On being an engaged dad.

[andrewducker]

Over the last few months a few people have mentioned how engaged I am as a dad.

And while, yes, I do enjoy doing things with the kids, this is actually driven by something more fundamental - that parenthood isn't something that falls on only Jane, and this is largely because we both have jobs.

Once we had a Sophia about the place we needed to work out how life with her* was going to work. Jane had taken a year off for parental leave, but after that point there came the question of what to do about the three/four years until school started. Nursery is expensive, and Jane wasn't a *big* fan of her job**. But she'd known multiple people who had left similar office jobs when they had a kid and then couldn't get back into anything of the same level and ended up doing very low-level jobs later on. And we knew that this would only be a temporary step - the kid(s) would go to school, and she didn't want to base all of her future options on a choice made to cover those three years. Also, being independent is very important to her. The thought of being entirely dependent on anyone*** filled her with horror. And we could afford to put the kid(s) in nursery, so that's what we did.****

And that made setting the tone for things much easier. Neither of us was the stay-at-home parent with the other being the wage-earner - we both had jobs, and parenting was divided between us. And, particularly once Gideon came along 18 months after Sophia went to nursery, Jane mostly parented Gideon and I mostly parented Sophia. Not that both of us didn't occasionally look after both, or do things the other way around. But Gideon was dependent on Jane in a way that Sophia wasn't, so it naturally fell that way. And so I got to spent a lot more time with her. Which suited me fine, because I find it much easier to build a relationship with someone who can talk to me and tell me what they want/need.

And so it's not that I ever said "I want to be a hand's-on dad", it's that we *both* wanted to have jobs, and so parenting was naturally going to be more evenly split than back in ye olden days.

*and eventually Gideon, although we didn't know if we'd be able to have another child at 43/48.
**She likes her current one a great deal more.
*** even someone as lovely as me, because let's face it, do you ever really know someone *that* well?
**** Theoretically *I* could have stopped working and been a stay-at-home parent. But the thought of doing that also fills me with horror. It is not something I would shine at, and I am delighted to hand off the work to people who are able to provide far more enrichment than I would manage. I have no idea how the ones who also have their own children manage to finish a long day with a bunch of small kids before going home to their own ones!

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

Lots of moms would tell you that they have full-time jobs and still do most if not all of the parenting anyway, whatever that involves. Having you both work meant you talked like adults and decided that you needed to work as a team but that's a conscious choice on both your parts, that you keep making as time goes on. Lots of couples still don't work like that, at least in my country.

[rmc28]

I know that during the pandemic lockdowns, it felt like almost every male-female couples with children I knew, the mother was taking the lead on all childcare and homeschooling. For reasons which always seemed good and valid for the individual family - as they were for my family and me being Lead Parent - but the systematic bias was very unnerving.

[andrewducker]

It definitely was.

[ninetydegrees]

As a teacher I rarely need two hands to count the fathers who attend parent-teacher meetings, almost all elected parents who attend admin meetings are women, primary contacts are mothers (they're the ones who answer calls and emails, contact us, take care of all the admin aspects, organize communication between parents, etc.). I always contact both parents. Parents who threaten us though are almost always fathers.

[coth]

B worked from home running his own business, while I commuted to offices. We had a more equal split of work than most, because he did almost all shopping and cooking and a fair amount of actual childcare, but I was still the child admin and transport person. This division of labour was partly because I had a smartphone from really early on and could do a certain amount on the train and in my lunch hours (B didn't get a smartphone, and partly because I was the driver and picked up almost all of the fetching and carrying. But we always went together to school things. Not a coincidence that our two closest local acquaintances were also families where the father could be met at the school gate.

I do notice in London that you will see men with buggies/children but no female companion nowadays - that was vanishingly rare when we had a young child to wrangle.

[andrewducker]

I haven't made friends with anyone else where the dad is primarily the one at pickup (although I know a couple to say hi to). My friendships so far are entirely driven by "Who are the parents of the ones Sophia wants to spend time with."

Things are definitely changing for the positive. Dads seem to be a lot more involved.

[andrewducker]

I'm sorry you get threatened.