My two-year-old son, Jenner, really likes street lights. Standing before the inexplicably closed library, I think this is a very good thing. It’s the first day in a week with no rain and neither of us feels much like going home. Heading back to the corner, I set him down and sit cross-legged on the cold cement. He jumps into my lap. A light mist falls. In the gray, wet air, the colors are especially vivid. As the lights turn green to yellow to red, Jenner shrieks with joy as we point out the changes in all directions, periods of rapid movement slowing again and again to long periods of wait.
It’s an overly simplistic metaphor, though one that occurs immediately to a once full-time teacher and family bread-winner recently turned sleep- deprived, academic brain-addled, stay-at-home papa: green light gone red, my career is on hold. During the red light, I’ll spend a few years changing diapers, waking up at all hours, caretaking the growth of another (while doing my best to keep a foot in the door as a part-time graduate student); then, sometime soon, the lights will change again.
It’s a very linear way of looking at things, one that many of us (perhaps especially young men) are taught growing up. A relatively gifted student with supportive parents, every future was open to me. Big ol’ green light! I went to college and graduate school, taught for ten years in an array of academic settings, and always made a mark. Though at times I would feel burnt out, there was always a logical next step.
When my wife Connie got in to medical school, I followed her across the country. In the early years, we lived off my teacher’s salary supplemented by her student loans. When she graduated, we moved back to the west coast. She began residency (an even tougher schedule than med school) and a short time later our son was born.
Feeling the urge to take a little rest (yellow light please!) and with my wife’s long hours away, we decided it made sense for me to be the stay-at-home parent. Little did I know how ‘unslow’ it would be. Soon, I went from being a part-time graduate student to a taking a semester’s leave; I had no time for school as I struggled to keep up with my deeply curious and intent, early-to-walk and late-to-talk little non-sleeper son. Big ol’ red light!
Back at the street corner, Jenner hops up to standing, his legs climbing mine to get a better view. “Unga, unga, unga!” he says, which roughly translates to, “The lights just changed, papa. Why have you stopped pointing?” We don’t call him the Jenner(ator) for nothing!
It’s impossible to describe all the joys and struggles of getting to meet this little guy anew each day. All the firsts: giggles and steps, bubbles and books, watching him realize he can pass something back and forth between his hands. The stay-at-home experience has been at once the most rewarding and most challenging job I’ve ever had, a job which I know my biggest supporter and lovely wife wishes she could share. Sometimes that’s the hardest part, watching her vacillate between trying to honor her natural abilities as a physician (and the opportunity for which so many women before her had fought) to care for other people’s families while at the same time wishing she could just give it all back and be at home with ours.
Truly, we are a bridge generation, one with more women in college than men. But we’re also a generation that still expects women to act as primary caregivers; in every kid-oriented environment I visit (playgrounds, swimming pools, music classes) I’m almost always the only dad. Yes, it makes biological sense for women to be home with very young children (how I wish I could breastfeed!), and I hugely support maternal leave, yet it’s also clear our expectations of gender roles have not caught up with our opportunities. Even in the definitively progressive county I live in, being a stay-at-home papa remains nowhere close to mainstream. I never played house as a child and, having not much interest in infants as a high school science teacher, I never imagined I’d become a full-time father, especially to a child so young.
So what should I do with my equally present feeling of professional envy? Has my life really been on hold? To my current thinking (my son is an excellent teacher), the need to even ask these questions is a symptom of old expectations, expectations based not solely on gender, but on lives lived in straight lines. It used to be that the man found a career that lasted him 50 years; the woman a husband who lasts her hopefully as long. But in today’s world, whether by choice or due to economically disadvantageous trends, more and more parents of both genders are venturing out into the workforce and as they do these lines continue to blur.
In recent years we’ve seen signs that the economic views of the last few decades may not be sustainable, and I think we’re also asking if traditional careers are sustainable as well. How can we rethink our expectations to allow both parents (if they choose) to experience the joy of being at home, watching their little ones grow into themselves and figure out the world, as well as be fulfilled by the more general contributions each wishes to make to society and to the family bottom line?
What insights can we (men and women) take with us as we reenter the professional world? Kids do not move in straight lines. With my little guy it’s all arcs and curves, all whatever comes next, all dancing through the present to a rhythm all his own.
So, though my career may never achieve the highest plateau, does that mean my time with Jenner hasn’t been worthwhile? What does it mean to raise another happy, healthy human being? What is the value of raising another respectful and compassionate man? How do we define success in our own lives?
They’re all questions my family and I continue to ask as we move forward. But for now, Jenner’s ready. The parking lot is filled with puddles. We can hear them calling our names.