Christchurch father’s view

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32902, 28 April 1972, Page 5

Christchurch father’s view

The writer of this article Is a young father of two children, boys, aged four and 14 months. Recently, while his wife was in hospital and recuperating at home, he looked after the two during the day every day for two months. He commends the childminding experience to other fathers and sees jobsharing as a way to a similar satisfaction.

Job-sharing implies that the father do everything for his children. Far from being a tedium, or just “baching” while Mum is away, this can be exciting and give a better insight into the business of marriage and children.

Children, particularly preschool children, may be the salvation of their parents—both parents—but only if the parents let them.

Almost from birth men, even more than women, are put into a rigid sexual role. Together, they support each other in this. With women, and wives, they continue their notion of the gamerules and all. It is the adult world.

As such, the adult world does not have much time to give small children. “To be seen . . .” When adults are in conversation all the child gets is a distracted notice; the transition is hard, even if the adult is equipped and willing to make it.

Every distracted reply leaves the child more frustrated, more “irrational” in his next question. Because of their small time with their children, fathers seem most at fault, most impatient. Yet as things stand it is they who dictate the family values. Let them decide these values in the light of the whole family. The traditional, patriarchal structure of New Zealand families cannot withstand the rigours of. the twentieth century; for man to be dominant he must have something to dominate. STEREOTYPE FADING Masculinity, the male stereotype and all that it entails, is fading. Attest the apparent demise of Rugby, “the man’s game,” so beloved by our single-sex schools as the healthy outlet for aggression. Women’s Lib. has given women a united, if confused, cry for understanding. It can be met halfway and used to build a united thing—a family. A scheme of job-sharing, while its application may be more difficult in New Zealand than in Scandinavia, seems worthy of study. Society asks its young fathers to earn more, to fill their I houses with desirable new things, at a time when they are facing possibly the greatest emotional adjustment of their lives. The young bread-winner comes home from work to a wife who, in his mind, has | done little during the day. To return the house to his idea

of normalcy he becomes the authoritarian patriarch, thereby destroying some of the rest and companionship that the family should give. How many men have been left alone to care for their children over a period of weeks? From my own experience, once in this situation it is impossible to stay the tall disciplinarian; the father has as much to get from his children, especi-

ally the youngest, as he has to give them. Too often, it seems, fathers say: “Wait until he is older, talking. Then I will take more of an interest in him.”

By the time the child is older the father will be one more remove from him; the child less of a child, the father finding more need to asserts his authority and so set himself on a line that will end, perhaps, in an irreparable lack of communication. ACCEPTED ROLE

How much time does the New Zealand man allow himself for his children—weeks at work, nights with the distractions of dinner and the television, week-ends occupied with sport, boozing, the Sunday papers and the afternoon doze. He fulfils his accepted role in our society, and it disturbs him if his wife fails to also.

Young wives, there must be sad suburbs filled with their choking. I took my four-year-old to the central Plunket rooms one day and talked of this with a sympathetic attending nurse.

She described the plight of the lonely young mothers coming in from the suburbs. Separated from their own parents, these girls are left with no-one to talk to about their baby—their life. For them the sex war must be magnified, living in a world whose daily boundary is the commercial ngdio and the tele. The husband comes

home from work, expecting the vital companionship and emotional message that the world tells him marriage gives. She has only the child to talk about, and then only the things which she thinks will interest him (explicitly, things not too soppy for a man to descend to). Living with a child is such a microcosmic affair that she must rule out the apparently insignificant—and often the most wonderful —that her day has to offer. His ridicule must not be allowed; that it something girls learn from their mothers, boys from fathers, too.

But, if he knew what life alone with children was like; what total explanation is entailed in defining the seemingly most simple things, and what freshness can be found in everything—in each new whole day—there would be a complete new avenue of communication with his wife and with his child. The family would be on the same plane, together. Instead, our society decrees that the only form of job-sharing allowed is where the wife works, to supplement the family bread and preserve the great illusion of wordly goods. This does the relationship

a positive harm; tired mother, father who cannot understand why she is tired; and the child, left at some day-care centre, removed from either parent.

Now in New Zealand jobsharing probably would mean the husband standing still on the career ladder that will, our education has told us, lead to riches. Yet if it is to be found, the cities are the place to do it, and are certainly where its advantages are most needed. It might mean a reduction in the husband’s financial aspirations and estrangement from particular social groups. With luck, he might then see it as a measure of group and social values.

People, almost all, said when they discovered that I was minding my children: “How marvellous. How do you do it?” After the first flush of self-congratulation their exclamation seemed pointless. It was fun. The children were the educators; they taught me how to relax with them. With relaxation, discipline seemed easy. It is hard to explain relaxation. People are too busy: “Oh, I wouldn’t have time for that.” Relaxed people did not ask.

I must say that I was fortunate in having a job which 1 entailed starting work in the ' early evening. I was able to have the kids fed, bathed and ready for bed for the babysitters —a varied collection of good, kind folk. Also, I enjoy my work; it was another world, to be taken on its own terms and used to unwind from and prepare for the family day. However, in our urban I society manv find little but , tedium in their work. Job- • sharing would ease this and ' distribute the burden, if it has to be a: burden, And it would let both ; parents get more from their ■children. For there is magic : to be had, a whimsical qua--1 lity that the world seems to have lost sight of.