Full-Time Dad
I am a full-time father , or stay-at-home parent if you prefer. However you define it, and whatever term you use to denote it. it means that two things:
- I do not have regular away-from-home employment
- I am the primary caregiver to my children
What does that mean though? What is it like to be a stay at home dad? Which is maybe the same questions as “what did my mother do all day when I was growing up?” Well, in my experience, here is what it’s like, in bullet point form:
1) I am not good at it
I am pretty sure that the crisis of confidence in parenting is both constant and gender-neutral.See Vance & Brandon’s literature review: Delineating Among Parenting Confidence, Parenting Self-Efficacy, and Competence. ANS Adv Nurs Sci. 2017 Oct/Dec;40(4):E18-E37. doi: 10.1097/ANS.0000000000000179. PMID: 28825934; PMCID: PMC5664183.
Unfortunately, none of the studies they survey validate measurements on a sample of fathers specifically; opting either for mothers specifically, or parents jointly. At least my very unscientific research (chatting with other parents) has led me to believe so. So while I do worry every day that I am not any good at this whole parenting thing, I do console myself with the thought that at least I am here and trying. Perhaps the kids will recognize the effort one day.
The difference between self-efficacy (one’s belief or judgment about their ability to be successful in the parental role.), confidence (one’s feelings of competence in the parenting role) and competence (objective quality of parental caregiving and interaction) or, more simply; self belief, self assessment, and outside assessment, leaves gaps for doubt and worry to creep in to. The thing to remember is that no one is actually very good at it, which is the same as saying we are all basically both adequately competent and wracked with doubt.
In a less academic way, what it really means, to me at least, is that as long as I show up and put in the work, do my homework, and ask for honest criticism from others, I am likely to be at least an adequate parent, which is perfectly fine for me.
2) My life revolves around meals (so nothing has changed)
Prior to becoming a full-time dad, I was an executive chef. In that role, my life revolved around meals; eating something from the drive-thru on my way to the restaurant, doing paperwork while the prep cooks got ready for dinner, eating lunch with the rest of the kitchen staff, preparing for dinner service, service, and then eating something leftover on the way home or to the bar after service.
Now that I am at home full-time, my life is somehow even more dominated by food and meals. I cook 20 meals a week from scratch (Tuesday morning is commercially prepared meusli breakfast), as well as tend to the goats and chickens that provide part of our food, grow vegetables and grains, maintain extensive fruit and nut orchards, forage for mushrooms, write an encyclopedia of local gastronomy, and read voraciously about food.
It is very interesting to me that I cook vastly more at home now than I ever did when I was being paid to think about food all the time. As I said, with the exception of a weekly box of meusli cereal, everything we eat in our house is cooked from scratch. And as I settle into my new sort-of career as a farmer, more and more of what I cook from scratch comes from my güertu - my kitchen garden.
Of course, I also clean house, tend scrapes and boo boos, handle bath times, do laundry, look after a couple of aging dogs and a colony of semi-feral cats that live on our farm. When that is done I cut firewood, remodel the house, and work at beating back the ever-advancing blackberry thickets that engulf everything in Asturias as soon as you turn your back on them.
3) I carry a purse
It is unfortunately a tactical purse, because there is a serious lack of purse-sized bags that do not signal gender. Apparently making a gender-neutral tote smaller than a messenger bag and bigger than a clutch is a Hard Problem. Though a messenger bag does make an amazing diaper bag Shoutout to Timbuk2 both for their amazing messenger bag and for the amazing photgraphy insert that turned my no-longer-needed diaper bag into a great camera bag I still use pretty much daily a decade later. it is not as practical as something smaller and lighter on public transport, when running to the store, or wherever else the kids and I might roam.
Sure, I could carry a backpack all the time (and many times I do), but a backpack is bigger than the essential kid support items I need at all times, and so is overkill on many days. So, I carry a sling bag designed for gun nuts who like tacticool aesthetics, and I fill it up with parenting supplies.
At least living in Europe it is more common for men to carry purse-sized bags so my bag doesn’t scream he has a gun like it would in the States, but I still feel weird about it sometimes.
4) I don’t know any other full-time fathers.
In the EU, being a stay at home father is exceedingly rare: Whereas in the US about one 1 in 20 fathers stay at home with their kids full time for more than six months, in the EU it is more like 1 in 100 (and is, of course, 1 in 3 for women).For US statistics, see the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Characteristics of Families report. For EU statistics, see the Eurostat Career Break for Childcare section of the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life report. In my personal experience, European countries are far more hidebound and have a bigger blind spot when it comes to assumed gender roles than the States. Spain in particular (as the one I am best acquainted with) is still so steeped in 19th century machismo as to make being a stay at home father something that is only socially acceptable for immigrants like me. No Spanish man could ever survive the torrent of emasculating abuse that would spill forth from every one of his “friends” and acquaintances at the bar. I however get merely referred to as el loco estadounidense which is what the casually xenophobic Spanish would call me regardless of what I did.
5) I am not watching my kids, I am raising my kids.
I am not a part-time parent and thus less qualified than you, Karen. I am not sitting on this park bench keeping an eye on my wife’s children while she runs to the store. Is this 1954? I mean, what kind of organizational, cleaning, cooking, baking, first-aid, nursing, or counseling, or instructional education do you have Karen? Because I have decades. And my kids are happy. I am supremely prepared for parenting, and at this point I have almost a decade of experience.
How exactly is it possible to simultaneously want men to be more involved fathers, and to not-so-subtly infantilize them when they are being involved?