[Note: This is a piece I published this winter at SGI Quarterly, a Buddhist journal based in Japan. It in turn was derived from a couple of posts I wrote for Firedoglake. It seemed like an appropriate piece for Father's Day. Hope you enjoy. -- DN]
I knew from the time I was a teenager that if I ever got the opportunity, I wanted to try my hand at being a stay-at-home father. My youngest brother was born when I was 11 and I wound up learning a lot about child care – especially the knowledge that it was a special thing.
The opportunity didn’t come till I was in my forties, which was when my wife, Lisa, and I decided that it was finally time to have a child. I was looking for an opportunity to do something besides my longtime newsroom work, and she had just been hired by a major software company; we’d intended all along for one of us to remain at home when we did have a child, so I bid farewell to the regular paycheck, built up my freelance writing business from home, and when Fiona was born in May 2001, I launched into the serious work of being the primary caregiver for our baby girl.
That was more than seven years ago, and Fiona’s been in school full-time for over two years now; the intervening time has given me room to put the experience of being a stay-at-home dad in some perspective.
And I have to tell you: it's been without question the most satisfying and rewarding thing I've done in my life. When I shuffle off this mortal coil, it will be with the knowledge I really did accomplish something worthwhile, and nothing can take that away.
Perhaps more to the point, it's only confirmed my belief that it's an experience more men need. It's important not just for making men better fathers, but I think also for helping women be better mothers -- and most of all, for giving child-rearing the cherished and significant place it should have in broader society.
It was hard, often sleepless, often nerve-wracking, and sometimes unpleasant work, but it was also the best job I ever had. Yet as the months and years added up, and I spent days on end at playgrounds, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and in playdates, it became plain that there really is a certain amount of resistance among a lot of people to the concept of stay-at-home daddies.
And even though a lot of women thought it was neat that a man was being the primary caregiver, there was at times a certain resentment from some women over my invasion of what for them was their territory. Some of this was perfectly understandable; when Fiona was a toddler, the topics of conversation among the gathered mothers often veered into various complaints about female bodily functions, and became my habit to wander off at such moments.
Then there were moments -- whispered comments, offhand remarks, strange assumptions -- where I was reminded that a lot of people, both men and women, privately viewed stay-at-home daddies as wimps or out-of-work losers.
Well, all this faded to insignificance amid the daily reality of raising a child. It's impossible to put into words the immensity of the rewards that come with it: you watch them grow in body and spirit, become real little persons with real minds, dreams, and desires all their own, and you bond with them in a way that lasts for life and maybe beyond. I've done many good and rewarding things in my life, but none of them has meant quite as much as being Fiona's daddy. What other people thought, really, hardly mattered at all, because I knew the score.
Certainly, it never seemed to me that my masculinity might be at stake. Indeed, I've never encountered anything that came close to making me feel like a "real man" as being a daddy.
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