The Positive Spin on a Reverse Role Household

Yesterday found me in a sort of Medical Hell, ferrying myself back and forth from office to office, trying to get all of my health needs taken care of in one afternoon. Frankly, I hate this aspect of parenting - and I call it that because of the fact that I now have a daughter to concern myself with which means that I feel the need to be in tip-top condition which means I can't take my former laissez-faire approach to health (the equivalent of a First Aid kit stocked with duct tape, a lighter and a fifth of whiskey) anymore...and I try to lead by example, especially at this impressionable age. Of course, she wasn't with me to see the wonderful example I was setting, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I did it.

The one thing I don't actually mind about visits to the doctor, dentist and hospital is that I usually have plenty of time to sit and wait and catch up on my waiting room parenting magazine reading. That's where I bypass the fashion magazines, news and celebrity rags (I am so not interested in the lives of celebs...I think that may qualify me for US Citizenship Revocation even though I was actually born here) and go right for Parents, Parenting, and, if I'm really lucky, Working Mother.

So it was that yesterday found me curled up on an exam room table under a paper blanket, using the johnnie as a pillow and thumbing through the August (or was it September?) issue of Working Mother when I came across an article discussing the rising trend in so called "reverse role" families and ways to "protect your marriage while you navigate this new path". Since we are in this category, I actually began to read instead of browse. I was hoping for a little inspiration, a new look at how others deal with some of the unique issues that come with being a breadwinning mother and stay-at-home father...

But I didn't really see any. The article made a point of pointing out that a big reason for the increased number of families taking on the challenges of the reverse role household is because of the economy - more men are being laid off. Of course, that adds a whole different dynamic to the equation. For one thing, it's not by choice. That probably means that money is really tight which, well, it is in our household too, but we knew that going in to this, so maybe it concerns us less? Both of us have been dirt poor in the past and both feel comparatively wealthy at this point in our lives (even though we're not) in spite of the fact that we turn in the change jar a lot more than I would like to admit. Yet, it's not a source of discontent in this house, nor is it a perennial source of arguments for us. So, it was sort of a non-point in our case, if you will.

Reading on...

What I did find interesting about this article was that although the advice to keeping your marriage sound largely focused on not letting yourself become defined by your salary or financial contribution to the household, it also noted that women still do more than their SAHF husbands. From the article, "According to recent data from the government’s American Time Use Survey, analyzed by economists Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller, when women are looking for a job, they spend twice as much time taking care of their children each day as employed women do. By contrast, unemployed men’s childcare duties are virtually identical to those of their working counterparts, and they tend to spend more time sleeping and watching TV."

I was surprised that although the rising numbers of SAHFs were attributed to more men being laid off, there was no caveat to this stating that perhaps those men who sleep or tune out "on the job" were suffering from some form of depression over the fact that their whole world had been turned inside out? I can tell you with 100% certainty that M spends more time taking care of our daughter, even when I'm home. And I don't necessarily feel badly about that, or even about the fact that I go to work every day.

In our home, M doesn't sleep or watch TV. While it's true that I end up cooking most of our dinners (our beloved landlords cook the rest), it's not because he's been slacking. I've spent time with our daughter and I can tell you that his job as a SAHF in this household is nothing but overtime from the moment she wakes up. Even when she naps, he rarely does the same. He may tidy up, he may take that time to decompress and veg just to be able to get through the remainder of her whirlwind day when she wakes, but I've tried to make it clear, over and over, that an immaculate household is the least of my concerns when I come home after work and that her nap time should be his break time.

So, the house remains presentable but not sanitized and that's fine. I can deal with that on a weekend. So dinner isn't simmering when I get home. Given that I'm picky about what's cooked and how, that's fine too. I'm a foodie - he's just along for the ride.

What, then, does he do? Well, he stays engaged far more than I did when I was home with A for that week in August. I focused more on cleaning house than he does but that meant I focused less on her...and I felt bad for it. He, on the other hand, plays and plays and plays. He follows her silly games, he sets aside time for arts, he patiently explains everything he does, she points out and in the world around her. He'll slide on the slide for hours. He'll push her in the swing, bury her in the leaves, race her down the sidewalk. He established a routine early on too, and we all know that babies love routine. But he sticks to it, rain, snow or shine.

