The Slightly Crunchy Dad
By Lucky Tomaszek
My husband loves our kids, and he loves being a dad. From the moment our first child was born, he was a changed man. He is as crunchy as I am, even if he doesn’t like to admit it.
The funny thing is, he doesn’t look crunchy. Allen is a former Marine who never grew his hair out when his tour was over. He’s spent almost a decade working a corporate job and he fits the fashion mold; twill pants, polo shirts and dress shoes. He drives a late model car and has learned to golf. He certainly wasn’t raised crunchy. He was a fairly typical latchkey kid with parents who worked outside the home.
In honor of Father’s Day, I spent some time talking to a couple of slightly crunchy dads, getting their perspective on parenting. Sometimes it seems like dads are just along for the ride. I must say there are times when I feel like Allen is just going along with my desires to keep the peace. But the time I spent talking to him and to Matt, dad to 3 year-old Maddie and new baby Ellie, made it clear that they support what we do.
The first thing I ask Allen is something I’ve wanted to know for a long time: What kind of dad did he think he would be before he had kids? His answer: “I didn’t really think about it. I’m a typical guy, I thought about how I was going to support the family rather than the day to day raising of the kids.” Well, that’s not quite what I was looking for, but it seems to be the norm. Many apparently don’t spend hours reading, researching and fantasizing during pregnancy like women tend to do.
I asked Matt the same question. He replied, “When we were expecting Maddie, I thought we’d be typical. We’d go to the hospital and have the baby. And then we’d come home and have months of getting up several times a night to feed the baby a bottle. You have to watch them and keep them safe all the time, and I expected that. But this is a lot easier than I expected parenting to be.”
Co-sleeping keeps dads close.
Matt goes on to share a little of his story with me. “We had a bad birth experience in the hospital and my wife was pretty upset by it. We started sleeping with Maddie as soon as we came home from the hospital, mostly because it made breastfeeding easier. The bottles went right out the window, because breastfeeding became so important to her after the disappointment of the birth. Anyway, we’ve been doing it so long, I wouldn’t want to do it any other way now. It’s adorable to wake up next to her.”
Allen agrees with Matt’s last statement about waking up next to the kids. It makes the occasional tough co-sleeping night worth it all. Allen says to me, “I started bringing our baby to bed because I worked so many hours, and I really felt that I needed time with her. I kept sleeping with the (all of our) kids because I wanted to stay close. By the time we had more babies, I was used to sleeping with them. When they’re tiny, it helps you bond to them. And it helps them know that you’re there for them. It keeps you close, and that’s what it is to me, it’s being close to your kids.”
Being a slightly crunchy dad is about more than sharing a bed with your young child. It would be very hard to be the kind of mom I am without my husband’s full support. When it was time for me to go back to work after our first baby, I couldn’t imagine doing it. I did not want to leave her, and Allen stood behind me, even though we desperately needed the money.
Now our lives are a little easier. We live in a roomy home with a decent back yard. We both drive newer and more reliable cars. Allen moved up the corporate ladder and it has definitely helped. When he looks back on our humble family beginnings, he has no regrets about being the bread winner all these years, “It makes sense to be close to your kids. Spend as much time with your kids and your family as you can. It’s not all about work. I want to do everything I can to be in a family environment. That’s just important to me.”
The pride of the provider.
Our friend Matt is also happy about their decision to have a stay at home mom in the house with the kids. It wasn’t always easy for them. Matt’s wife was a schoolteacher who planned her pregnancy around the school year. She was due to give birth to Maddie near the end of the school year so she could have the summer off and then put the baby in daycare at the beginning of the next school year.
It didn’t work out quite like that. Little Maddie decided to come 6 weeks early, and by the time summer was over, all plans of returning to work had been scratched.
Matt had to take on the responsibility of earning the family’s income by himself. He feels good about the fact that he’s been able to do it, “I take a lot of pride that we’ve been able to make it work as a one income family because it’s important for them to feel secure all the time. They get their needs met immediately, by their mom. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that I’m able to provide that for my family. It takes a lot of work to survive with one income, but we’ve done it.”
When I ask each of these two men if this kind of parenting is all about sacrifice, they both give me an emphatic “No!” for an answer. Matt tells me how close he and Maddie are. “When I come home from work she runs into my arms and just wants to be with me. She sticks with me for the rest of the night. I love the time with her, and it gives my wife a break, which she needs after being home all day with the two kids. It’s the right thing for everybody.”
Allen and I agree on another thing about parenting too; it’s really an investment for the future, for the dreaded teen years and beyond. Allen says, “I think if you’re closer to your kids, it makes things easier. Your kids are happier, and I think they’re better behaved. They learn more about themselves and feel more secure about their role in the world. And I think they value their family more.”
I ask Matt about the future, what he’s hoping for in the teen years and he thinks for a moment before answering. “I hope that as the girls get older, they will realize that we’re here for them. I want them to be able to talk to us when they’re having problems as older kids. I think that they’ll feel less offended when we ask ‘Where are you going and who will you be with’. We’re part of everything they do right now, and I want that to continue as long as possible. I want my kids to realize that branching out from the bonds of the family is an important step.”
I ask my husband if he would like to say something in closing, but he declines. He goes back to reading the paper. A little while later he looks up and says, “OK, maybe there’s one more thing. I think it’s important for kids to be around their moms and dads as much as they can. If you ask most of the kids in the world what they want most, they’re going to tell you they want more time with their parents. Even teenagers want to know their parents are there for them. Let’s just keep it simple. Presumably, if you’re having kids, it’s because you want to be with them, so be with your kids. It’s that easy for me.”
