Kier Gaines a “dad vlogger” also known as the “millennial dad” runs a YouTube channel of his young family who parents alongside wife Noémie and has some advice for future fathers in his viral video.
The two parent their 2-year-old daughter, Emery. In a recent viral video, he offered up advice to soon-to-be dads, reminding them how the road to modern fatherhood is not a walk in the park.
“A lot of young men, particularly young Black men, hit me up being like, ‘Yo! I can’t wait to be a dad, I can’t wait to be a father,” he says in the video as he carries his daughter on a walk through a neighborhood.
“I love that because I think the men that were a generation before us got raised by the men that were a generation before them, and those men didn’t really know warm love.”
He reveals he felt like he owed it to these young men who may see only the “cute” videos and photos that he posts online to tell him what it is really like.
Before becoming a parent, he says, “exposes things about you that you don’t know about yourself,” before adding how it’s a “huge emotional undertaking if you do it the right way.”
Gaines, who is also a therapist, urged how young men should “go see somebody about your past” prior to becoming a father.
“Go see somebody about the trauma that you’ve endured throughout the course of your life, and start healing,” he says. “Because if you don’t heal from that? You’ll have all this and you’ll never be happy.”
The video is a reality check that it takes consistent work to become a good parent and partner long term.
“We put in an immense amount of work to make this thing happen,” he says. “Man, we do it every day!”
He ended the speech with a great metaphor for creating a loving family: “You can’t just pour water over a lady and a baby and have a happy family overnight — this ain’t oatmeal, man!”