A man I know dropped a bombshell on a circle of colleagues and acquaintances the other day by asking about paternity leave policy.

“Why do you want to know about that?” I asked.

“I had a daughter two weeks ago,” he answered, stunning us all.

None of us had had even an inkling about the man’s personal life, to say nothing of his impending fatherhood.

After a round of hearty congratulations and questions about the child and her mother, I ventured a daring question: “Are you going to get married?”

He did not hesitate. “Hell no!” he said. “She’s not my type.”

“Well, she was your type at least once though, huh?” I said, sassily.

“Well, you know,” he said, “a brother’s got to do what a brother’s got to do.” 

At that pathetic remark, I decided to butt out of the guy’s business, given that he was not a close friend or relative and, most of all, had not asked my opinion.

“Well, congratulations again, Daddy,” I said, recovering. “What a surprise.”

“What, were you questioning my skills?” he responded, raising one brow devilishly.

The comment turned my stomach anew, but I somehow managed to bow out of the room without a retort. His words kept ringing in my head, however. Questioning my skills? Sheesh.

That would have been disgusting enough had it come from a teenaged father with a warped sense of, and feeble grasp on, his manhood.

But this man is in his mid-30s. There’s simply no excuse to (a) not practice safe sex; (b) speak badly of his child’s mother; and (c) to think he proved anything by impregnating a woman who, in the end, he didn’t really care for.

Had I carried on, I would have told him this: “Pardon my bluntness, but for the record: Manhood is not measured by the ability to accidentally make a baby. Furthermore, ejaculation is not a ‘skill.’ If there was a skill involved in that, it was probably hers. Sorry, but a sister’s got to do what a sister’s got to do.”

In the weeks that have followed that exchange, the man has shown signs of being a fairly attentive father, albeit a non-custodial one. He accompanied mother and child to a pediatric check-up. He has babysat when the mother needed to be away for something. He sees the child regularly and helps provide for her.

That is not the same as coming home every night and being there when she’s squealing with croup or diaper rash or one of those inevitable ear infections, but it beats being a  hit-and-run lover who passes on his DNA and then becomes a stranger to the baby with his nose or his hairline or his eyes or his smile. 

Perhaps it was only shuck and jive that led my friend to say such crude things regarding his newfound state. If so, he was only mouthing the words that too many men seem to live by.

Their pride is in reproducing alone, not in the nearness and nurture that are supposed to go with it.