Month: January 2023

Musings of a stay-at-home dad

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I often can’t believe how good I have it, if I’m being perfectly honest.

I’m in love with the peace and contentment of my life…interspersed with the daily responsibilities and stressors of parenting.

There has never been greater daily purpose for my lucky ass.

Simultaneously, I come face to face with my insecurities every day.

And I have no choice but to come past them every day. With or without my ego intact.

For there is always more to do as a parent.

Always.

So I enjoy them. The breaks that is, not the insecurities. I take a lot of breaks to fuel myself for the next task. I think I might start referring to them as “prep” sessions. There is never enough time to get things done. So you make peace with that, and pick your battles. Before moving onto another glorious break. And during those breaks, I reflect with pride on what I achieved prior to said break – dish-washing, dog-walking, de-cluttering, disaster-prevention and more – while “prepping” for the next task at hand.

And all for love. (The love I speak about is the occasionally exasperating, soulful love that is rooted in struggle and worry…as opposed to the social media driven fluff masquerading for the real thing.)

The Sisyphean day-to-day of keeping up with household tasks is really aided by the fact that I’m far from a perfectionist.

I have my wife/keeper to thank for that.

Deep down though, I’m scared I might like it a bit too much and find the inevitable transition back to breadwinner to be far too onerous. (Or am I secretly hoping I can go back to being the breadwinner so as to assuage my own ego?)

This is still relatively new for me. Being a home-maker and not the primary one who sells their labor to capitalism is not something boys with my upbringing are trained in.

Quite the opposite actually.

As a dude, the chauvinistic socialization is initially hard to grapple with. That’s definitely one of the insecurities I face up to daily. Make no mistake, I’m grateful as fuck for my partner taking on the burden of income generation. It is something I can switch back to at a moment’s notice, but I’m also really, really thankful that Sus is the principally salaried one in our household. Selling one’s labor to capitalism, especially in some of the jobs I’ve had access to, is draining on the soul. Nonetheless, shifting into homemaker mode for clueless men like myself comes with patriarchal baggage that can be hard to shed.

The power dynamics in our household are more matriarchal than ever, and it feels more balanced. As a male home-maker, I have never ever felt powerless in our household. But when I’m the main breadwinner, despite the gender balance we strive for in our household, it feels just a touch harder to have more egalitarian gender dynamics, especially with the diversity of gender roles we want to expose our children to.

The privilege of being a stay-at-home dad, in partnership with a breadwinner-mom, comes with the benefit of providing a healthier, more diverse understanding of manhood and womanhood for my kids. It’s feeling more normal than ever, and quite frankly should eventually become passe.

Again, I have my wife/keeper to thank for that.

Why do anything?

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You probably have nothing better to do anyway…

Well, think about it.

Do you?

This is an internal coaching tip I keep in my back pocket to get stuff done. As a bumbling father of two, well settled in my first mid-life crisis, I rely on anything I can to get things done. Especially the daily cooking, cleaning, and decluttering. When I start procrastinating I just ask myself whether I have anything better to do with my time and, almost always, I don’t. (Of course there are times when procrastination is the best thing I can do with my time…but it gets really old, really fast when the dishes start piling up and the house starts resembling a disaster zone.)

Nowadays, I write when I get a little break from being a full-time home-maker and professional cave troll. I embark on random streams of consciousness and bloated id for nobody else’s sake but my own. It’s like daily exercise despite being a failed and mostly talent-free athlete. Yes, I do it for the cookies and feelings of self-importance, but it might just be good for me too.

This wasn’t always the case.

When I was younger, with less subcutaneous fat, I used to write with ambition. I used to write with dreams. Laughable ones. Of literary grandeur. Of being lauded.

(When I barely knew how to use periods or parentheses.)

Life is different now.

I’m beginning to accept that I have nothing noteworthy to say. This acceptance is a necessary rite of passage for any man, but it’s particularly crucial for my egomaniacal ass.

And yet…

I keep pontificating to absolutely no avail. I keep publishing my ramblings to the benefit of no one. I keep yammering into the void, so to speak.

Why? You ask, oh random figment of my imagination.

Because, my good friend, I genuinely have nothing better to do at this present moment.

Which is fine. Really.

I for one don’t know when this paraphrase took on such a negative connotation.

What, inherently, is wrong with doing something because you have nothing better to do with your time? Why is that seen as somewhat of a copout?

In any case, I’m at a stage in my life where clean dishes and a half-assed workout are major victories. Kids who are not whining or needy for more than a 10 minute stretch is like winning a world title.

Life now decides what the best thing for me to do is; And I get very limited franchise in deciding such matters.

That’s why I write during those rare periods when I genuinely have nothing better to do with my time.

It’s simultaneously liberating and sobering.