"Now I have to worry about boys," my friend, Al Azcona, told me when he found out that his wife was expecting a girl. Having once been young men themselves, many fathers are instantly concerned about the prospect of their daughters spending time with young men. It's funny that fathers hope their sons will be very successful with members of the opposite sex, but they will do anything they can to prevent their daughters from dating until their mid 20s.

As his wife has traveled down the path of pregnancy, she has faced the barrage of tests that comes with being of "advanced maternal age." (Pregnant and 35 or over? Welcome to "advanced maternal age." Kind of makes you wince, doesn't it?) Ultrasounds, tests, meetings with genetic counselors. "It was all to rule out the possibility of birth defects, which is very important, I know," says Azcona, a resident of San Diego, Calif. "But after a while, it got to be very intimidating. It's hard not to worry, especially when everyone is telling you not to worry and that everything is going to be fine."

Since the statistical risk was so low, and all of the early results were very positive, Azcona and his wife decided not to go through some of the more advanced and invasive tests. "Enough was enough, especially since it was all just to rule stuff out when there was no evidence that anything was wrong in the first place," he says.

While contemplating the serious issues of boys and biology, Azcona also has more frilly concerns; being colorblind, he has trouble distinguishing pink from grey. "Someone had better tell me which clothes are the pink ones, or she is going to go out in public looking like a gym sock," he says. "I'd be in pretty big trouble if that happened."

So, aside from dating practices, what are new dads most worried about when it comes to the arrival of their little one? A lot. For starters, our society never assumes that fatherhood comes naturally for men. (We do assume that mothering comes naturally for women, though, of course, that stereotype is not necessarily true, either.) We can and do get up for midnight feedings, change radioactive diapers and spend quality time with our kids. Despite our capabilities, fathers-to-be and brand-new dads often do feel insecure about their parenting skills, right down to whether or not they can even hold a new baby properly.

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