In short, he is a fully engaged father - I daresay moreso than many SAHMs I know.

In the end, I was disappointed in the advice proffered by the article. I was hoping for some sage words of wisdom to pass along for the next time the nanny and mommy contingent shunned him at the playground or maybe even some links to father's groups (which he wouldn't follow anyway, but you never know). Instead, it told me to do everything we had been doing along with some things we don't need to do.

I constantly remind him that I could never earn enough to pay him the salary he deserves for what he does. And he never complains. Sometimes I think that he tinkers with the car late at night to make an idiot light come on that will necessitate him having to fix it just so that he can keep his mechanic skills sharp (that was his trade before he left it all to be home with A) and because, well, I know that he misses it. But that's OK. When I boil it down, sure I work a lot to keep us treading water - and yes, I cook and take care of the major cleaning, but on top of surface cleaning and laundry, he does the most important jobs. He keeps the car running (and friends and neighbors cars too), our daughter happy and healthy and takes care of all of the pet care, household fix-it projects and all of that other stuff that for some reason we feel inclined to think of as trivial man stuff. Really, when you add it up, if he was paid, he'd be making a hell of a lot more than I ever could.

Are any readers in this reverse role in your households? What are you primary complaints? How do you handle the expectations? Is it by choice or the economy?

What Happens When Your Relief Calls in Sick?

In my husband's case, this means that technically, his "relief" shift is actually at home, lying on the couch, lost under a drift of used tissues and discarded Benadryl blister packs. The only clue to the Second Shift's true whereabouts has been a sticky, red trail of dried Target Brand NyQuil (in red death flavor) leading to a wheezing lump.

I feel badly about this. Truly I do. I am one of nature's slow healers. A simple cut can take over a month to heal. A mild cold turns in to a raging infection when it meets my immune system and then takes weeks to depart the host body after ravaging it most violently and leaving it for dead.

In this case, I am aware that I should not be able to map my sinus cavities simply by virtue of feeling them trying to burst forth from my face...but I can. To pass the time earlier, I even tried to practice cartography in this fashion but got lost once we reached the alimentary canal.

So, for two days now, I've been up and down (mostly down). When I've been awake, I've had my nose buried in a book or found myself squinting at the interwebz, trying to sort out where to take this...this...this. This, this. Yes. That's it.

What I have not been doing is being a very interactive mommy. Oh, I've changed a diaper here and there, read a book (today that's out as I can't actually speak above a whisper now) or two, snuggled for Tigger and Pooh time and managed to help out with a few meals...

But I know that M isn't feeling well either. And I feel even worse for it. It's bad enough that he's the Day Shift and, too often, the Evening Shift as well, especially if A isn't interested in watching or helping me get dinner together...now he has to do it all around me, knowing I'll be as much help as a wilted toadstool on a damp morning.

It's funny...the Mom-o-Sphere has been abuzz lately with the rekindling of the Mommy Wars, no thanks to Dr. Phil (I'm not providing links it's just too stupid...), but as I watch M herd our daughter to her toddler story time at the library, kick the ball around outside on a cold, cloudy day and as I hear him tell her to leave Mommy alone, she's sleeping (through my drug induced fog), I am reminded of two things:

1. I couldn't pay this man a high enough salary if I had access to unlimited riches.

2. If I have to will myself into recovering faster, I have to. It's just silly to be a snot-nosed, wheezy lump when clearly, extra help and hands is what's really needed around the house.

What about you? How do you deal with kids when one or both parents are sick?

Bye Bye Baby Einstein, Hello Real World

In late August of this year, I packed up my laptop, hugged my co-workers good bye and said, "Hopefully this will be over soon." My husband had been recalled from Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) and had been ordered, on somewhat short notice, to report to Fort Knox, KY.

