Skip to main content

Against Tide

I met a sales guy recently who confessed he truly hated traveling and that was even before he had twins who are a few years old now. He lucked into the most rewarding part of their babyhood being home full-time during the pandemic. Before the kids, he traveled a lot did not enjoy it but there was no compelling cause that made him say he won't. I got the feeling R had got in touch with what fatherhood meant to him, the rewards of seeing his boys grow in front of his eyes, being able to chase after them and tip-toe around when they finally napped. He intents to work from home and not travel until there is no choice. 

To that end he is hiring people to do the travel for him, folks in a different phase of their lives or those who actually enjoy being on the road most of the time. It was heart-warming to hear R describe the forces that tie him to home. It does turn out the he was raised by two professional parents both on career tracks. They were there for him as much as they could which was not very much. R and his older siblings fended for themselves. Parents were primarily providers for the family and the annual vacation was the only time the kids had full access to them. R wanted a different kind of life for his twins and do be the father he did not have growing up.

“If we look at public polling data, it’s absolutely clear that men’s hours of child care and housework have increased quite a bit over the last several decades,” says Scott Melzer, professor of sociology and chair of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Albion College. “It still pales in comparison to how many hours women are putting in, but the culture has shifted.”

I think men like R are likely to be way more supportive and understanding of a woman's maternal desire to be close to her children. He is not going to look at it a lack of ambition. As a man who spends a lot of time juggling work and raising toddlers, R is well aware of the challenges that stay-at-home dads face and a corporate culture that does not expect or support a top sales guy like R who wants to be home and be dad to his children. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...