of our self-image. It can absorb so much of our identity that it becomes the only thing from which we can derive satisfaction, the only place we feel appreciated. If we are particularly good at our job, it can also become the place where our accomplishments are honored and acknowledged—the center of our feelings of self-worth.
I remember back when my children were growing up, I used to go out with the guys from the office for drinks every night. I'd be the first one to volunteer for the out-of-town business trip, the last one to leave the office at night. Now I want to go back, shake myself, and ask what I thought I was doing. The sad thing is I already know. I spent so much time at work and so little time at home that I was simply more comfortable at work. When I went home, it was like entering a foreign country run by a woman I no longer knew and kids I didn't know how to relate to.
The less time we spend at home, the less familiar it becomes. We lose track of what is going on in our children's lives. We don't know the names of their friends, whom they are feuding with, what they like, or what is bothering them. It can be very disconcerting to listen to your six-year-old explaining an event of crucial importance to him and realize that you know neither the landscape nor the actors.
Like a small crack on the windshield left untended, this lack of involvement can widen and worsen as our children begin to express their anger over our absence in any number of creative ways that are guaranteed to make time spent at home even less enjoyable. This can become just one more pressure pushing us farther away, or it can be the wake-up call that something needs to change.
My business had reached a point where it was ready to go to another level completely, but to get there would have required me to be out of state on a regular basis. At the same time, things at home were not doing terribly well. My son was starting to get into trouble—nothing major, but it was very clear handwriting on the wall. I made a decision to restructure my business so that I would be able to spend more time at home. It meant less money, and at times I have had to really stretch to make it work, but I have never regretted my decision.
Unfortunately, we don't all have the ability to unilaterally restructure our work life and still be able to pay the bills, but we are all faced with the same dilemma. For the most part, the very job opportunities available to us that allow us to provide for our children threaten to pull us so far apart from them that we might lose the very thing we are working so hard to maintain—our family. And until recently, there was very little acknowledgment of this issue by employers.
Balancing work and family life is a very real and difficult problem with no simple solutions. We cannot return en masse to the days of small shops and single-family farms; those options are no longer economically viable on any large scale. Nor can we simply quit our jobs or abandon our children. Broadening the awareness and sensitivity of employers to the problems fathers face and demanding and getting flexible work schedules, realistic paternity leave, and child-care policies will take considerable time and effort.
I really don't understand how the hell we are supposed to do this. It's like first we sat down and decided how we wanted to live our lives, and then we turned around and structured the real world in such a way that it would be impossible. My neighbor just got laid off, and he is such a wreck that his kids are tiptoeing around to avoid him. My company is doing so well that we are all putting in mandatory overtime, so I never get to see my kids.
For all the world, it feels very much like we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, being slowly ground into pieces. And recent changes in our economic landscape are not making things any easier. The growing pains of a truly international economy have forced a wave of corporate downsizing, which in real language means that fewer good jobs are available; and the lucky ones who have those jobs are being increasingly called upon to work longer hours. As fathers, we have to fight in an intensely stressful job market to find work that will enable us to provide for our children; and, at the same time, if we are successful, we must somehow resist the job pressures that pull us farther and farther away from them.
Given all these factors, being a father at this moment in history is no picnic. We are understandably expected to provide for our children, and attacked as deadbeat dads if we fail. At the same time, we end up sacrificing precious time with our children in order to provide for them, and then come under criticism for not being with them enough.
For many men, it feels like an impossible situation–and there are no easy fixes on the horizon. Yet this is the hand we have been dealt, and the stakes are far too high to walk away without trying. For, as great a social tragedy as the absent father has become, it is so much more a personal tragedy for our children, who are growing up without our support and nurturing, and for those of us who are severed from the miracle of our children's lives.
We need to begin to redefine fathering in a way that makes sense at this point in our history so that it can provide the kind of reassuring comfort and strength for our children that it should. We need to search for ways around the seemingly impossible binds we find ourselves in, so that when we work, it is for a deeper purpose that can be achieved, and when we are home with our children, it is as the fathers we want to be. In order to be able to do all this, we need to look a little closer at the more personal factors that keep us separated from our children.
Chapter 3
Outside from the Beginning
I thought I knew what I was getting into. I really did. I grew up in the sixties, and most of my friends were in no hurry to have children. But almost for as long as I can remember, I had loved kids and couldn't wait to have my own. When my wife got pregnant, I read everything about parenting I could get my hands on. I'm probably the only person in America to have actually read Dr. Spock cover to cover.
We were among the first wave of parents insisting on natural childbirth back when only a handful of hospitals allowed fathers into the delivery room. We even briefly considered something called the “LeBoyer method,” which involved everyone speaking in whispers in a delivery room heated to body temperature and then immediately submerging the new child in a tub of 98.6° water. The idea was to make her transition from the relatively quiet and very warm, wet world into the noisy, cold atmosphere of a standard delivery room that much less traumatic.
I was totally into being a father and thought I was prepared—until moments after my daughter's messy arrival, when the nurse put this tiny little girl into my hands. I was so overwhelmed by the flood of feelings that I damn near dropped her. At that moment, the only clear thought I had was sheer disbelief at how I could ever have been stupid enough to think I was ready for this.
I was scared. I was scared I would drop her, I was scared something might happen to her, I was scared I wouldn't be able to provide everything she deserved, I was scared I would look scared when now more than ever it seemed I had to be strong and in control, and I was scared to death of how quickly and how deeply I loved this squirming little girl.
Fathers are different from mothers. It's so obvious that we don't even stop to think about what the difference really means. The relationship of a mother and her child develops quite literally from the inside out. For nine months, the mother and her child are together in a physical symbiosis that defies comprehension. On the most elemental level, they share in the miracle of creation, and the day of birth is but the first important milestone in their already established connection.
Fathers, on the other hand, come to their children from the outside from the very beginning. We can participate in the progress of our wife's pregnancy, we can place our hands in strategic spots to feel the kicks and jabs, we can listen to the swooshing heartbeat through a stethoscope, and now, thanks to the marvels of technology, we can watch videos of our child floating gently within her embryonic world. But our experience is always filtered; no matter how we participate, fundamentally we remain on the outside. Our first real contact with our child is when we pick up our newborn and cradle her in our arms.
In some profound way, our biological placement in the process of birth mirrors the challenges we will face throughout our children's lives. For most mothers, the primary struggle of parenthood is stepping back far enough to allow the child the room to grow and develop.