This was the first time he'd be gone from home and it was going to be momentous. Our daughter would be with me all day instead of her father. I was going to have to sort out the best way to keep her routine, one she was and still is firmly attuned to; to work from home while simultaneously keeping both eyes firmly planted on her the entire time (at 16 months and running, her main mission in life was to find new and interesting ways to attempt to end her life and give us both as many heart attacks as was possible in one day without actually ending our own as well); and to try desperately to find affordable daycare if my husband's appeal to be released was denied.

As the leading opponent to TV for toddlers in our household, day 1 found us both in a funk. Daddy was gone. The house felt empty and, for the first time, not at all home-like. Both toddler and I went through the motions and even sort of chatted a little bit, but in the end, we spent the day watching TV and waiting for a phone call.

Oh, we had a walk and lunch and some outside time before the temperature got too frightfully hot...

But mostly, we just watched TV. When, for some reason, PBS and PBS Sprout channels both started repeating themselves in the afternoon, I went searching for the Baby Einstein DVD we'd been given as a gift when she was born. I found it in the study, collecting dust. I had cringed when we received it, I remember that. To me, these things were worse than "normal" kids television...they were actually trying to market genius in babies. I was smug about that, I will admit it. No gullible yuppies were we! With spending money at a premium in this household, we were both wise and frugal enough to know that the best way to turn a baby into a genius was hands-on teaching and interaction, o ho! But, never look a gift DVD in the...well...

My husband had previewed the video some time before and I recalled him telling me that it was the most mind-numbingly boring thing he had ever seen. Of course, he wasn't a baby, so that review probably wasn't the most reliable in the history of children's educational programming reviews, but I also remembered him saying that he would only ever show it to a child if he wanted to be accused of torture, it was just that bad. Similarly, I have banned Blues Clues from the house for the same basic reason.

But it was enough to make me put the DVD back where I'd found it. It was serving the household well as a collector of dust. Being too hot to play outside, daughter and I wandered in to her room instead and threw styrofoam blocks at each other .

Flash forward to now. That DVD only just now saw the light of day after our move a month ago when it was packed from it's dust collecting location into a drawer and I purposefully hunted it down and took it out. There's a note on it: Return to Store.

Over on Yahoo! Shine, I learned that Disney is offering refunds for all of the suckers...er...well meaning parents who really believed that plopping a child in front of a television watching a video specially designed to numb the brains of parents everywhere but "stimulate" infants was, indeed, to parenting what snake oil is to cancer, flux, indigestion, disease of the liver and any other ailments you can think of. Nothing more than a placebo that, in too many cases, actually caused a malady rather than cured anything.

I'm not sure, though, how this is so "stunning" to parents. The only thing that's stunned me about the refund is the fact that Disney is actually offering refunds at all. Sure, this will probably save them money in the long run (is it this or suffer a class action lawsuit?), but it's practically an admission of guilt - it's almost saying, "Yeah, we suckered you. And now your kid has attention span issues because we suckered you so here's your 25 bucks back, OK? That should cover the next bottle of Rittalin, right?"

The debate over childhood TV viewing and attention span disorders will forever rage long after this has subsided and parents will still draw their lines in the sand, prepared to label one another as Very Bad Parents for allowing/disallowing TV in the household at or under or around certain ages, or even at all!

But on that sad August day when neither of us wanted to do much of anything and both of us missed Daddy/Dear Husband and couldn't quite articulate our feelings to one another, Sesame Street and Curious George helped distract us just that little bit...and somehow, brought us closer together too. We snuggled a lot that day - and our decidedly independent hellion is not a big snuggler so that was something extra special to hold on to.

As for Baby Einstein's "Numbers Nursery: Discovering 1 Through 5" video, the cash I get back will definitely come in handy during the next diaper run. Or maybe to purchase another couple of sets of feetsey pajamas as we settle in for the winter to come.

At 18 months now, she already counts to 3 as it is...and that's just from a lot of silly songs with Mommy and Daddy and counting of fingers and toes. There really is no substitute for the Real McCoy - interacting with your kid and maybe even teaching them to count while you cook instead of hoping a video does it for you.