In the Beginning......

At-Home-Dad

This is my fourth year as an at-home-Dad, caring for our domicile and the routines of my wife and daughter, er, in reverse order if measured by time and success rate. How do Soccer Moms with four kids do it while maintaining their identity? I have but one child to run around for. The 2 of us bounce between 6 or so towns as we pursue the soccer and Nordic ski seasons, horse-riding and the health professionals and various suppliers of the various stuffs we use to live.

We lead a fairly conventional life with grocery store runs, library visits and the inevitable visits to dentists and doctors. We eat organic food as much as possible, often buying food from the local farm operation about a mile down the road. We watch movies together on Friday night and stay connected with cellphones. My wife drives 17 miles to run a business she owns with a few employees. Often she must fly to NYC or the West Coast for business meetings. I try to have a suitable meal on the table at the end of the workday. It is all relatively tame and predictable. Well, that is until my daughter forgets her running shoes, or the cat wraps thread around her tongue, or my wife's business is in need of a shot of capital, hmmmmm, now where am I gonna pick that up?

Did I ever envision this as my future? Certainly not. I am male and I responded to the male signals in our culture. Perhaps it is more that I acquiesced to them. I always expected to have a monolithic career - a job that became a life history. Though I questioned why this notion was so and what that job might be, I never seemed to question that I would have some form of "career". In hindsight, it is, perhaps, odd that I should have accepted the career-as-life path since I wanted to throw over anything that was expected of me. It seems it was enough just to think that I wouldn't follow into a traditional career such as law, accounting or medicine. Instead, I would seek out theater or writing or something creative that I could pursue without the stricture of suits and numbing routines. Different enough without taking on the risk of really throwing over the status quo.

In many ways, I wanted to work, even as a teen. I didn't want a job. I wanted to work - work meaning to be busy at something with more meaning than a combined set of tasks, something that had some 'true' value for humanity. As strong as that drive was, I never could define that work. Instead I grasped at things that seemed to shine out of the world around me. I worked as a Tech Director for a community theater group, I learned furniture refinishing, I worked as an audio production assistant and dabbled in graphic arts. All this time I was playing with a camera. It wasn't any surprise that I ended up as a film process technician and custom color print maker before beginning the more involved journey of focusing on creating the printed image. Following the nuts-and-bolts or bootstraps approach, I finally turned from the technical work to the creative by attending workshops in art photography.

Fast forward along a circuitous route, including a liberal arts college, an Ivy League university, various photo studios, through to my own photography studio business and the advent of digital for every studio. Running a two business household began pulling at the fabric of everyday living. The living of life was being squeezed by the business of making a living. My wife and I decided that it was time to have one of us focus on our daughter who had navigated daycare and elementary school fine but was now heading into preadolescence. We truly wanted one of us to be there for her. Since we shared all the duties of the house, it came down to economics. My business pulled in the least money so, poof!, I was the chosen one.

To tell the truth, I wanted the job. I'm no Martha Stewart but I am competent in all rooms of the house. We don't do ornaments well or decorate our cookies with perfect icing. Our linen closets are not labeled if they are sorted by size, sort of. The table linens look okay if I fold them right out of the drier otherwise they're a rumpled mess. They catch the spills and crumbs either way and I get a chance to get the timing right on folding when I next wash them again. We mostly try to make the home an interlude from the work of the world out there in order to spend time together.

I am often asked if the job is difficult for me. The subtext under that question is always: as a male don't you feel emasculated by working in the home? Even very progressive people hand me that question. Oftentimes, whatever answer I give, they don't know how to proceed in the conversation. Well, most don't. Women are much better at it than men. I noticied this as soon as I started announcing my plans to be an at-home-Dad. In the month I was actively closing my studio and informing people of my plans, men would invariably respond with, "That's a big change." Often they couldn't think of anything to follow that up with. Women, on the other hand would often be very supportive or even fantasize about their husbands considering the same thing.

Do I feel immasculated and unfulfilled doing the domestic work of the home? The answer, of course, is no and yes. No, because, as Aristotle pointed out, the work of the home and the collections of possessions involved are necessary to living. If I were single, it would all be my work anyway. What are a few more loads of laundry or plates to load in the dishwasher? OK, vacuuming doesn't rank as a pleasurable task but then again, cleaning the studio up after a photo shoot wasn't a high point; certainly not as much fun as invoicing the shoot - which incidently was often more fun than the actual process of making the images with the client. So, while it isn't all easy doings it is nice that I can do it for the people I love and have chosen to live my life with. Additionally, I have a relationship with my daughter that is much closer than would ever have been possible while working outside the home for 40 or 60 hours a week. (The myth that owning your own business you can set your own schedule is just that - a myth - it owns you and it is never satisfied with your time sheet).

And yes, I do sometimes feel unfulfilled because it feels good to accomplish something in the world. People are out there making money, making things, making policies, putting their energies into turning the wheels of our world. I do sometimes feel that life is passing by - and it no doubt is. The life that is passing by is just not the one I'm living in right now.