Preparing to be a Stay-at-Home Dad
June 04, 2010, By Jason Avant 1 comment
This morning I woke up at 6:30, packed my son’s lunchbox, dropped him off at school, swung by Target to get some cleaning supplies (my duties as work-from-home dad include serving as quartermaster – we were out of paper towels and granola bars and the crew was set to mutiny) and was interviewed by a reporter about what it means to be a modern father. It was, like most days, very surreal.
My kids are my job in every conceivable sense. I went to work for them full time over a year ago when the economy finally caught up with me – I’d spent ten years working as a recruiter, and last April I got a basic lesson in supply and demand. There was no demand for workers, thus there was no need for a guy like me, whose sole purpose was to find them. My wife Beth had established her own successful business; we crunched some numbers, and realized that it would be cheaper for me to stay at home and take care of the kids then to try to find a part-time job. My new role would also give me the chance to pursue a writing career – I’d run my blog DadCentric for four years, but it had been a hobby. Now it would become my business, along with any other freelance work I could pick up. I began writing for other websites, all aimed at folks with kids – a family travel site, a pop culture site for parents, and now this one.
I became a professional dad.
It’s a strange life. A few months ago, I was at a party, talking to a friend of a friend. I’d maybe exchanged three words with this person over the years. The conversation drifted to our kids. “Yours are what, 5 and 2 now? They’re so funny. When Lucas dropped the f-bomb when he was telling Mick to go outside? Classic!” At first, I was alarmed. How did he know my dog’s name? How did he hear about my kid’s first delivery of the second worst word one can say in front of an adult? Then I realized I’d told him. Thousands of other total strangers. I imagined that my kids would be many things - Pee Wee soccer stars, featured performers in their school plays, spelling bee champions. I didn’t envision them being Internet cult figures.
There’s a bit of dread that goes along with making my life as a dad public – because that life is inexorably bound with their lives as kids. Lucas is starting to get that his life is a bit different than his classmates’ – having a CBS film crew follow him to his skateboard lesson was his first clue. I wonder what he’ll think, years from now, when he reads those vivid descriptions of his filled diapers, or my documenting his surgeon’s focus as he tried to extract a particularly stubborn booger from his nose. I guess I’ll know when he gets “DADDY DIDN’T LOVE ME” tattooed on his chest by his cellmate.
More and more dads are writing about their experiences these days, online and in traditional print formats. And this is a good thing, going hand-in-hand with the change we’re seeing in how dads approach their roles, no longer content with the clichéd and outmoded ways in which society views us. Writing about “parenting” has been dominated by mothers, leaving out 50 percent of the equation. When moms and dads are seen as equals – both as parents, and as chroniclers of the parental experience – everybody wins. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go – my daughter is trying to wash her dolls in the toilet, the one that my son forgot to flush after his last visit. I need to stop her. And take notes. It’ll make a great blog post.
Jason Avant is the founder and managing editor of DadCentric.com. He is a frequent contributor to ManoftheHouse.com.
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