*A prior piece about fathers needing to do more than pick up a dinner plate and the remote control when they return to the wife and kids after work….that is, if he wants to not come back to an empty house.*
According to national statistics, I’m an anomaly, but one that’s more common than people would like to think. You see, I’m an African-American woman who’s both a wife and a mother. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been blessed with a loving husband who is also a devoted father and stepfather to my son and our two daughters, but like the women in the recent national study who’ve cited their children’s fathers’ parenting skills as less than ideal, I’ve had a hard row to hoe getting my husband to expand his duties in that direction.
Managing a household is challenging enough, so adding two additional children and the work that each of them require makes it a monumental task, to say the least: there’s homework and tutoring for the sixth grader, Wee School for the toddler and the merry-go-round of feedings, baths, diaper changes and doctor’s visits for the seven-month-old. For every hug, kiss and good report from a teacher or report card, there is the thankless grunt work behind it, and until recently, my husband seemed to think that working outside the home exempted him from doing those draining tasks.
Some couples are content with the Ozzie and Harriet template: the wife keeping the house as neat as a pin, the meals cooked from scratch and the children in line, while Dad comes in from work, puts his feet up and smiles magnanimously at his name-bearing brood. But we’re in 2010, not 1910—-men have options that many of their fathers didn’t, which include being present for more than the birth and the graduation of their children. When people say “it’s the little things that count,” they mean it, especially when it comes to the never-ending work of being a good parent. It’s not the big things that overwhelm as much as the grind of the daily minutiae that those perpetual tasks tend to generate.
In other words, being a good provider, attentive husband and hands-on father aren’t all character traits that are mutually exclusive to one another. It’s no longer acceptable for a man to puff up his chest with pride about the bills being paid if his wife or partner is on the verge of appearing on the TV show Snapped thanks to being left with everything else. And If he wants to remain part of a sane coupling and not have his children humming Harry Chapin’s “Cats In The Cradle” when he comes home, the man needs to realize that he doesn’t have the patent on being tired and that while he can clock out of the day, his lady’s job, especially if she’s also a parent, doesn’t quite allow her that luxury. How can it be a ‘balancing act,’ after all, if only one of them does the heavy lifting?
