The Day I Wanted to Be a Father

How I mistook completeness for permanence and missed the inheritance I was meant to pass on.

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About the Author

Dr. Colin Wright is an evolutionary biology PhD, Manhattan Institute Fellow, and CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, The Washington Examiner, and other major news outlets and scientific journals.

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A note before I begin...

For most of my adult life, I was certain I would never want children. Not uncertain or conflicted. Certain. I built my relationships, my ambitions, and my future around that conviction, assuming that fatherhood was a life I would never live. Then, without warning, that certainty shattered. It didn’t happen through argument or persuasion, but through a single moment that changed how I understood love, meaning, and time. This is a personal story about how I went from seeing children as a kind of ending to seeing them as the deepest beginning imaginable, and why becoming a father is now my life’s greatest aspiration.

This essay was originally published on X as a submission to its $1 million contest for the best X Article. Unfortunately, it did not win.

I have the best parents I could ever imagine.

They are emotionally stable, smart, pragmatic, hard working, and loving. I have never witnessed either of them behaving dishonorably toward each other, or toward anyone else. I have never heard them yell at one another, never observed cruelty, and never sensed an ounce of contempt. They have been married for more than forty years, and they still love each other deeply.

Growing up, I always knew my parents were different from my friends’ parents, though for a long time I could not articulate why. It wasn’t that my friends’ homes lacked affection (they didn’t), but what I felt in my own house was warmer, steadier, and secure. There was a playfulness to the way my parents spoke to one another, reflecting the deepest comfort in their presence together. Even now, when I visit home, I’ll often catch them passing each other in the kitchen only to stop for a hug or kiss, or sometimes even dance.

A family friend once told me a story that captures a glimpse of who they are. Many years ago, my parents organized a trip to Mexico with a group of friends. The husbands arrived a week early to fish, and the wives were to join them later so everyone could vacation together and eat what the men had caught. When my mom finally stepped off the plane with the other wives and saw my dad waiting there, she began to cry soft, happy tears. She had missed him. Her husband and best friend. Even after just one week apart.

The love I feel when I visit home is unlike anything else I’ve ever known.

When I was very young, I remember assuming I would have children someday, but it wasn’t something I reflected on much. It just seemed like part of life. But sometime in high school, that assumption fell away. This didn’t occur because of any particular event, and it was not a result of deep introspection. I simply stopped being able to imagine myself as a father. Children seemed like a hassle and an immense burden. Why would I want that? What was the point?

As I got older, my “child-free” stance became more entrenched. It was reinforced by Reddit forums like r/childfree, where users celebrated the freedom of a life without kids. People posted about their amazing vacations, extra money, their ability to sleep in, or the nice things they cluttered their lives with. That life looked appealing to me. Although I always believed I would be a good father if I chose that path, it wasn’t a path I felt drawn toward. And even if I had been, it seemed almost impossibly distant. I didn’t have the money, the house, or the loving wife. It felt too abstract and hypothetical, like it was something for another version of me.

My first long-term relationship was with someone who was also firmly against having children. That seemed perfect. At one point, I even had a consultation for a vasectomy. I never followed through. I’m still not entirely sure why. It just felt like something I could always do later.

When that relationship ended in 2016, my search for a new someone came with a non-negotiable requirement: she also had to be child-free. Being an academic didn’t help either. The postdoc years, the geographic instability that made establishing roots nearly impossible, and the uncertainty of tenure all felt incompatible with building a family. I was convinced that children simply weren’t in my future. I was certain of that until I was thirty-six years old.

Then one moment changed everything.

In 2020, during COVID lockdowns, our family decided that we’d all quarantine together. So I moved back into my parents’ home near Sacramento, along with my brother. I always notice how much parents have aged since I last saw them, even after a short separation. They were definitely getting older, but they were healthy.

During lockdown, my dad needed to have a colonoscopy. As part of the prep, he was forbidden to eat solid food for twenty-four hours and could only drink clear liquids. He chose sugar-free Crystal Light lemonade. A terrible idea, as it turned out. After the procedure, he came home, sat outside for a bit, then stood up to go inside and lie down. Having consumed no carbohydrates for over a day, he suddenly became lightheaded. As he opened the door, he fainted and fell face-first onto the tile floor, hitting his head hard and knocking himself unconscious.

