About this story: The inspiration for this short story came from several sources. The first was a friend of mine who had concerns about supporting her two children while trying to switch jobs. I recall being shocked by how much her insurance would cost her if she quit and switched to COBRA. The second source of inspiration was an internet article regarding the lack of available facilities for stay-at-home dads, such as bathrooms with changing tables. I wish I could remember the exact source of the article. I want to say New York Times, but sadly I can’t be certain. If anyone ever finds this article, feel free to send the link to me to post. In the meantime, read on.
Not to sound arrogant, but a lot of people used to envy me. I mean I’m pretty much living the American dream. I’ve got a house, a wife, a kid, and a dog. The thing is I’m fairly certain that in the traditional American dream the wife doesn’t have a full time job, and the husband isn’t a full time daddy.
Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Rosie and I always expected that she’d be the one to stay home with the kids if it came to that. I mean she’s a nurse. She loves taking care of people. Kids just seemed to fit in naturally with that. Me, I’m a real estate agent. What do I know about taking care of anybody? I sell. I make money, that’s what I did. Had to be when you worked on commission.
Then one day, Rosie came home and told me she’s pregnant. That was great. That was wonderful. We celebrated like crazy, but we couldn’t party for forever. We had to get serious sometime. So, we sat down one day and started looking into what we were going to do. Talking about having her be a full time mommy was nice and all, but she loved her job. She didn’t want to leave it if she didn’t have to. So, we talked about daycare centers and baby sitters, but we weren’t comfortable with either of those choices. Especially me. Some strangers taking care of our kid when they’ve already got a roomful of other kids to deal with. What happens when more kids than there are daycare workers start to cry? As for a baby sitter, we’d seen too many TV news reports about what happens when there’s one stranger in a house without any other strangers around to make sure she doesn’t do anything wrong. No baby sitters for us.
We ended up back with plan A. Rosie quits her job. So we started looking over our finances. Turned out Rosie made more money than me. Not by a lot. A thousand or so. Still, that surprised the hell out of me. I knew we made about the same amount a money, but I always figured I made more. I guess I never looked too closely. We had a joint account, but we also had our old accounts from before we got married so our paychecks still got automatically put in those. Direct deposit, it’s called. Keeping separate accounts had been Rosie’s idea. “How am I ever going to surprise you with anything if you can see the price tag or what I used the debit card for?” she’d said. Still, it wasn’t too big a deal I told myself. Rosie can still quit. I made more than enough to take care of us.
I kept telling myself that right up till I started thinking about health benefits. Real estate agents usually don’t get health benefits unless we pay for it, and like most real estate agents married to a nurse, I hadn’t bothered to. My wife got health insurance for free. Why would I want to pay for something I get for free? It wouldn’t be free though if she quit, so I had her check out what the COBRA payments would be like to keep us on her plan. COBRA, I figured would be cheaper than anything else out there. Cheap turned out to be pretty pricey. For me, her, and a kid the total was about seven-hundred bucks a month. About eight-thousand four hundred a year. I remember staring at the math and wondering how am I supposed to take care of all of us on just what I make with a kid on the way and insurance to boot.
Rosie must have read my mind cause it was when I was thinking all this that she dropped the bomb. “Why don’t you quit honey?”
“S’cuse me?”
“Well, I can keep working while you take care of the baby. That way we don’t have to worry about all this money and insurance stuff. Plus, I work less than you. You have to be on call all the time for people who want to see apartments and stuff. Your away on the weekends sometimes for open houses. This way, you don’t have to deal with all that.”
I didn’t remember ever telling her I hated working weekends or getting called at funny times. “I don’t mind that stuff,” I said. I must have yelled it cause then she yelled at me “Well sometimes I do.”
Ouch.
It took me a while to wrap my head around Rosie’s idea. I mean I’m a guy. What do I know about dirty diapers and colds and screaming babies? It just wasn’t something I wanted to think about. I never wanted to be daddy diapers. Poop wasn’t my thing. Baseball games, toys, and maybe feeding the tike sometimes I could handle. That’s what Daddies were for. Mommies were supposed to take care of the rest. That’s what women were made for. That’s why women are the ones who get pregnant. We didn’t talk about it again till a few weeks before the baby was due. Talking caused too much tension. All the other prep work for having a baby was stressful enough.
Besides, I was too busy trying to prove Rosie wrong. I wanted to show her that I was man enough to take care of her and the new baby. I worked extra hours, took extra clients, all to get more cash. By the end, I was a piss poor person to hang with. Never awake for more than the time it took to go to work, come home, and eat. Worse, every tiny thing irritated me. Right down to the way Rosie folded my laundry. One day she threw a bunch of shirts back at me and told me to get off my lazy butt and go fold them myself. When we finally talked about the situation, what was really getting to us, the first thing out of her mouth was, “If you’re never around now, how much worse is it going to be when the kid’s born?”
I tried to argue the point. The kid was going to have her all the time; what would he care about me for? But, she snapped back. “It goes both ways. He’s your son. Don’t you think you’ll care about him whether your around or not? Or are you saying you don’t care at all?”
So now I’m a full-time daddy. It isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There are still some definite downs. Even with all the crying, I get pretty lonely. The first time I tried inviting a pal over he cracked up as soon as I started doing baby talk. I couldn’t get him to quiet down long enough to explain that was the only way to get the kid to sleep so I clocked him and kicked him out instead. The second time a bud started laughing I turned beat red and decided to just end my misery and stop inviting people over. On the up side, I’ve developed a whole new skill set. I’ve gotten pretty good at prepping a bottle without burning myself and changing diapers. Although, I wasn’t too thrilled the first time I changed the baby. The tike pee-ed in my face. I’ve gotten used to that. Sort of.
So, I get the occasional ha-ha from one of my buddy’s, and sometimes it’s a little weird being home with only a one-year old for company. I tell myself the important thing is it turns out I could handle this gig after all. What I mean is it’s just sort of nice knowing that when the baby needs something he needs it from daddy, not mommy.
That doesn’t mean I want to stay daddy dearest for forever though. About twice a week, I take some evening classes when Rosie gets home from work. I’m trying to get a degree in finance. I’m thinking stock broker. A nurse can’t make more than a stock broker. Right?
