Memories of At-Home Fatherhood

In Meg Wolitzer’s insightful and punctilious portrayal of at-home mothers in New York City, The Ten-Year Nap, she writes of an at-home father:

…his appearance at the school in the afternoon was confusing; it threw off theories about how the world worked.  You were initially pleased by him, but then after a short while you felt slightly annoyed.  He seemed like a loiterer here in the world that the women had formed for themselves.

I read this with a nod of recollection.  It’s now been 24 years since my wife and I made the decision to have me stay at home with our twin daughters while she continued her career in human resources.  As I wrote in my song, “Daddy’s at Home”: 

I remember the time
When I found this wife of mine
Was earning more than I ever would
And as her due date arrived
We needed to decide
Which one of us would stay home for good
I wasn't tied to the workday that took me from nine to five
But now I'm wishing I could just rest my eyes

This song highlights the joys of at-home fatherhood – many of my songs do – and I unequivocally stand by the decision to stay at home and raise the kids.  I wish I could do it all over again.  I loved being a dad to young children.

But there was also a flip side to the journey: being an at-home father was often isolating, particularly on the East Coast where people are less open and tougher nuts to crack in general, but even in the friendlier Midwest.  And while one could theorize about why this was the case, I think Wolitzer offers a plausible explanation: because women were dubious about this interloper, a man entering a world that had been reserved for them.  I wasn’t invited to join their walks, their coffee outings, their phone call chats – and really, I shouldn’t have been.  I see more clearly now than I did then just how presumptuous it was for me to think that I should have been treated as a colleague. 

When I first took my twins to preschool in Illinois, many of the moms viewed me as a novelty, and I was able to establish a rapport with some of the friendlier ones.  Looking back now, I’m grateful for the few mom friends I made, who occasionally took my phone calls to chat about which park district program we were signing up for or to just unload about the trivial trials that parenting includes.  During dark winter days, when parenting could feel like a life sentence, these phone calls were a lifeline for me.  

Over time, some of the relationships I established graduated to in-person gatherings.  I think that what I had going for me more than anything else was a nonthreatening quality, some sort of signal that read, “I am not going to make a move on you.”  In a way, I preferred these relationships to any I could have established with fellow fathers.  Too often, I found dads to be a bore.  If you weren’t talking to them about sports, finances and home improvement, the conversations dried up.  The women I became friends with were more interesting, unafraid to express regret and uncertainly.  They were more self-effacing and more empathetic.  More human.

As my kids grew older, I saw other fathers walking their kids to and from school.  Most were working in some capacity, either out of the home or on odd shifts, but there were a few of us full-time stay-at-home dads roaming about.  It became less of a thing.  Less novel.  More accepted.  A quarter of a century later, I like to think that I helped them along in some small way.

Enter Empty-Nesterdom

I’ve recently joked with some friends of mine: “I’ll be an empty-nester in September.  When you see a flare, come with a few beers and rescue me.”

This Friday my wife and I enter Empty-Nesterdom.  For the first time since December of 1996, when a bout of nausea prompted us to stop by CVS for a quick pregnancy test, we will no longer devote a large percentage of thought and energy to our children.  At least not all the time.  Granted, our son’s increasingly independent lifestyle over the last number of years has gradually given my wife and me more time on our own, and we’ve slowly grown accustomed to what life might look like on the other side, but I’d be lying if I said that I don’t have a degree of trepidation about the future.  None of our kids will be an easy drive away, and one isn’t even an easy flight away.  We won’t be able to plan a spontaneous lunch or walk with our kids.  Every visit will have to be crosschecked against multiple calendars and planned in advance.  When our twin girls left for school five years ago, we ended up seeing one of them once a semester (Kentucky) and the other once a year (California).  Cincinnati will similarly limit our visits, and we may go for long periods of time without seeing any of them.

Although my three kids are doing pretty well, I’ve found that having adult children leads to a different sort of parental anxiety, because adult children have adult problems.  Gone are the days when their spirits could be lifted merely by me picking them up and jumping up and down.  God, I loved those days.  I love these days too for sure.  It’s just more uncertain, and I of course have little to no control of the situation.  Last week I looked over a 401k rollover procedure for my daughter, and I was happy to actually contribute something of value.   I love it when there’s a right answer to a problem. 

Mostly, though, it’s not so simple.  A while back, the psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb wrote a great article in The Atlantic called “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy.”  It’s nearly a decade old now, but the revelations still ring true: that as parents we’ve overprotected our children to the extent that they experience difficulty in their twenties and thirties, so unable are they to handle challenges, to be resilient in the face of difficulties.  The article is well-summarized by the following sentence: “…many parents will do anything to avoid having their kids experience even mild discomfort, anxiety, or disappointment, with the result that when, as adults, they experience the normal frustrations of life, they think something must be terribly wrong.”

This was written in 2011 when the worries of much of the world paled in comparison to what young people face today.  We’re asking an awful lot of young adults to handle the adversities of COVID-19, a sinking economy, isolation, cancelled school, melting icecaps, political divisiveness, mean-spirited leaders, hateful mob mentality gone rampant online, and a whole host of other concerns, when we as adults set them up for failure to overcome life’s great challenges.

I’d like to think that my wife and I didn’t fall into the overprotective parenting trap, but I’m sure I’m fooling myself.  I’m sure I sent one to many emails to their teachers over the years and had my kids check in too often when they were out.  Ultimately, we probably did okay, but I believe that my children are up to the task of weathering life’s great challenges likely in spite of their upbringing rather than because of it.  It’s not going to be easy, but I believe that they’ll be among those who navigate these treacherous times, not with perfection, but with perseverance.

But a larger question looms: will my wife and I be up to the task?  Will we find balance, meaning and determination absent the diversion of active parenting? 

Stay tuned.

The True Sign of Aging: Smarter Kids

As the parent of two sixteen year-olds, I recognize that my perceived IQ is going to plummet precipitously over the next five years or so, only to rebound nicely in time for my daughters’ graduations from college.  This, I can accept, primarily because it’s temporary and because I’ll end up looking pretty good in the end.

I can also accept that I recently had to purchase my first pair of reading glasses and that the suit I purchased in 1993 is becoming tight in the mid-section. 

What I can’t accept is the true sign of aging: having kids that are far smarter than I am or ever will be.  And this has nothing to do with grades and tests.  Sure, both of my daughters did better on their practice ACTS than I did on my actual exam, but they’ve also taken classes that begin with the words “honors” and “AP,” and they tend to engage in activities such as completing assignments and studying.  Well, sure, anyone can do well on his ACT if he prepares for it.  Where’s the challenge in that?

No, the true sign of my kids’ superior intelligence was exhibited on Labor Day, when my family got together with friends and agreed to play a game of Pictionary – children vs. adults.  I am humbled and ashamed to reveal that my opponents were three-quarters of the way through the board before my team reached the first square!  We managed to shrink the margin of defeat before our kids completed their victory dance, but in truth, the adults – to borrow President Obama’s description of the 2010 midterm election – took a shellacking

Yes, I drew a Christmas tree about as well as my daughter did, but that didn’t help my team guess any quicker.  And my game partner learned that drawing nothing to help us guess the word “nothing,” wasn’t as successful as drawing something and then drawing a line through it, as our opponents did.  Even my 11 year-old son, who I would hope to be lagging somewhat on the intelligence front, portrayed “time zone” perfectly, sketching the Earth, drawing vertical lines through it, and then adding a clock for good measure. 

That’s right.  My sixth grader successfully drew “time zone.”  My team couldn’t even get “yield sign.”

Which is why from now on, I’m going to exercise my superiority over my children the only way I know how: ping-pong.