Personal Observations at Core : Book Examines the Father-Infant Bond

“I’ve always tape-recorded everything I’ve ever done,” Dr. Martin Greenberg said as he set up his bulky black recorder near the interviewer’s. The old machine is the same one that Greenberg, a San Diego-based psychiatrist, used 11 years ago to record his feelings and observations during the early months of his first son’s life. Those extensive and personal recorded notes provide the core of Greenberg’s recently published book, “The Birth of a Father” (Continuum: $15.95).

Fifteen years ago, Greenberg coined the term engrossment to refer to the sense of absorption, preoccupation and interest new fathers feel for their newborns. Integral to “The Birth of a Father” are the words of new fathers Greenberg interviewed as part of his research, in his therapy practice and in fathers’ groups. Many of these quotes amount to passionate outpourings of love for their newborns.

‘The Incredible Wonder’

Fathers have shared with Greenberg their feelings about “the incredible wonder of it all,” and some have told him they wish they could carry a baby as their pregnant wives did. “I love the words of these fathers; they’re like poetry,” he said. “In a way I’m an interpreter. All I’m doing is capturing a unique experience. Whether I’m a good interpreter or not depends upon whether I can try to understand the experience, and that the father gets a sense that I am really hearing him. Then it’s amazing how the kinds of things he’s saying are totally in touch with what I call the universal life force.”

Greenberg, 44, speaks with enthusiasm about the father-infant connection. An intense, dark-eyed man, he was in the Los Angeles area recently to share his findings with several groups. He gave a talk on “Fathering: The Missing Link” at Charter Grove Hospital in Corona and was the keynote speaker (“Dad’s a Parent Too”) at a conference in La Mirada co-sponsored by Charter/Baywood Hospital of Long Beach and Women Care in Cerritos. In addition, an independent film maker interviewed him for a documentary on fathering.

Born in New York City, Greenberg received his bachelor’s degree from UCLA, and his medical training from the University of California at San Francisco in 1967. He began studying the effect infants and the birth process had on first-time fathers while in Sweden on a one-year National Institute of Health Award. He completed his training in psychiatry at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of Chicago School of Medicine.

Moved to Switzerland

Martin and Claudia Greenberg’s marriage--she is an art therapist, potter and photographer--in 1971 was followed by the birth of Jonathan in 1974. Two weeks after Jonathan was born, Greenberg began recording his thoughts and feelings, intending to write a book from the start. While Jonathan was still a baby, the Greenbergs moved to Switzerland for a year.

The outdoors-loving doctor’s favorite way of relating to infant Jonathan was to take him on long walks in the forest or other natural settings in a front carrier or backpack. He would carry on a one-sided conversation with the infant until Jonathan fell asleep. Then Greenberg would turn on the tape recorder and pour out in words the excited, ambivalent, poignant and almost always loving emotions he was feeling about the relationships in his changed family.

“I was totally shocked at the strength of my feelings, though I was primed and knew what to expect,” Greenberg said, adding that such surprise at the intensity of feelings is common for new fathers.

“What I wanted to do in ‘The Birth of a Father’ was to help the father find that feeling and keep and amplify it,” Greenberg said. “You move to the side and you’re just watching it and it’s some sort of explosive thing that happens, comes out of the ground. The father feels swept away, swept off his feet.”

“I wasn’t feeling anything during the pregnancy,” Greenberg said. “That’s part of the universal experience of fathers during a pregnancy, but I didn’t know that at the time. There are concrete things that can be done that carry emotional consequences. The husband can massage his wife’s tummy, talk to it, have an image of the baby and start singing. He might say I’m an idiot, but if he did those things he’d feel something.

“The father’s sense of getting ready lags about eight weeks behind his wife’s. This leads to an experience I call getting on different tracks. That is why birth can be such a devastating experience for a marriage.”

Parents need a lot of help during the pregnancy and immediately after the birth, according to Greenberg. In his book, he suggests several ways women can enhance the relationship of the father and the newborn, the simplest of which is to leave the house so father and child can be alone together. Another is to point out the baby’s responsiveness to the father: “Look how much she loves her daddy.”

The birth of Greenberg’s second son Jacob, 2 1/2, led him to an increased understanding of the impact of complications on the father. After his wife’s life-threatening pregnancy and delivery, Greenberg said he was so physically and emotionally exhausted that he had a hard time becoming engrossed with the infant. Though he credits his being the first to hold Jacob with his ability to “hook up” with him right away, he knew something was missing.

“I went through a low-grade depression after the birth that I think is similar to the depression many women experience,” Greenberg said. “I don’t even know when it disappeared. A year or nine months later I suddenly realized how fantastic Jacob was.”

Not Limited to Men

Greenberg doesn’t claim engrossment is limited to men. Bonding, commonly used as a general term referring to the link-up between parent and child, usually refers specifically to the mother-infant relationship. Greenberg coined engrossment when he noticed what was going on with new fathers. “It turns out that mothers are engrossed too. What I think is a little different is that mothers come from a different place,” he said. “Mothers have the intense relationship with the baby that includes both an emotional and a physical link of the pregnancy. This comes to a head and at the birth they are losing something, whereas the father is gaining something.”

Greenberg talks about another kind of loss: that felt by both parents of a new baby, the “pang of sadness mixed with joy as you realize that as much as you want to hold on to this moment, you cannot stop the clock.” To deal with some of this sadness, he recommends “story time,” in which you say to your child things like “I was there when you were born and I was happy with you.”

Greenberg admits he feels strongly the poignancy of watching his children grow older and more separate from him. He confesses to not being able to get rid of any of their toys.

Working on Doctorate

Claudia Greenberg is now working on a doctorate in clinical psychology. Greenberg is looking forward to his wife’s future career, particularly since he’s been working at three jobs for the past few months. In addition to his private therapy practice at the North City Psychological Group in San Diego, Greenberg is a psychiatric consultant on the Adolescent Unit of Charter Grove Hospital in Corona and also consults at Hemet Community Mental Health Center in Hemet.

He plans to write another book, possibly utilizing his hundreds of as-yet untranscribed tapes. For this project, he is soliciting humorous stories and anecdotes from fathers detailing their struggles during the first couple of years of parenting. (Greenberg can be written at North City Psychological Group, 9606 Tierra Grande St., Suite 102, San Diego 92126.)

Candid about his ultimately human parenting skills, Greenberg said, “It is possible to get very fascinated with the image and the idea of being a father that is captured by ‘my son is asleep and I’ll talk to you about my feeling about being a father.’ There is also a down-to-earth aspect about being a father and that is my son wakes up and is on my back and I need to respond to him. There were times when I was up in the air and Jonathan would wake up and I would feel like saying, ‘Would you stop bothering me for a second, I want to finish talking about how wonderful it is to be a father.’ ”