It happens every time. An old female friend finds you on Facebook and asks to friend you. With fond memories (or, maybe, really fond memories) you happily oblige. The first thing you do is head to her photos, hoping to dig out a bikini shot or two to relive the past, or vicariously enjoy what you missed — or see the bullet you dodged (well, maybe she dodged you). And … Shit! Where are the photos of her?

It’s all kid shots. Babies in cribs, toddlers smeared with ice cream, kids carving pumpkins. There may be a shot or two of her husband scattered in there, usually with a squirming youngster on his lap and a look of “what the fuck?” on his face. Almost all of the few pictures of her include children.

Your blood runs cold. But your  angel isn’t a centerfold — she’s a mom-bot.

So … maybe I’m generalizing a bit. But not overly much. Women who have kids do seem to adopt their offspring as a major part of their identity, even to the point of displacing other aspects of their lives. Guys … We tend to run more along the lines of, “Oh yeah. I have a kid, don’t I?” Your old buddies probably don’t use photos of their newborns as profile pics, and they do post lots of photos of themselves.

Which isn’t a problem if you’re gay. Good for you!

I think this is one of the under-appreciated challenges for stay-at-home dads that somewhat differentiates them from stay-at-home-moms. Yes, everybody deals with runny noses, developmental milestones, tantrums, socialization and the like. But whether it’s genetic, or cultural or subliminal programming inserted into TV commercials by space aliens with a traditional parenting philosophy, women often seem more likely to embrace life with the wee ones to the point of transforming who they are, and are less likely than men to resent the demands and trade-offs necessitated by the little beasts. Men, who don’t so easily merge their own identities with their parenting duties, may kick and scream a bit more than their female counterparts as they struggle to keep major portions of their life un-crusted with goo, unaccompanied by nursery rhymes, or simply unsubmerged in the role of a dad (that’s the unflattering way we see it, anyway).

The flip side is, I suspect, that we emerge a little more easily at the other end, individual identities intact, when the kids are ready for launch.

Now that I’ve written this, I know that I’m going to hear from moms who don’t completely identify with their kids and from fathers who do. I grok it, really, I do. It would be frightening if the alien subliminal-programming campaign was 100% effective. And seriously, we’ve all met the frustrated jock or business also-ran who tries to achieve the success that eluded him through his children. But I think my observations are accurate, broadly speaking.

Many women who have children are moms — that’s who they are. Men tend more often to be guys who happen to be dads. That’s an important difference in emphasis when it comes to identity that just has to have a major impact on the way we perform our parenting roles.

And on the likelihood of finding bikini shots.

If it hasn’t yet occurred to an adult sitting in a darkened theater, watching Toy Story 3 with a wide-eyed tyke, the clear giveaway that the long-awaited sequel’s “G” rating is a total cock-up comes about three-quarters of the way through.  That’s when the movie’s beloved protagonists barely escape a shredding by a battery of spinning blades, only to face doom in a fiery inferno.

By this time, of course, your kid has already encountered deceit, torture and the suggestion that lost or discarded toys may become so embittered as to despise their rosy-cheeked former owners and embark on a career of iron-fisted brutality. I’m not quite clear why I sat through all that with my four-year-old, who still mourns for his pink bunny, misplaced during a vacation a year ago, just so he could prompt us to depart by shaking in terror during the previously mentioned death-by-a-thousand-cuts-plus-flames bit.

Sometime I think I just suck as a dad.

My kid isn’t even especially sensitive — he loved Up, and like every male member of my family, thinks that pain is hilarious. Oddly, though, he’s drawn up short by a vicious mind-fuck followed by a vision of Hell.

None of this should be taken to suggest that Toy Story 3 is a bad movie; to the contrary, it’s excellent. The story is complex and well-written, the humor comes off without a misfire and the characters continue to appeal. The movie is extremely well-crafted — especially for college-age late-teens, growing nostalgic for their childhoods as they trade oft-handled dolls and games for laptops and beer mugs. I can easily visualize brigades of newly minted college freshmen marching out of showings of Toy Story 3 and immediately speed-dialing mom to forbid her to touch the cherished contents of the toy box.

But it ain’t for the wee ones.

By the way, does anybody know how the damned movie ends? I’m kind of invested in the outcome.

Yesterday, I mentioned that after the birth of my son, “I raced out and got myself snipped.” Let me elaborate a bit; as with so many of life’s adventures, there’s a story behind those words.

I was dead-set on having no more kids. One was enough — more than enough, so far as I was concerned. But, at that time, there was only one urologist within a 50 mile radius. Yes, this is rural Arizona, and one guy had the monopoly on the maintenance and repair of male plumbing. He was also a bit of a jerk — but at least he was a competent physician. So, for my vasectomy, he was the only game in town.

I went as soon as my wife was sufficiently recovered from her own ordeal in giving birth to our son. Never before has one man been so eager to go under the knife. Onto the table I went, naked from the waist down.

