More parenting videos on JuiceBoxJungle
The latest Juice Box Jungle episode on fatherhood (above) ought to be must-watch for first-time mommies who haven't figured out where daddies fit into the picture yet. Sure, the guys helped to make the baby, but he didn't have to carry it inside him for nine months, shove it out of his ka-china (my son's word for it -- don't ask), and continue to have it attached to his boobies (Facebook be damned!) for at least a year after that. How could they possibly know what to do with a baby when they haven't lived it like we mommies have? Worse, put yourself in my shoes: my husband is the youngest in his family by decades, and he is an only child. When I met him at age 16, my siblings were ages 7 and 8, and they were the closest he'd ever been to young children. His learning curve with kids was going to be steep, naturally...
Fast forward to a decade later, when our first child, our daughter, came into being under circumstances we hadn't anticipated. Instead of having our first child just as Daddy was wrapping up a two-year graduate degree, she was born at the start of his second year. I was the breadwinner, and staying home from work was not an option; so I started working again when Petunia was six weeks old, and suddenly Daddy -- the student with the more flexible schedule -- was on duty. The man with zero childcare experience became diaper-changer-in-chief, roller-of-the-stroller to mommy's office for nursing sessions, crying-infant-hall-pacer, etc. Quite frankly, trying to return to work too soon while adjusting to new mommyhood didn't give me time to think about whether or not he was caring for the baby in the right way, whatever that was. He was simply doing it -- and, in retrospect, I realized that he figured it out quite well on his own. When he didn't know about something, he asked me, or he googled it! (What did we do before the internet?!)
Fast forward another eight years, and our baby Petunia is now age 8, and her brother Dash is almost 4. Mommy became an at-home parent with child #2, and Daddy is the full-time worker (as he has been since Petunia's first birthday). With the addition of our second child, I worried... would Daddy have the same close bond with our son, for whom he is rarely the primary caregiver, as he does with our daughter? Once again, Daddy figured out ways to forge that special bond in his very own way. He has special things that he does alone with the kids (like a standing date for McDonald's pancakes on Saturday mornings while Mommy sleeps in!). These days, there are a lot more things that Daddy does -- things like rough-housing, or letting the kids drink soda on occasion -- that Mommy wants to question, but, unless he's doing something that really undermines my full-time parenting routines, I keep my mouth shut. It's better that he interacts with them on his own terms than under mine. And while I sometimes find it unfair that Daddy gets to be more of a special playmate while Mommy's the rulemaker, there is no threat that works better than "I'll tell you father" when the kids aren't behaving. They know that, at the end of the day, Mommy and Daddy are on the same team, pulling for the same great thing: raising happy, curious, creative, fun kids. It's the trust in each other that we won't screw up the kids too badly that helps us along the way.
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