employee. Out of fear, insecurity, and need, we put in long hours at work and have precious little time left to spend with our children.
Before we know it, the tiny creatures we brought home from the hospital are crawling, then walking, then running to greet us at the door each evening. And as they grow, so too do their needs-clothes, shoes, medical bills, braces, piano lessons, judo classes. This is also frequently the time in our career when we have greater opportunities for advancement, and that, of course, means even more attention to work, more hours spent on the job, and more work being brought home to intrude on the few hours available for our children. Even men who start out intending to do it differently find themselves in the provider trap.
When my son was born, I was determined to do it differently. I took a six-month sabbatical from work to care for him when he was an infant. I did diapers, 2 a.m. feedings, stroller walks in the park-everything. Later, I was the only guy in sight at the day-care center. As he got older, I became increasingly concerned about our finances. We needed a house, I had to start worrying about college tuition…I ended up taking a high-powered, well-paying job two hours away from home. When I wasn't driving back and forth, I was flying all over the state, working sixty-hour weeks.
Suddenly, it was only my wife at my son's tennis lessons, baseball games, and school recitals. Ten years went by in the blink of an eye: We had financial security, but I missed out on a tremendous amount of my son's life. He never says anything about it, but I know he felt very hurt and abandoned.
Even when we are home, it is all too often in a state of utter exhaustion. We want, need, and feel we deserve some peace, some time to relax, to unwind and do nothing. To our children, however, that time is experienced very differently. They have gone all day without seeing, talking, or playing with Daddy, and children are not particularly patient. By time you walk in the door, tired, stressed, and in need of quiet, they are ready to jump you in an explosion of enthusiasm.
Sometimes I'd be so wound-up I just knew I couldn't handle the onslaught, so I'd call home and put off my arrival for an hour. Then I'd drive to this really beautiful park a few miles away and just sit there until I could feel the stress drain away. Sometimes it only took a few minutes, and then instead of dreading walking in the door, I couldn't wait.
Because we love our children so much, we want desperately to be good providers and so we work very hard at it. Then suddenly we find ourselves deep into the middle years of our children's youth, at a distance we never planned for nor wanted. We find ourselves on the outside looking in at their lives—their rhythms and schedules—much of which is constructed without concern for our presence, because in truth it is very difficult to assure them we will be there. We try. We try to get to the soccer match, to show up at the parent/ teacher night, to get home early so we can play catch, but it is very difficult. They learn to stop counting on us to be there in order not to feel the sharp sting of disappointment, and we end up feeling left out.
Time is important, whether we want it to be or not. The more time we spend working, the more energy we pour into our job, the more all-consuming it can become. Without our ever intending it, work can assume a larger and larger piece 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
