John Scalzi has observed that “in the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.” I don’t dispute this claim; in fact, I agree with it completely. Which makes it all the more humbling to admit that, even on this easiest setting, I have often failed to get the fatherhood and career balancing act right.
It would be easy to assign part of the blame for my failure to the church. After all, it has defined the primary reason for my existence as being the provider, the bacon bringer-homer, the winner of bread.
If the wolf is going to be kept away from the door of the home, the man is going to be the one who does it. So, when you work in a field where you are encouraged to stack up billable hours, and when your kids always need new shoes or orthodontia, and when the transmission needs an overhaul, and when new countertops move from the category of “nice to have” to something like a necessity, well, it’s easy to justify 70 hour weeks at the office. It’s like crack cocaine, or so I’ve heard, the second and third times get even easier to rationalize.
And the next thing you know, you haven’t had dinner with your family for two months, you’ve missed recitals and track meets and tickle fights at bedtime, and your family life is on autopilot. I have done this so many times it is embarrassing.
But the church also clearly conveys another message, one that calls men to be more involved in the lives of their children. It seems odd to have to acknowledge this, but that is a message I had to learn to hear. I love my kids, and I love to be around them. But since they are such good kids, it’s been easy to assume that my occasional lack of involvement hasn’t mattered. It is so ridiculously easy to think that I am showing my love for them by earning money and providing for their current and future needs. Earning a living is important, it cannot be neglected, but being a good father requires more than that. So I am very grateful for consistent messages which tell me that my presence in the lives of my children is even more important.
Has anybody ever heard women talk about quality time vs. quantity time? I don’t think I ever have. That particular conversation comes from a position of such unconscious privilege that I can only imagine women rolling their eyes as they prepare yet another meal or drive yet another kid to saxophone rehearsal or soccer practice. Quality time is a clever cop-out, used almost exclusively by guys who want to make excuses for failing to do the hard work of connecting with their children. Teenagers can be baffling and incredibly difficult. Their brains are fully capable of “forgetting” about an important homework assignment until 8:45 p.m. on the evening before it is due. Our definition of quality time needs to expand to include those hours between 8:45 and whenever it gets done. Those hours not only give us the chance to follow Jesus and practice the virtues of patience and charity, but, just as importantly, we get to emulate Cool Hand Luke, and exemplify grace under pressure. Bill Cosby said that the job of a dad is to sit tall in the saddle, smile, and overlook a lot. We can’t just show up for an hour a week and expect to be respected. We need to be there through the good and bad, thick and thin, silly times and serious times. One of my friends works as a family therapist, and he knows some heartbreaking stories about dads who literally don’t know what to say or do when they have five minutes alone with a daughter or son.
My own father worked two jobs for as long as I can remember. Fortunately, both jobs were within two miles of our house, so he was almost always home for breakfast and dinner. When I was chosen to be a pitcher on my baseball team, he took a week off from his second job to help me work, every afternoon, on my curveball and breaking pitch. When I had tennis matches, I hardly every saw him in the bleachers, but sometime during the afternoon, I’d usually notice his car roll into the parking lot. He would park where he could watch from the front seat of his car, through the chain link fence. He slipped away from his job, if only for a few minutes on his break, and yet those few minutes meant the world to me. On Saturdays, he always made breakfast for the family, then took several kids with him as he ran errands and did chores. I will always love him for these things. His example, more than anything else, has helped me maintain whatever uneasy equilibrium I have achieved in the fatherhood/career tightrope act.
-Submitted by Mark Brown
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I’ve heard loads of women talk about quality vs quantity of time. Working moms.
Nice write up, Mark. I struggle with this all the time too. Nice food for thought.
I’ve found that there is a difference between “event” time or “activity” time (time spent with kids engaged in a specific activity constrained by prior planning, i.e. a vacation day, a soccer game, a dance recital, etc.) and what I like to call “real life” time (playing taxi, helping them with homework, making food for them, getting them in bed, waking them up, driving them to school, etc.). Both have their charms (and their value). I wouldn’t trade either.
Quality time vs quantity time originated with women who were trying to figure out how to balance their working lives with raising kids. The concept can be a cop out, but it’s also a very real and difficult question for women– and men.
hawkgrrrl/Paula,
Thanks for the additional information, the context you have both provided makes sense.
Randy,
Isn’t it strange, how much of a struggle this is?
Brent,
Yes, I think you are right, and I would even take a further step and say that quantity time is what makes quality time possible. Or maybe to say that there is no easy way to tell the difference. Our children need to be around us and observe how we respond in the not-so-fun times, when things have gone wrong, when we are under pressure, or involved in the mundane drudgery of living. Only when they have seen how we act and react in those times will they be able to trust us when they really need us. When your 16 y.o. son is helping you replace the garbage disposal, with all four of your legs sticking out from the cabinet under the kitchen sink, and he says “Uh, dad, I think I need to talk to you about something”, that’s quality time, right there. That’s the good stuff, and it can’t be planned or scheduled or bought.
Besides the time it takes to earn a decent living, active Mormon men have the additional responsibility of Church callings which are often as demanding as a part time job. I wonder how much “quality time” bishops have with their children.
Good point, CC, and that observation exposes a curious bit of our sexist practice. Look around you in church at the men who have time-consuming callings. If your ward is like any ward I’ve ever attended, most of those guys have demanding, time-intensive jobs. But for the time-consuming callings which are filled by women, a demanding outside-the-home job is often viewed as a disqualifier.
CC is on to a good point. People often talk about the bishop’s kids being the worst ones. Well, that makes sense when you consider that bishops are often absent from home (and often preoccupied when they are physically there), meaning they can’t shoulder their half of the parenting burden. Their wife gets no relief, the kids, like velociraptors, test the parental fence for weaknesses know just where to push to get away with stuff. Kids aren’t stupid; they know how to navigate in the parental blind spots. I’m basing this more on my experiences as a teen than as a parent, since as a parent, I have no idea what’s going on in my blind spots, just like my parents didn’t.
You have raised good points. I enjoyed reading your post.