The Stay at Home Dad’s Ego
If you had told me in college that just six years after graduating, I would quit my job to become a full-time parent, I probably would have spit my beer all over you. But now, that story now makes enough sense that I could explain it even to my former, drunken, fratboy self. After six years of work, my IT career had fizzled, burning too fast with youthful ambition after graduation before starving itself for want of meaningful work in the wastelands of a corporate cube farm. By the time my son Carter was born two years ago, I had become a terminally-bored software designer for a mega-bank in Chicago, watching the clock and surfing the internet all day while I did the minimal amount of work to keep my health benefits. Meanwhile my wife, Debbie, had become a successful Realtor who absolutely adored her career, which quickly eclipsed mine in both enthusiasm and earnings potential. So when Carter was born, the decision about who was to take care of him was a no-brainer. Given the state of our respective careers, we decided to defy tradition and I quit my job. As far as the IRS was concerned, I became a Realtor too; I had earned my license the previous fall so I could help Debbie while she was pregnant. Officially I’m her business partner now, but all I really do is keep the books and pinch-hit for double-booked appointments. My real boss wears diapers and thinks his name is “Caca.”
Guys who are overly sensitive about their manhood don’t make decisions like this. As such I didn’t expect to be bothered too much by the gender-reversal. After all, I had found a sugar mama; what’s more manly than that? But quitting my career to take care of a baby while working part time for my wife has put some strain on the male ego. Terms like “Mr. Mom” and “house husband” are degrading for a reason— they’re cultural oxymorons like “male nurse” that symbolize a man who has somehow made a poor choice. They sound awkward because they describe an awkward situation. It was even strange to me at first; when I grew up, my dad went to work every day while my mom stayed home, just like every other kid I knew.
It took me about five months to come to terms with this new life, to start thinking about it as a new career instead of something I was doing in the absence of one. In the beginning, I tried to do some reading to prepare myself for life as a stay-at-home dad, but the current literature on the topic consisted of either New Age-y affirmations about starting a gender-reversed parenting revolution or slapstick, sitcom-worthy anecdotes about changing diapers on workbenches and accidentally putting breast milk in your coffee. Apparently my options were to either live on a commune and nurse my child from an artificial teat strapped to my chest or to channel Tim Allen from Home Improvement and Michael Keaton in Mr. Mom. I decided to do neither, and instead relied on advice from our parents, the pediatrician, and tricks I’d learned from training my dog Bootsy, a three-year-old Lab and standard poodle mix made especially for yuppies called a labradoodle.
For the most part, it’s worked. I’ve limited Carter to just a few chipped teeth and kept the number of times I’ve had to whack him with a newspaper down to a minimum. Now I rather like the routine. We have breakfast; we watch cartoons; we nap, then we have a snack. I get to play with Boosty every day. I have plenty of time to read and write, and I’ve learned the subtle differences between Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go! (Diego has better music). This new freedom notwithstanding, it’s still hard to ignore that sympathetic, “Poor Guy” look I get from people when they ask what I do for a living. My old college buddies have been ruthless of course, and the lifestyle certainly hasn’t done much to reaffirm the notion that I’m still the same strapping young man who convinced a woman to marry him in the first place. Going bald in my twenties was bad enough—try feeling sexy while you’re wearing a Baby Bjorn.
Carter was born in the winter, so while the weather was still cold we continued paying the dog walker we had hired while both of us were still working. It was helpful when Carter was a newborn, but in the spring, I told him we would no longer need his services. Abiding by the bachelor’s adage that women are suckers for babies and puppies, I hoped to restore my masculinity by walking Carter and Bootsy around the neighborhood to preen for the ladies. I wasn’t thinking of cheating, of course, or even flirting with anyone. All I wanted was to catch a few second glances from some women and soak up the attention as they cooed over Carter and complimented my fatherly sacrifice. I took practice runs with my two charges down the side streets, learning how to manage Bootsy’s leash and keep it from tangling around the stroller wheels, lest I ruin my testosterone restoration by tripping and hogtying myself to a Graco Metrolite. Before long I could steer the stroller with a flick of the wrist, driving it through intersections and over curbs, all the while switching hands with the leash, passing it behind my back and hopping over it without breaking stride like a rodeo cowboy as Bootsy darted to and fro behind us.
Once I was confident with my wrangling skills, I decided it was time to stroll by the one place in my neighborhood where I knew I could find some attractive women: Starbucks. As I approached the green awning on the corner of Madison and Morgan, I found my mark: two hotties brandishing iced skim lattes exiting the shop and heading my direction. I pretended to fuss over Carter’s seatbelt while Bootsy paused to sniff some grass. As the women neared, I straightened up and puffed out my chest. They looked down at Carter then back at me, smiled, then giggled to each other as they passed. I basked in their adoration for a moment until I looked down at Bootsy and realized that they were laughing because he was cocked over the grass next to me, taking a gigantic dump. I bent down to clean up, red-faced, hoping they wouldn’t look back at us. It’s hard to look sexy when you’re picking up a pile of dog shit with a plastic bag, while its depositor is celebrating his accomplishment by sitting on the sidewalk next to you, licking his crotch.
Any time I go to the downtown Loop now and see guys my age scurrying around in their blue dress shirts and khakis, ID badges clipped to their belts next to their Blackberries, I get a slight twinge of jealousy. “It must be nice to have somewhere to be,” I think. I miss that feeling of importance from having a job. No matter how bored, unchallenged, or criminally underpaid you are at work, knowing you have to get up, put on nice clothes and punch in somewhere does something for your self-esteem.
“But you are important,” Debbie tells me. “Carter needs you to be there,” my mom says. “You have the most important job in the world,” all those parenting magazines and books say. This is true I suppose, and in the end those platitudes help. But believe me, it’s hard to feel like an upwardly mobile, ambitious and contributing member to society when you’re sitting in your boxer shorts at 10 AM, trying to decide if that brown speck on your t-shirt–the same one you slept in the night before–is a crumb from your breakfast or a piece of baby shit.
I realize though that if I did start working again, pretty soon I’d just want to be back home watching cartoons instead, and Carter is pretty good at reminding me why. Nobody gives feedback like a toddler. Debbie usually gets up with him in the morning and feeds him breakfast before she leaves for work, but one day shortly after he turned two, I happened to go into his room first. When I opened the door, he stood up in his crib and said, “Mama?” The room being dark and him having just woken up, I could forgive the confusion. But when I bent to pick him up, he pushed me away, started waving frantically, saying, “Bye bye.” When I tried again, he flopped to the mattress, pretending to sleep so I would go away. As I stood at the crib’s railing watching him play possum, I knew I was witnessing a moment, though one I didn’t expect until he was maybe 16: that day when a son balls up his fists and screams at his father, “I hate you!” My eyes welled and my throat tightened. They grow up so fast.
