An author took a road trip with his son to his hometown rodeo to discover what it means to become a man today. He doesn't have the answer, but he did learn a few things about fatherhood.

I didn't have a father growing up. He wasn't around. So I didn't have positive — or any, really — male role models, Hennick said. Another stumbling block was the changing conversation around gender — particularly masculinity — in America. Hennick didn't know how to address these concerns with his son. I think that expectations of men are changing in ways that we kind of maybe aren't talking about a ton, Hennick said. Like, it's still easier to be a man in America than to be a woman. But Hennick points out that there's been a conversation about sort of women's changing roles and identities and sort of the changing definitions or expectations of womanhood or motherhood. There wasn't necessarily something like that he could turn to for his own role. Finally, there was the topic of race. My son is biracial and I'm white. I've never been a black man in America and didn't feel like I had anything to teach him about that, Hennick said. None of them were — or are — questions with easy answers. So Hennick took to the road. I was like, all right, let's get in the car and see what happens, he said.When it comes to trying to figure out how to be a father when you had an absent one — and the realities of American culture and manhood — the rodeo seemed like the right choice. The rodeo — it's cowboys, and the cowboy is kind of the archetype of American masculinity, right? Hennick told Business Insider. And so I put my faith in the idea that there might be something to learn along the way.As Hennick writes it, the backdrop of the summer of 2016 — and their car ride across the country — was the Black Lives Matter movement, gaining traction by the day. Hennick watched boys like his son, who is biracial, be labeled thugs. It was the final stretch of the 2016 election, and debates over sexism — and what it means to be a man in America — were raging. For Hennick, all of this was underscored by an absent father and his own struggles with alcohol. Hennick was three months sober at the time of the trip — a streak he has stuck with since. I want to be for my children the father I never had: present, sober, responsible, hard working, competent, loving, organized, attentive, Hennick writes in the memoir. And, even when I fall short, I want Nile and Peanut to think that's who I am.On one leg of their trip, Hennick decided to take Nile to Niagara Falls, thinking it would be fun to ride on the go-kart track. But once they made it to the track, his son decided he didn't want to participate. But I had been looking forward to this so much, for so many years — to try to sort of give him an experience that I thought he would enjoy, Hennick said. But in the moment it turned out that he was just sort of scared and overwhelmed, and he was a little boy. Hennick said that both of them — son and father — were tired and cranky, and he ended up throwing his own little tantrum. I sort of realized that trying to manufacture these memories doesn't always work and things don't always go as you expect, and that's okay, Hennick said.It's so easy in parenthood to get caught up in the day-to-day logistics of having kids, Hennick said. You know, keeping mittens straight, and packing school lunches, and doing drop off, and shuttling kids to soccer practice, and stuff like that. But taking time — whether it's a cross-country trip to the rodeo or just sitting with your experience of parenthood — is crucial, too. I think it is important to find time to reflect and to sort of ask the big questions about what you're doing, whether or not you arrived at any sort of concrete answers, Hennick said. I think it's worthwhile to sit with the hard questions and to think about them. And three years out, Hennick doesn't have answers to any of the big questions. I haven't had any epiphanies, Hennick said. And even if I did have one, I know myself well enough to know that I wouldn't be able to hold on to it for that long — because the day to day does creep up on you. But it is that very day-to-day minutiae that made the journey worth it for Hennick. He said that other parents have resonated with the quiet or small moments of parenting that he depicts. While he hasn't cracked the code of fatherhood, or solved issues of masculinity, having a tangible record of these 10 days with his son — both good and bad — is enough for now. It can be hard to appreciate what you have, Hennick said. And so it's nice to have a record to look back on. He's come away with a book, and the same questions. There is no sort of universal answer to the question, 'What does it mean to be a good man? What does it mean to raise your son into a good man?' Hennick said. But he did have one major realization: I'll be grappling with these questions my entire life as will my son — and that, that's okay.

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An author took a road trip with his son to his hometown rodeo to discover what it means to become a man today. He doesn't have the answer, but he did learn a few things about fatherhood.

For Hennick, there were 3 'big limitations' when it came to figuring out how to raise his son

Why he chose to go to the rodeo

Navigating the complexities of 2016 — and Hennick's own history with sobriety

On realizing that 'trying to manufacture these memories doesn't always work'

Why he would recommend it to another parent — and what has stayed with him