“A rebellion against inherited principles of fatherhood”

Andrés Neuman uses literature to break silences, challenge prejudices, and accompany changes in parenthood. With A Father is Born^[1], he explores the prenatal experience and the early years of his son’s life, paving the way for new narratives where fatherhood is told from the lessons learned through care and observation.

In conversation with journalist Ignacio Pereyra, guest editor of Early Childhood Matters and father of two, Neuman helps us see the evolution of the father figure in art and culture, expanding our social imagination of contemporary parents and families.

What motivated you to write A Father is Born?

Like many men, I was full of prejudices, fears and insecurities that came from society’s image of fatherhood. I believed that I would not be able to cultivate an intense and radical bond with a baby. But parenting is learned through daily practice. We are expected to become men, but no one prepares us to be fathers or to care for children.

Why aren’t we taught how to be parents?

It is taken for granted that we will know, or rather that it won’t be much needed. The bond between man and baby, which I find beautiful, intimate and revealing, is barely depicted in iconography or art history. When it does appear, it is usually from a perspective of prejudice or comedy. So, when I found out my partner was pregnant, I started taking notes to improvise a kind of gift of love: to narrate the pre-verbal and post-verbal bond between father and child, and to fill in a piece of that hole we all have in our memory.

How has the father figure evolved in literature and cultural imagery?

It is interesting to distinguish between two levels: learned social roles and the specific literary imagery we construct. Although roles keep changing, why is it so difficult to place this in cultural and artistic imagery, and for other ways of approaching fatherhood to be included in literature? Many women have turned alternative motherhood, or resistance to motherhood, into reflection, creation or fiction. In men, this has rarely filtered into our intellectual work. Do we perhaps believe that other topics are more worthy of literature? We seem to have considered politics, football or economics to be interesting enough, but feeding our child or changing nappies is trivial.

What does that tell us?

Male writers take seriously the literary topics we choose to write about. If we do not write about care and parenting too, then we reinforce the idea that they ultimately do not belong to us. That’s why I think it’s crucial to write about them, to bring them into public discussion and into our works, recognising them as valuable and complex. They are just as important as other topics we have written about ad nauseam. We need to stop seeing fatherhood as a burden or something that does not interest us outside the family space.

What father figures dominate in traditional literature?

I think there are three main figures: the violent father, who generates literature about the damage he causes, such as Kafka’s father; the absent father, who searches for the ghost that was never there, as in Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo; and Hollywood’s heroic father, omnipotent, invulnerable, who never doubts, a provider and saviour, a superhero who distorts the reality of care. Without these three figures, what remains is a great silence, which I am interested in exploring: the everyday, contradictory, imperfect and revealing experience of paternal care. A literature where the father is constructed day by day, confronts his legacy and questions his identity through care.

Why is the emerging movement of male writers who write about their children important? I am referring to the contemporary writing of Alejandro Zambra, Agustín Valle, Eduardo Halfon, Andrés Burgo, Juan Sklar and Renato Cisneros, among others.

Because it opens a conversation to rethink fatherhood from a loving, everyday and political perspective. Of course, there have always been some fathers who raised and cared for children, but they didn’t talk about it in public. By making it visible, literature collectivises that experience and helps transform both the cultural imagination and family roles. It is not about idealising, but about recognising the conflicts and exhaustion alongside the horizon of enjoyment. It is a rebellion against inherited principles, against the idea that fatherhood is either not our responsibility or something we will only enjoy when taking our child to football. Literature can broaden fatherhood and care, allowing the emergence of more diverse and richer father figures in culture.

How does this emerging literature differ from traditional literature?

The most profound difference is the perspective: previously, literature about fathers was usually written by their children, either from pain or searching for a lost or unknown father figure. Now, parents write about themselves from a place of wonder, love, and everyday fragility. This new literature aspires to collectivise the experience and break the silence to think about the intimate bond with children from the perspective of present, active fathers.

You dedicate A Father is Born to Telmo and Erika, your “teachers”. What did your son and your partner teach you?

The classic father figure emphasises the pedagogical functions of men, the father as a teacher, a role model and an example. I am more interested in the opposite logic, emphasising what we learn from mothers and our children. I am a caregiver, it is my responsibility, but above all I am a disciple of my son. My role is not only to teach: I learn as much as or even more than he does. I learn from my son’s amazement. Although there is no equal distribution of care, there is equality in the exchange.

What does the fragmented writing style of your books on fatherhood represent?

The fragmentary and concise nature of this book stems from the real conditions of parenting: insomnia, interruptions, lack of time, inability to concentrate. I suppose that writing in this way reflects the chaos and intensity of life with a young child. Fragmentation is aesthetic and ethical: narrating as it happens, without separating experience and writing. It’s something that female authors have been doing for a long time.

Can questioning our traditional roles be a win–win?

It can be liberating to ask ourselves: what were we missing out on by sticking to our traditional roles? As a child, I would have liked to know my father’s vulnerabilities, who did not know his father’s. For me, it is a relief and a joy that my son knows me. Taking off the totemic superhero cape allows for a deeper, honest exchange.

What memories of your parents or grandparents inspire you?

When my son was a baby, my dad asked me to teach him how to change nappies. I felt somewhat conflicted: grateful and helpless. Who changed mine? Why don’t you teach me? At the same time, I felt a great emotion: how wonderful that a 70-year old person wants to learn how to care better! It’s admirable, and it also makes me feel sad when I think about it in terms of my own childhood.

It’s an uncomfortable exercise.

Exactly. My father told me that when I was a child I wanted a toy kitchen, but my mother thought it was inappropriate. I didn’t even remember. When my son turned 2, my father gave us a toy kitchen for my son and, 40 years late, for me too, I guess. We’ve played a lot with that toy kitchen!