Evolution of the Irish Dad: ‘My father had no long hair to brush, he brushed mine with his hand’

He nailed the Irish Mammy on Twitter. Now, for Father's Day, Colm O'Regan takes a look at the Irish Dad

'I think about how my father had no long hair to brush but then I remember how he brushed my hair with his hand.'

That’s ok Daddy. You can just do a low pony-tail.” The youngest says understandingly. The ‘low pony tail’ is considered the entry level Daughters’ Hairstyle. It’s one level above Just Put a Hat On Instead. 

I do the low pony-tail. The hair bobbin is wrapped expertly around my wrist. I transfer it less expertly to her hair. I do what I consider to be enough loops of to make it a tight pony-tail. The little hand comes back to check her hair. It pauses.

“That’s fine Daddy,” she says, in a way that suggested it is less than fine but she thinks there’s no point in making a fuss. This will be one of those days when her hair is not 100% ‘but what’s important is family’.

I’ll do better next time I think. These skills are important. I don’t hear much about how nice it is to learn new skills as a Daddy. “It’s ok I’ve done this before. I’m a father. I have my cert here somewhere.” 

It’s nice to learn how to do a new job and you don’t get your performance evaluation until they’re teenagers and they tell you you’re the worst father ever.

Especially a Daddy of daughters and a brother of no sisters where you learn things about long hair you didn’t need to know before. I’m down to learn how to do a plait soon. That’ll get me my FETAC Level 4 In Daddy Hair. 

For now I’m content with brushing. Very content. Why didn’t anyone tell me how nice it is to brush someone else’s long hair? Once the tangles are out it’s almost mediative. Everyone is becalmed. No wonder hairdressers are in such great form. They spend so much of the day stroking someone else’s head.

I think about how my father had no long hair to brush but then I remember how he brushed my hair with his hand. Does anyone else remember their father’s heavy comforting hand on their head when they were small? Just smoothing the hair on my head. 

I now realise he was doing it as much for himself as for me. And I find myself every so often putting my a big country hand on a daughter’s head. With their permission of course.

Hair isn’t the only skill you learn. There’s wrestling and horseplay. Apparently horseplay is very important for small children. Just general pushing and shoving with that little element of risk where they feel just for a second that I am actually going to eat them. The fear of a tickle followed by the joy of a tickle. It’s supposed to be good for regulating emotions. And it’s probably good for the children too. Again, it is only as I go through these stages that I remember my father lifting me up on his leg or squeezing my head or nose or hands and I get it. How memorable was that feeling of safe jeopardy!

Colm O'Regan: 'Does anyone else remember their father’s heavy comforting hand on their head when they were small?'

I am particularly grateful for having to learn the skill of minding other children. Or even just knowing what to say to them. For years, from about teenagerhood onwards, I had no idea what to say to children. They might just stare at you and you didn’t know what to do. All the conversation seemed forced and missing the point. 

Now after about five years of almost non-stop talk from one or both of the Two, I know what to say to nearly any child. They will tell you something about their toy and all you have to do is just ask them a simple follow-up question. 

But keep it simple. Build on the information you have from the previous answer. Don’t make leaps or the spell will break.

Occasionally they will find a gap to start asking you question which will lead to a sequence of 34 “Whys?” Don’t fear it. It will lead to you asking yourself the same questions about the nature of existence. 

When you can’t answer any further, tell them you don’t know but will look it up. Then hand them back to their parents so they can ask a new set of Whys.

The stereotype of Irish fathers is that they don’t do too much talking. Phone calls home to Mama and Dada were definitely of that ilk. It was rather like watching the news. 

Mama was the main anchor and then she would hand over to my father for The Weather, how my car was going, any new houses being built and how had they got planning permission and then it would be passed back to Mama for a recap of the headlines.

I never saw this as a problem. Communicating with my father was more about being next to him. Also we never really know how two adults will be together. 

The chat between a 12-year-old and his father about Everything is different 20 years later. There were comfortable silences.

I wonder am I gone the other way. I’m a bit of a nag. An overexplainer. “No children I need to tell you in detail why this minor point about behaviour is important.” “It’s ok Daddy. We understand. They say. “You’re blocking our cartoon.” 

I think it’s because I want to know every damn thing about what goes on in their magic heads. As they grow and increasingly become separate humans with opinions, experiences, friendships, tastes, that entirely self-generated and not a reflection of me there is a necessary distance emerges. 

I’m just peeled out for news. That might just be a hangover from the lockdown when we quizzed our partners about the most mundane of outings. “Tell me again in great detail everything that happened on your trip to Mr Price. Was there anyone there we knew?” 

As time goes on we lose the cachet of ‘Small Child’s parent’.

I see all these new Dads writing about fatherhood as if they were the first ones ever to become a father. When clearly I was the first and I’m pretty sure I said all that needed to be said. 

I see fathers with babies in slings looking all proud and I want to tell them. Just so you know, I did that too ok? So there.

I like Father’s Day because I don’t have to remember anything for it. I won’t get into trouble for forgetting. But I remember one person of course. And what a good job he did.