I wasn’t there when it happened. I was in my bedroom, working at my desk. My brother suddenly burst through my door in a panic telling me that Dad had fallen. From the way he said it, I knew immediately that this wasn’t a mere stumble.

The image I saw as I rushed into the living room is forever burned into my memory. My dad was on the ground, convulsing. Shaking violently. I thought I was watching him die, and that he would suddenly stop moving forever. The fear was overwhelming. But through that terror a single thought erupted inside me with startling force: you must have children.

The thought wasn’t in the form of words, like an inner monologue. It was more like being shouted at by an emotion.

Eventually, my dad stopped shaking and regained consciousness, but he wasn’t himself. He didn’t know where he was or what happened. He kept trying to stand up, but we wouldn’t let him. We called 911. The paramedics arrived quickly and asked him questions. He was oddly cheerful but completely disoriented. Devastatingly, because of the COVID pandemic, we couldn’t go with him when they loaded him onto the gurney and took him away in the ambulance.

As the doors to the ambulance closed, I felt shaken in a way I’d never experienced before. And suddenly, the meaning of that earlier internal command became clear. I understood that the reason I had never felt the need to start my own family was because I already had one. A perfect one. I had a mother and father who loved each other, a brother who was my best friend, a home filled with warmth and support. My parents were so good at being parents that they left me wanting nothing. They made me feel whole and complete, and it kept me blissfully ignorant of how the cycle of life is supposed to work.

But shaking on the floor, my father—who had always been my symbol of strength and stability—was suddenly fragile. Mortal. For the first time, I viscerally understood that the family I had always relied on was not eternal. It was fleeting. My dad was getting older. He will die someday. For all I knew, he might have been dying right there and then.

With that realization, the foundation of my sense of meaning cracked. I saw clearly that my deepest sense of purpose came from my family, and that without them I would feel hopelessly lost. If I wanted that sense of meaning to persist for the rest of my life, I would need to create my own family. And that meant relinquishing my role as the son and stepping into the role of the father.

The meaning wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t come from making my parents proud. It would come from something much deeper: giving myself up, setting aside my ego, and building a secure, loving world for my children. It would come from seeing myself reflected in their eyes and feeling pride not in my achievements, but in who they become with my guidance.

For most of my life, I had thought of having children as the end of my life. Now I understand it as the beginning of a new one. In truth, until I have children of my own, I still view myself as a child in some sense. Unfinished. Parenthood feels to me like the necessary final chapter of a life well lived, one filled with a meaning much deeper than exotic vacations or luxury goods could ever provide.

I don’t care about traveling anymore. I’ve seen enough. I don’t care about my intellectual legacy. How many more essays do I really need to write? All I care about now is being a good father.

I wish I had come to this realization earlier. As it stands, I will be an old dad. Given my parents’ age—especially my father’s—I don’t know how well my future children will ever know them. That thought weighs heavily on me. And knowing that every passing year without children means one fewer year I get to be their father feels like something precious constantly slipping away. On my deathbed, how much would I value a few more years with my loving family? Waiting hurts, because every delay feels like a loss.

I know people who want children but have postponed having them because of politics. Because of the current administration. It’s painful to think that someone would allow their political opponents to steal four years of life with their children. Four Christmases. Four birthdays. Four totally irreplaceable years.

Days like Father’s Day are hard reminders of what I don’t yet have. But nothing hits quite like Christmas Eve, when there are no little ears to hear me read The Night Before Christmas, or Christmas morning, when no children come rushing in, eyes full of wonder, to open presents from Santa.

I think many people will eventually have this same realization. I know several around my age who already have, triggered by the death of a beloved parent. They delayed starting families because they felt fulfilled by the one they already had, not realizing that the warmth and wholeness they felt was never meant to last forever.

I used to say I couldn’t imagine being a father. Now it’s nearly all I imagine.

I’ve always been wary of labels. I don’t believe in God, but I avoid calling myself an atheist. I didn’t like being labeled a Democrat when I was on the left, and I don’t like being labeled a Republican now that I lean right. I was deeply influenced by Paul Graham’s essay “Keep Your Identity Small,” which argued that the more labels you adopt, the harder it becomes to think clearly because disagreement starts to feel like a personal attack. Indeed, so many of our current social ills are caused by an excessive fixation on identity.

But I’ve found one exception, one identity I can’t wait to claim without hesitation or caveat.

Dad.

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