Superdad Beats Up Mr. Mom

Making the decision to stay at home and take care of our daughter was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've had to make recently. Choosing to step away from work which I found both challenging and rewarding, and which shaped (and certainly continues to influence) how I see myself was tough. Furthermore, that initial decision led to a cascade of other decisions which were easier, but all stemmed back to that first decision to do what I'm doing now.

Even on the crummy days, when our daughter is screaming, I'm sleepy and impatient, and I feel under the gun, it was still a decision. I don't have to be doing what I'm doing. I could stick our daughter in day care, load up my schedule, and work. But I choose not to. That's important.

When my wife was still on maternity leave, we got a lot of questions about what would happen after her leave was up. When we said she was going back to work, people would look at me and say, “Oh, so you're going to be Mr. Mom?” Hardly! I'm a dad, and I am running two small businesses from home besides taking care of my daughter – as a father. Mom is mom, and I'm not her. The idea of Mr. Mom brings up connotations of some wimpy guy who can't handle working in “the real world”, so is staying home with the kids to hide out and has a bossy wife. Sorry. That's not the story here.

I think the term Mr. Mom is demeaning to the dads who are at home with their kids. It's not that they can't hack it, or are somehow lesser men, or aren't accustomed to work, though the phrase implies it. Maybe they just happened to be one of the guys that married “up” and hooked up with one of the smart, bright, attractive girls. That may be one of the dirty secrets of the stay-at-home dads; they're the ones with the real trophy wives.

Setting that aside, there are other reasons we are doing things this way. I'm better wired to work with people than my wife. I can also handle the at-home schedule a little better than she can. She also enjoys her job and has the potential to make significantly more money than I do down the road. Regardless of how we're wired as a couple, my wife and I were already on a different trajectory than most people in the area we live long before the idea of having kids ever came up. This is just another step along that path. Neither of us draw our identity in our marriage from who can earn the most, so whenever it has come to working, we have just gone with whoever has had the best opportunities. In terms of education and credentialing, we are nearly equal, though the opportunities available to me are not as good as hers.

That's not to say that the transition to becoming Superdad is easy. It's tough. I was shocked at how much I drew my identity from the work I did (and do), and how much I valued myself based on goals, achievements, accomplishments, accolades, and rewards. This wasn't a pleasant discovery. Our daughter doesn't know jack about this stuff, but she gets mad if she isn't fed, doesn't get her naps during the day, and isn't snuggled and played with enough. It was also hard to get up in the middle of the night to feed and diaper her so that my wife could get enough sleep to do her job well. This was especially true during the month when our daughter was recovering from a broken femur and had to be checked on every night at 1:30. I don't like giving up my time, and fight to protect it, but there's someone else who needs it. What makes me cringe is knowing that I'd been like this all along with my wife, but that it took a baby and change of lifestyle to force me to see it. Ouch.

Being an at-home dad has also changed the way I relate to my friends. Before we had the baby, my title seemed to be “small business owner” and people respected that, because of the supposed glamour of owning your own business. In reality, it was pretty ugly, but I'm not sure I was able to convince anyone of that. When that label was replaced with “Mr. Mom” in most people's minds, they also seemed to change in how they related to me. This may be a perceived change, however, as I was suddenly much less accessible than I was before, and if I was a hermit before, I probably seemed to be a monk who'd taken a vow of silence after my wife's maternity leave was up. I just didn't have time to do anything else.

One of the potential downsides of being a Superdad with girls in the house is that the likelihood of them turning into tomboys seems high. It's not that it's what I want necessarily, but because of how daughter's wired, it seems almost inevitable. She's big, determined, and on-the-go. In my mind, I see her as a big, tall girl, wearing pink and saying something like, “I like motocross!” in a high squeaky voice. Or, as one of my younger cousins used to say, “Don't mess with the big girl!” It probably doesn't help that we wrestle a lot, run together, and that she's big for her age. I know that big babies don't necessarily turn into big adults, but we've got the right genes for it to happen.

Am I Mr. Mom? No way. I'm a dad. I do dad things with my daughter. I just happen to do a lot more of them than a lot of other guys get to do with theirs. And I'm not hiding out. I chose to do this because it's the best thing for my family. When it isn't anymore, I'll stop. Meanwhile, Superdad's going to bed. He may be able to beat up Mr. Mom, but he still needs some sleep.