Mother's Day

An interview with the mom behind the magic

The kids’ mothers’ day.

For my first Mother’s Day as a blogger (I guess I’m okay calling myself that now) I wanted to try something different. A lot of my writing centers around the challenges of being a stay-at-home dad. First, it’s always a challenge spending prolonged time being in charge of small kids, no matter who you are or what your background. It is taxing on your mental and physical energy, and it’s a long-term investment, which can make it hard to maintain morale. Second, while no parent starts completely from scratch, every parent must ad-lib as they try to incorporate the best of their upbringing, filter out the worst, and figure out which was which in the process. We discover that we have become our parents (often in the ways that we didn’t want to) while simultaneously feeling like we are falling short of the example they set.

However, in our case, there have been some extra challenges: namely, the challenge of feeling like we are both ad-libbing in a strangely reversed paradigm. Both of us grew up in households with a traditionally gendered division of labor. Both of our fathers worked outside the home (in fact, in a remarkable coincidence, both of them were self-employed primary care physicians) and both of our mothers were at home, at least while the kids were young. (As I put it to my second-grade class, “My mom used to be a doctor too, but she traded it for a more important job: being a mom.”) Both of us unconsciously assumed that this division of domestic labor would be our paradigm as well. But, of course, life didn’t turn out quite that way: less because we had planned it and more because of the reality of her earning potential far outstripping mine, I wound up as Mr. Mom and she ended up bringing home the bacon. As both of us have wrestled with the implications of this role reversal—both the practical difficulty of balancing different household responsibilities and the deeper questions of what it means to be a “mom” and “dad” when we’re doing the roles we traditionally associated with the other parent—it seemed appropriate for Mother’s Day to celebrate and honor the mother of my kids by hearing about her experience. Here, edited for brevity and clarity, is a transcript of that conversation.

Jenn: What we have is different from what we had when we grew up with and certainly different from the stereotypes that you see of the 1950s. Growing up, it seemed like it was always the female housewife—the stay-at-home mom—and then you have the dad that left to go to work. That is the stereotype that came out of certainly the 1950s and I’d say even before, when people lived on farms: the dad would go out to the fields and do the hard labor and then come home, and the wife was always the one responsible for caring for the children and the general household organization and maintenance.

Michael: But now we find that I am Ma Ingalls to you to your Pa Ingalls and I am the Lucy Ricardo to your Ricky?

Jenn: I would actually say it is not a complete linear substitute. On the one hand, we do have very clear roles in that you are the one that's primarily at home with the kids taking care of the home and I am the breadwinner. However, I think what has really surprised people about us is that, unlike many couples, who often have very distinct, defined roles that don't ever really intersect, our roles are more fluid. The way we've raised our kids requires a particularly high caliber of communication for things to run as smoothly as they are.

Michael: So what do you think are the biggest challenges of this paradigm of parenting as opposed to the one that we both grew up with?

Jenn: First of all, I think it's just to try to cut through those stereotypes. So much of our default settings and our experience come from those very stereotypical rules. Because we don't have those to fall back on, it often feels that we are swimming upstream or against the tide. We haven't seen this done by anyone else that we know, so it feels like we're paving a new trail.

Michael: Can you think of any particular areas of struggle as we are trying to pave that trail?

Jenn: The first that comes to mind is meals. Because I'm not home for all three meals, I've lost kind of my touch in terms of knowing what is or what is not being consumed and what the kids are eating and what they are currently not.

Michael: And has that felt hard for you to not have that not have knowledge or sense?

Jenn: I would say yes and no. I miss sometimes knowing what the kids are particularly into or what they ate earlier when I see them in the evenings to kind of gauge how hungry they are: you know, just the timing and the rhythms of the day I'm not privy to because I'm not at home. That's something I've had to give up. That has been hard because, in a sense, I feel like I no longer know my children. I come home and I see them for dinner, but I don't know the rhythms or the themes of their day. I can't always judge their temperament or what has led up to them feeling tired or overstimulated because I haven't been with them. I’ve had to grieve that loss.

But on the plus side, I've never really been into cooking. I cook to live; I don’t live to cook. Looking back, even when I played house with my friends at ages three and four, I was never the one that wanted to spend a lot of time near the kitchen sets concocting recipes. I remember being four years old and playing with my best friend Courtney, who was three, and she would always say, “No, I'm gonna be the mom and you're gonna be the dad and you're going to leave the house and go to work.” And I would kiss her and wave goodbye and I would go up to the driveway and she would be at home with the dolls and then I would … turn around in my little tricycle and come back at the end of the day and say, “I'm home from work!” So, I played the daddy role and I had no idea that I was, in a way, foreshadowing what I would do someday.

Michael: In your opinion, is there an innate difference between motherhood and fatherhood? If so, what is that difference? And how has your conception of those roles changed since we’ve been in this arrangement, or has it?

