5
Apr
2010
Mere Male: celebrating the stay-at-home dad. Or mum really.
So we let a man into the blog in a defenceless moment….
A few weeks ago at one of our post work pub gatherings, a group of male friends and I were discussing whether we would prefer to work or be stay at home fathers. The universal view was that whilst work sometimes may just be a means to an end rather than a passion, is often stressful and demanding and is invariably fraught with politics, it was still infinitely preferable to being at home with children. I often greet my wife with a variation on the “I’d love to give up working and go to coffee mornings and play dates all week” theme (note to any fathers reading this, try this line at home, they love it despite what the reaction might suggest) but I’d bet serious money, if I had any, that if I did take my wife up on her offer to switch roles, within the week she’d come home to find someone thumb in mouth, gently rocking themselves and calling for their mummy, just not one of her children.
Why is this? A few observations:
- To keep children, especially toddlers, engaged and entertained requires the creative skills and imagination of an artist, designer and writer rolled into one. I’m up there with the best of them at throwing my kids around on the sofa for 10 minutes. After that, I’m pretty much done on the ideas front.
- Being highly organised helps – in short, I am to organised what Katie Price is to talented.
- I have often come home to find one of my children sitting having his supper, the other balanced on my wife’s hip as she juggles preparing the next day’s culinary feast and her new (sodding annoying because she can’t put it down for two seconds) iPhone. My idea of multi-tasking is shampoo and conditioner.
- There are endless admin tasks associated with running a house. Kate loves browsing in delis, pottering in the local market and even shopping in Sainsburys. Not to mention the strange kick she gets out of planning birthday parties. Not many 2 year olds share my favourite pastimes of golf and classic sporting contests on Sky TV.
- Cooking. Contrary to popular opinion in our household, I can cook – Exhibit A, surviving three years of university – I’m just not that good at it. Actually, that’s a little like saying Robert Mugabe is a bit of a pillock. To be more accurate, I am f***king hopeless at it. Watching me grapple with fresh ingredients and a recipe is a two hour comedy sketch in itself.
- I loathe the afternoon shift, particularly the time between 4.30 and 6.30. If I was a stay at home Dad, how could I stay at work pretending to be busy/caught in a meeting and then get home at 6.45 just in time for a cuddle whilst watching Fireman Sam? To be clear, the cuddle is with my son, not my wife; she prefers Charlie and Lola.
I could go on but you’ve got the gist. The point is that next time I am thinking how utterly sh*t commuting on the tube is, perhaps I should remind myself that in the grand scheme of things I am getting off lightly. Of course, I’d never tell my wife this, she’d be too busy at one of her lunch dates to care.
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Great article! Oh, but you left out that men need to spend many hours at the end of a day with children talking about how tired you are….
Jeepers, you’ve covered quite a lot there. In no particular order, the following issues arise:
Are you permitted to have post work pub gatherings? How far ahead to you have to put in an application for this, and what is the appeal process like?
Also, is the picture of the biscuits and mug of coffee meant to represent the pinnacle of your cooking achievements to date? Bravo, I say. Whilst on this topic, if you were looking for a bit more variety with recipes, do you think you could bbq chocolate digestives if needed? Have you tried heating the coffee mug on the bbq as well? Any tips appreciated as you clearly have undersold your cooking capabilities.
Also, are you really a man writing this, or is it some sort of ghost writer set up? There’s a mention in your article of the use of conditioner as well as shampoo, which is extremely suspect. I just hope for your masculinity’s sake that if you are using conditioner, you are buying the 10 litre bottle of Tesco’s own brand which does EXACTLY THE SAME JOB AS THAT POSH RUBBISH which costs 80 quid for 50mls.
Seriously you have to be kidding me… Check your credit card statements buddy. There is plenty of time for those at home to get out and about! I would like to swap roles but would insist that the current spending ratio stay the same. i.e. those at home looking after the rug rats spend 80% of the cash while those at work spend then rest. Interesting experiment to see the “discretionary spending” at home dry up and the wife head to work with the same 5 suits that she has worn for the last year, day in day out….. But most importantly I would also like to know what the hell you did wrong to your better half to lodge this entry.. You must really must be in it up to your neck.