Non-fathers like to use their Sundays fixing brunch and Bloody Marys for six close friends. Fathers spend Sundays oiling training wheels, hitting the discount stores for sales on cornstarch, and waking up at exactly the same ungodly hour as they do on a weekday. Non-fathers eat seafood quiche. Non-fathers play tennis. Non-fathers live in the fast lane.
Fathers live in a subdivision near a good school, an all-night grocery, a clinic and a gas station.
Non-fathers wear silk ties with subtle designer logos. Non-fathers invest in certificates that mature in a year. Fathers invest in shoes for feet that mature in six weeks. When it comes to rearing children, every society is only twenty years away from barbarism. Twenty years is all we have to accomplish the task of civilizing the infants who are born into our midst each year.