Jenn: I think really that comes down to the differences between male and female. One of the biggest “ah, ha!” moments for me came a few years ago, within the first year of having you be a stay-at-home dad. I realized that having a stay-at-home dad was not equal to having a stay-at-home mom. There are things that each of us contribute to the roles of parenting that are different. It doesn’t mean that one is better than the other per se but they are different. The reality is, I was the one that breastfed. I was the one that gave birth to the kids. It wasn’t an option to have you do those things. And so, God has made each gender uniquely and beautifully different from each other, and [we are] also called by God to different roles in bringing a child into the world.

And I have really seen benefit to having both of us being really invested in our children’s lives. It’s becoming more commonplace perhaps, but certainly, growing up, none of my peers in the early 90s had a close, close relationship with her father, at least that I can think of. Everyone’s dad worked outside the home and was gone. It’s been such a blessing and an honor to watch our kids have so much interaction and time with you: time that I know many fathers would give worlds to be able to have and to be that involved in their children’s lives. It’s something that I never had, and it’s very, very special to watch. I still get a kick out of when Jack comes to me on a weekend when you’re gone and asks, “Where is Daddy? I want Daddy!” And sometimes he will cry if he doesn’t know where you are. And, when you are gone, they feel your absence keenly in a way that I don’t think I ever felt my dad’s absence much because he just simply wasn’t there.

Michael: In what ways do you see this arrangement pushing us beyond our comfort zones and bearing fruit in either or both of us?

Jenn: I think for me, the ultimate role that I espoused to be for so long was just a wife and mother…the epitome of spirituality was seen as being a mother, and that stay-at-home mother role. Being a working mom has forced me to broaden my views and to find new ways of tapping into some strengths that I never knew I had. Thankfully, I’ve landed in a career that I absolutely love and I wouldn’t want to do anything else. So, never would have dreamed that I would be here—never in a million years—but I really feel that I’m where God wants me to be for this moment.

Michael: From a biblical perspective, a lot of the more theologically conservative Christians that we know—and we would, I think, identify as theologically conservative Christians—have a much more rigid view of gender roles. Do you view our arrangement as a problem from a biblical perspective? Why or why not?

Jenn: I’ve thought about that question as we’ve undertaken this reversal of roles. I’d say yes and no. I think that in the picture that I had growing up, the woman was silent. Now, though, looking at scripture, I don’t see that in the ways that God interacted with women. Certainly, I understand there’s some specific roles in the church that makes sense when you read the scriptural passages. But, when it comes to the interaction of men and women, I’ve begun to think that maybe there’s a little bit more of a…dare I say, equality to the roles, even while there’s still a difference. I think that there is still a man’s call to leadership there; as a woman and your wife, I very much want to make sure that you have a say in what things happen, and I consult you regularly. But I don’t think that means that I have to be a wallflower; neither am I a lone wolf going out there and just doing my own thing independently. I value your input about the direction and just decisions that need to be made. I guess it comes down to that team spirit.

Michael: Thanks, babe.

Do you have any final thoughts or observations about what it means to be a mother when that mother is also the full-time breadwinner, and what it means to be a father when that father is also the primary care-taker?

Jenn: You are not replaceable, and I am not replaceable. I think that one of my insecurities in doing this initially, was, they’re never going to need me. I’m not going to be wanted. I won’t have anything to contribute. I’m going to be away from home and they are just going to be happy as a lark. That’s not the case. I get the sense every day that I’m missed and I’m wanted and I still have a role to play in the kids’ lives. And that goes for either parent. I think if you were to leave, and we were to swap roles tomorrow, the kids would miss you desperately. And I think there are certain attributes about you that lend themselves very well to your current role: you are relational; you have the patience of a saint; you are able to listen and engage with the kids on their level but also treat them with a lot of respect when they come to you with questions. Your hugs are amazing. Your food is excellent. And so I think… what was the initial question again?

Michael: Just any final conclusions about motherhood and fatherhood as it relates to our arrangement.

Jenn: I think we live in times where it is really tricky to figure out culturally what is motherhood and what is fatherhood, outside just going strictly by biology. But I think that there’s more to it; it’s mysterious. I don’t claim to know it. But it’s been really cool and intriguing to watch and participate in this—kind of it feels like an experiment almost—and see what issues come up. Like I said, I think that our roles are probably more fluid than those of other couples. We are somewhat interchangeable when it comes to managing household things. But we still have our individual strengths as well. You still clean baby bottles better than I ever will.

Michael: Fortunately, I think we’re past that.

Jenn: But I think that these different skillsets would be true for any couple that is starting out in parenting. You find that one swaddles the baby better than the other one; one might be able to soothe a colicky babe better than the other one. So, it’s been fun to come up with different solutions and see how the other one is able to problem solve them.

Michael: Well, hon, thanks for taking the time, and more importantly, thanks for being a great mom.