And then the son of a bitch starts giving me a real-estate pitch.

You see, the urologist was part of a consortium that had built a medical complex across the road from the hospital — the very one in which his office was located. It was up-to-date, with all of the modern amenities, bound to appreciate in value, he assured me, and he thought it would be swell if my wife and I bought into the partnership.

And while he gave me the sales pitch, he had my balls in one hand and a scalpel in the other.

Honestly, if the investment papers had been on the table with me, I’d have signed them. Honored them? No. But I would have signed.

Instead, I gave the doctor as sincere a smile as I could manage, and told him I’d think about it.

As it turned out, the half-empty complex was hemorrhaging money. I didn’t know it (I found out later), but the place was about to go into foreclosure and the partners were desperate for a cash infusion. They didn’t get it from me — or anybody else — and the bank soon took over the white elephant. The urologist headed back east about the same time, though I can’t say for sure that the one thing led to the other.

I don’t know if his sales technique has remained the same. But I hope nobody ever tries to top my old urologist when it comes to the hard sell.

I don’t eat dairy, so I don’t put butter on my bread. My wife’s cholesterol spikes if she even looks at butter, so she (regretfully) follows my example to avoid emulating her mother’s triple bypass, or her younger brother’s doctor-mandated Lipitor dependence. This used to mean that we used olive oil, usually with some garlic and herbs instead. After all, any reason to consume olive oil is a good reason.

But recently, I’ve come up with something different. This is an original recipe, based on a vague memory of something I had in a restaurant about twenty years ago.

Roasted Vegetable Puree

2-3 carrots, coarsely chopped

2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped

1/2 medium onion, coarsely chopped

1 red or yellow potato, quartered

1 clove garlic

2-3 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons oil-packed (or rehydrated) sun-dried tomatoes

herbs of your choice (basil, thyme, parsley …)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Add carrots, celery, onion, potato and garlic to a roasting pan. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and toss to coat. Roast for approximately 40 minutes, stirring once.

When vegetables are roasted, remove from oven and place in a food processor. Add sun-dried tomatoes, remaining olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Process to a coarse puree.

Warm or room temperature, I use it on bread, on sandwiches and even on crackers. Let me know if you like it.

I wasn’t going to have kids. No way, no how. I told my girlfriends that: You want kids? Look elsewhere. I told my wife, back when we were just dating, the same thing: I’m the last of my line, baby. You see this fine genetic material? I’m taking it with me.

So how in Hell did this happen?:

Do you see the fear in that poor bastard’s eyes? He knows something important has just changed in his life, but he’s not entirely sure what or how.

Actually, there was a bit of a negotiation. After I moved into my then-wife-to-be’s house, she told me that she’d reconsidered her previous OK-ness with my no-procreation stance, and she was now un-OK with the idea.

After discussion, it was clear that having kids was more important to her than not having kids was to me. It was also, frankly, clear to me that I was between jobs, no longer had my name on a lease, and lacked much in the way of negotiating leverage.

Oh, you were looking for a magical transformation, weren’t you? Uh uh. That’s not the way it happened. In fact, just as soon as my wife was sufficiently recovered from giving birth to our son that I could be laid-up myself for a few days, I raced out and got myself snipped.

Oh, and that’s a story in itself. For now, let’s just say I was a captive audience.

So that’s it in a nutshell. From childfree to father through negotiation, a balance of competing priorities, and a relatively weak bargaining position. Magical, ain’t it?

Oh, don’t get so choked up. Maybe this will make you feel better:

Hey! I never said he wasn’t an amazing kid.

I’m not really sure how I ended up here. Ten years ago, I was a confirmed bachelor, professional writer and editor, and footloose child- … well, not hater, but disliker, or maybe just indifferenter.

Now, I’m a husband, the cook, “freelance” (read: unemployed but willing to earn a buck), and not just a father, but the primary caregiver and a stay at home dad — all without having ever consciously chosen such a radically different path from what might once have been expected. And no, I’m not entirely at peace with my new life.

Actually, how I got here isn’t a complete mystery. My wife is half WASP; seizing control of the stove could be viewed as an act of self-defense. Oh, all right– maybe that’s unfair to a certain ethnic “cuisine”; my wife is just a lousy cook.

And my wife is a physician with her own practice, while I’m a scribbler. It’s really a no-brainer when it comes to deciding which income to consider expendable.

As for the rest … There’s a lot to delve into. I’ll get to it over time. Like where did that kid come from? Yeah, that’s a big one.

And I’ll write about pretty much anything else that catches my fancy, from the unexpected (but gratifying) process of choosing among education alternatives to the shitty local public schools, to my continuing astonishment at the degeneration of so many American males into immature man-boys who dress like 14-year-olds and act like jackasses.

Come along for the ride.