I am a stay-at-home dad. That doesn’t make me my kids’ “mother” – it doesn’t even get me into the same ballpark – but it does give me an interesting perspective on Mother’s Day.
I have friends who mock my choice. They say, “I’d love to stay home and do nothing all day but change a poopy diaper or two.” My response is, “You think you want the poop? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE POOP!”
The mistake these friends are making is that their perspective on staying home comes from what they see in parenting magazines: photos of clean kids playing quietly with their siblings while a mom with perfect hair and makeup cooks an elegant meal and enjoys a glass of wine. Throw in butterflies fluttering in the background and bunnies prancing through the yard and you get what most men think it’s like to stay home with the kids.
When that’s your mental picture, Mother’s Day is nothing more than another holiday created to line the pockets of Hallmark and your local florist.
Now that I’ve spent time as an at-home dad, I know the truth: Most moms build in extra time around cooking dinner so they can break up fights between the kids and keep the little one from pulling the wings off the butterflies and eating them. If any bunny dares to sniff around the flower bed around that time, it might well become dinner.
Friends have wondered whether my wife should even get to celebrate Mother’s Day at all, since I’m the one at home. Of course she does; working in an office doesn’t mean she’s any less of a mother, just that she’s better-rested and can wear nice clothes without vomit on them. In many ways, she has to be an even better mother than before, because now she has just a few hours between dinner and bedtime when she can focus all of her motherly skills just to help me get the household back under control.
As an at-home dad, Mother’s Day is just another chance for me to admire and emulate all the aspects of being a mother that always seemed to be just outside my grasp. I think the problem is that men are trained from boyhood to generally look after the “big picture” of family life, such as earning a good wage, planning how to pay for college and reminding the kids to turn off the lights when they leave a room.
When I started staying home to raise a family, I had to learn that kids don’t see the big picture. Their world is defined by the little details. I know that someday they’ll appreciate the big picture (probably right around the time they remember to turn out the lights), but now what they really care about is that you make sure each of them gets exactly the same number of sprinkles on their ice cream. (I swear, I’ll never figure out how my wife is able to shake sprinkles with such precision.)
Our kids don’t have any hangups about whether a mom or a dad is the one who should be at home with them. They just know that dad is the guy who helps them off to school and cooks the meals (but if they want a precise number of sprinkles on their ice cream, they’ll have to wait until mom gets home).
This is not to say there isn’t some confusion over roles in our household. A few days ago, our 6-year-old daughter asked me for a special treat. When I told her I’d need to discuss it with her mother, she asked, “Does this mean that mom is the boss in our house?” To make sure she knew who the boss is, I made her chase the bunny around the yard for 20 minutes.
So despite which of us stays home with the kids, we’re planning on a full Mother’s Day celebration at our house. There will be breakfast in bed, homemade Mother’s Day cards and a reminder to respect and admire all she does as the mom.
In the spirit of celebration, I think I’ll even give the bunny the day off. I’m just hoping it’s not about to become a mother, too.
Tim McCutcheon lives in Fort Collins, where he cares for three small children and whatever goldfish survived the night.
