A big shout-out to all the single parents out there. It must be a very challenging experience. As much as I am loving being a parent and certainly wouldn’t change it, it is definitely harder than I expected it to be and certainly harder than anyone told me it would be. And that is with the good fortune to be married to my amazing wife whose love and energy for her daughter seem literally limitless and who seems to intuitively know what to do in any new situation. So when she had to Canberra for a three-day work trip, I was a little nervous, but also interested to see what the experience of solo parenting would be like. With our little girl less than six months old I knew it would be my wife that would be suffering the most through this period so I tried to approach the challenge as positively as I could. After all, I like to think I have a pretty high capacity to push my own physical and emotional limits and possess no shortage of patience or resourcefulness. Moreover, my baby whisperer wife was only a phone call away if anything came up that I couldn’t problem solve my way through. Obviously it was never going to take long for things to go sideways. My little girl came down pretty sick the night before my wife left and there were tears all round in our household, but we knew we would cope.
The after-hours doctor came around (on a side note, how amazing is our subsidised healthcare system? I wonder if the neo-liberals who rail against ”Socialism” refuse to use it out of principle) and wrote me a carer’s certificate and my boss was really supportive, offering to take on a lot of the jobs I had needed to get done. This meant aside from a few short jobs that had to be done by me, I was able to forget about work and concentrate on looking after my daughter. And I needed to concentrate. It was challenging to keep on top of everything that needed doing and equally challenging from an emotional perspective when my little girl (who was incredibly brave for the whole time) was having trouble sleeping or was in distress for prolonged periods. It was actually the latter that I found most difficult. Despite finding myself pushing a pram around the kitchen in my underwear trying to warm up a bottle at 5AM, I reckon over time I would have adjusted to the rhythm of activities I needed to get done. But even so, keeping up with everything would still be hard work. What would be harder though- and something I hadn’t really counted on- was just having to make so many important decisions unilaterally, without having someone to talk them through with. I am used to being able to bounce ideas of my wife and vice versa about what to do when things aren’t working. Obviously I could still call her- or any number of incredibly supportive friends- if I need, but often they feel like situations where you need the person to be there to understand exactly what is happening. If I truly was a single parent though, I imagine I would definitely have to upgrade my phone plan because I would certainly be making a huge number of hail Mary calls. I can imagine grandparents become especially important in this situation and even over these three days I was very thankful for a number of moments of support from my mother. To anyone that is or has raised a child on their own, I don’t offer sympathy because I don't feel sorry for you. It is still a richly rewarding evolution in life. But I do tip my hat in respect for the hard job that you are doing.
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Dad thoughtsI haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it. Archives
October 2020
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