What if my working toward being a more present dad causes more harm than good? I just realized this week that maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Culturally, we applaud the dad who is present in their kid’s lives. But is it possible to be too present? Like any good engineer, I’m going to start with an edge-case and deriving the general case would be much easier.
Fast-forward to 2028 and I’m drafted into the army. And thus far I’ve been thinking that I’m a great dad. I help my daughter with her homework, I take her to school, and I’m indispensable in the home. But now, I’m asked to operate a drone swarm and given VR goggles to do it. I think, “great, I can do this job from home!”
So every morning, before my daughter wakes up, I put on the goggles and utterly demolish America’s enemies. You might even say I’m a hero. I’m an incredible drone swarm operator, and I quickly rise in rank.
But there’s a problem. If the enemy doesn’t like their people dying. They want it to stop. They’re dying because of me, so now they’re looking for me. And if I live in the same home as my daughter, during the war, I’m unwittingly inviting my daughter onto the battlefield with me. If my enemy wants to kill me, they’ll have to bomb me at my own home. So, am I still a good dad?
It's a difficult issue where you weigh out security concerns vs the benefits to the child of having a father. Because children do get a really big benefit from having a father in their life, one I think people underestimate but that screams out of anecdotal experience, social statistics, and academic literature. It's very likely that the benefits are so great that it's worth substantial risk to the child's life for the better lifetime outcomes of being raised with their father.
But I don't think this is abstract, it's sounds like rationalization of a personal issue that's going the wrong way.