I wrote last week about how fatherhood has changed my experience of masculinity. That post focused on what my prior experience had been, and how my own relationship with that experience had changed. To sum up, I’ve got more skin in the game now. I don’t want to retreat from cultural ideas of masculinity, I want to confront and change them. I’m carrying the banner for my son, trying to give him healthier ways to be a boy and a man than I had. I want him to have more room, to not be squashed by our society’s limited ideas about masculinity.

But there’s more to the ways that fatherhood has changed my own experience. Having my baby with me changes how others experience me. He’s like a magical secret handshake that opens the doors of social contact, that makes strangers suddenly say “oh he’s got a baby, he must be alright.” Somehow being with an infant or toddler makes me safe and acceptable in a way that I can never be without one.

I say all this like these ideas leapt fully formed from my brow like Athena’s critique of gender ideology, but that would be a lie. These thoughts took time. Besides, what really drove all of this home for me was walking through public spaces with an empty baby stroller.

I like walks. I have spent a lot of time walking around my neighborhood (and through nearby ones). I especially like walking the local community path, and have walked it regularly while taking my baby to or from daycare. Even when I’m not going to daycare, I often take my baby out for walks with me.

Moving through the same public spaces day after day, with and without my baby, has been eye opening.

On my own, I experience all the same constraints I mentioned last week. I’m shut out, as often as not. Sometimes I’m purposefully ignored or avoided. This doesn’t feel like overt or intentional hostility (it might be and feel different if I weren’t white). I think others want to protect themselves, to not roll the dice on giving attention to a random man, or to avoid spending unwanted effort—or maybe all three.

I’m sure there’s also some resting New-Englander face going on. But I grew up with this. I’m pretty confident I’m not misreading this.

To be clear, I’m not saying that everyone else needs to stop trying to protect themselves from men. I totally get why people, especially women and femme people, might want to close themselves off or to give off every possible social cue saying that they do not want to interact with a man. Even I’ve felt the need to protect myself from men, and I don’t look like good prey. Of course the unfortunate truth is that those social signals are going to best deter the men who might have responded to gentler cues, while the worst offenders will ignore those signals completely. It’s a shitty situation.

Having my baby with me changes my experience of being shut out.

My behavior is obviously different when I’m with my baby. I often talk to my baby about the things we pass, or the people who are traveling alongside us. I ask him if he wants to wave or say hello. I talk about the things that he points at, we play peekaboo, and he plays with my hat (“ha’!”).

No doubt all these things change others’ perception of me. I’m a grown man, but by being cutesy with a baby I somehow defang the negative cultural baggage that comes with that. I suppose I seem safer to be around. Maybe everyone who greets me is also a parent, and sees themselves in me. Or (more likely) maybe people assume that I’m not going to assault them while I’m taking care of a child.

But it can’t just be about having my baby with me. If that were it, then walking with an empty stroller wouldn’t have a similar effect. Instead, even when it’s obvious that the stroller is empty and I’m not being cutesy with my baby, people are more willing to return my smile or generally acknowledge my existence.

It’s strange having entered this realm of social experience. I’m sure there are decent explanations for why people (particularly femme people) feel more comfortable around me when I look baby-adjacent. Maybe people unconsciously assume that my quality has been vouched for (“he was clearly good enough to have a baby and then be trusted with it”). Maybe people assume that they don’t need to be on their guard against me as a predator. Maybe people assume they need not fear the exhaustion of fending off unwanted attention. Regardless, this experience is strange because I can so clearly step into it (by having my baby with me, or my baby-care equipment) even as my default experience remains cold, unwelcoming, or hostile.

I’m not complaining about having gained access to this experience of acceptance. I’m glad for it. As a friendly and sociable person, the social connections I find with my baby are much better than what I find without him. Yet stepping in and out of that acceptance is just one more reminder of how isolating it can feel to be in public as a man. It sucks to be around so many people yet feel alone.

What really sucks though is how our culture will continue to carry this cycle forward. My baby is going to be stuck in this experience too. How old will he be when he realizes that others think he might be a monster? Yes, it’s no doubt safer to be the lonely person that others assume they should be afraid of, but how do I prepare him for that? I wasn’t prepared for it. How do I help him to change his own experience of this isolation, or change others’ automatic fear? As I articulated last week, I still struggle with that.

Sadly, I can’t help but think that this experience of isolation and rejection is part of the larger problems of abuse and shitty gender dynamics and toxic hierarchies in our culture. Offers of community and purpose are heady drugs for those who feel so alone. The lonely and angry and resentful are easily convinced that they are owed “their due,” and that they should be able to take that due if it isn’t freely given.

May we find other, more healthy ways to create community and purpose and cultivate positive interactions. I want to offer my son a kinder society than what I found.