words that opened his book (and still do, eight editions later) opened a whole new vista for me as a father: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” Well, yeah! When you put it that way, I guess I do! And if I didn’t--if parents everywhere didn’t--how would our species have made it through several hundred thousand generations?

Eventually my work as a writer brought me assignments for several national parenting-related magazines, and even several book projects: one I authored on family spirituality, Raising Spiritual Children in a Material World (Berkley Publishing Group, 1997), and another, which I coauthored, describing a holistic approach to family life, The Whole Parenting Guide (Broadway Books, 1999). I studied and researched and interviewed and wrote, and acquired some valuable insights into the nuances and mysteries of childrearing. But every parenting discovery I ever made was facilitated by those sage words from Dr. Spock.

(To read Part 2, click here.)