Lucas Camilo

You may assume from the title of this post that we’re not going to use the usual “we” voice of Lucas’s blog… and you’re right!  Perhaps this is the beginning of more blogging in each of our personal voices, something we’ve talked about doing for a while.  So here goes Burke with part 1 of his blog-post-turned-essay…

I’ve been wanting to share some reflections about being a father that build on the parenting resources – including “dad” resources – that have been inspiring to both Krista and I as we continue to explore our roles as parents and caregivers of Lucas.  From the beginning we’ve felt strongly about equality of responsibility in the raising of children; we’ve also been passionate about maintaining our political and social values through the way that we raise Lucas.  However, how these things plays out in practice can sometimes be a challenge, and it often occurs to me that I don’t always live up to my own ideals when it comes to parenting.

In part for that reason, it’s been exciting to find books, websites, and zines that articulate – better than I ever could – the challenges and virtues of shared parenting from a dad’s perspective, not to mention a lefty political perspective.  Over email I’ve gotten to know two dad writers in particular – Tomas Moniz, the editor of the amazing zine Rad Dad (more on that in part 2), and Jeremy Adam Smith, the author of The Daddy Shift and founder of the blog “Daddy Dialectic”. Thanks to both of them (and to Jen Silverman for connecting us!) for opening up the world of “radical dad” resources, which I look forward to continuing to explore.

In fact, when Krista was pregnant I sought out literature on the early stages of parenting from a dad’s perspective.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that most of the books out there for expecting dad’s are slapstick how-to guides based on cliché male stereotypes – “how to change a diaper at the ball game” – and lamentations on the end of sex/freedom/the good life.   Needless to say that wasn’t what I was looking for.  So it wasn’t until after Lucas was born and we had read just about all the Preemie books you could imagine that I started again looking for dad resources.

Which brings me to my first disclaimer: raising a medically fragile child with a disability is very different than raising a typically developing child.  Early in Lucas’s life, during the post-Preemie/MTM diagnosis stage, I couldn’t really handle reading stuff about by parents of kids without disabilities.  Even if they shared our politics and philosophy about parenting, many of these reflections were based on life with a child who would never have any trouble doing the “basics” (eating, breathing, talking, walking, etc) – things that we most certainly can’t take for granted with Lucas – and it made me sad.  I’ve mostly gotten over that but the reason that My Baby Rides the Short Bus was so powerful for both Krista and I is that is written entirely by parents of kids with special needs.

The Short Bus anthology became our best support resource in the first year of Lucas’s life, but I couldn’t help but notice that only two of the nearly 40 writers featured in the book were fathers.  (Another anthology of special needs memoir writing called The Elephant in the Playroom is not as overtly political as Short Bus but around 25% of the essays are written by dads, including a beautiful story called “Dream House” about a boy who uses a ventilator).  As I joined special needs list-serves and parent-support forums I found that almost all of the people posting were women.  Either most dads were taking a back seat in dealing with their child’s disability or they just weren’t writing about it.  But certainly there must be more than a few dads out there writing about parenting from a non-macho perspective?

It was then that I ordered The Daddy Shift by Jeremy Adam Smith.  The book delves into the transformation that has occurred as more dads take on the role of primary caregiver and more moms take jobs that make them the primary breadwinner.  It’s got some great history that explains some of the sociological changes around gender roles in parenting over the course of the last century, and it also gets into specific stories of dad’s who have chosen to stay at home with their children.  The book tells the “positive (but complex) stories of men and their partners who are building a new alternative… in hope of making the alternative more visible, and viable, to more people.”  He continues:

“If this map has a destination it is a world in which gender roles are more flexible and the division of family labor is negotiated, not imposed.  It is also a world in which public policy supports the choices of twenty-first century families by providing paid leave to both parents as well as high quality day care, universal health care, and protection against discrimination, among other programs that have been shown to fuel father involvement in family health.”

In April of last year I went back to work after taking some time off from full-time employment shortly after Lucas’s birth.  At that moment it happened that I was more focused on getting a job and Krista was more excited to stay at home with Lucas.  It could have gone the other way, and as we consider future transitions (moving to the West coast, etc) it’s likely that I’ll soon be taking a shift as a stay-at-home dad as Krista spends more time in school or working.  So even as we superficially have maintained traditional gender roles through our current arrangement, these ideas really resonated.

In fact, Krista and I are committed to shared-parenting and to continuing to build on the alternative that Jeremy writes about.  I think a lot of young couples are in some way committed to such an ideal, but like I said at the beginning, it’s challenging to make it play out in practice.  The fact that very few dads participate in online parenting/special needs forums is perhaps a testament to how far we’ve got to go towards achieving that ideal.

I should also add that dads probably feel excluded sometimes from parenting spaces because such spaces are set up for moms; one assumption that pervades our society is that moms know best when it comes to their children’s needs. Though there’s good reason for this, I often get frustrated when certain doctors, nurses, administrative people, etc assume that Krista is the only the person to talk to when it comes to Lucas.  People will call and ask for her and when I say she’s not home, prefer to leave a message rather than talk to dad, who they assume doesn’t know much about what’s going on with Lucas.

At any rate, under our current arrangement I spend a lot of time with Lucas during the evenings and over weekends, when Krista often has classes and workshops; but we also try to divvy up domestic work, dealing with health issues, making appointments for Lucas, etc, which The Daddy Shift rightly explains is just as important to shared parenting as caregiving (note that I say “try” – Krista will have to weigh in on how successful we actually are.)

Here I should make another disclaimer: because I have inherited wealth our situation is distinct from the typical household referred to in the book, which depend on at least one “breadwinner” to support the family.  As occurred for the first 7 months of Lucas’s life, we have the luxury of both being able to not work a full-time paid job, at least for a period of time.  Given Lucas’s disability and the potential costs associated with it, the situation has pushed me to embrace aspects of that privilege, as we talked about on this blog back in 2009.   Of course, there are many working class families who also have children with disabilities, and I can only begin to imagine the additional challenges, concerns, stresses, and barriers that they face.   The fact that I have the time to write long reflections like this is perhaps one small example of how class plays out in parenting.

Speaking of writing, I recently learned that an essay I originally wrote for Lucas’s blog will be included in the upcoming Rad Dad Anthology (co-edited by Jeremy Adam Smith and Tomas Moniz, who I mentioned before.)  This makes me feel very proud; it’s a big deal to share our personal stories about parenting and the challenges of caring for a child with disabilities, and I’m really glad that Krista and I have decided to be so open about it (she’s done some amazing poetry and memoir writing in the last year that hopefully will soon be shared on this blog as well.)  Writing openly about parenting and disability isn’t for everyone, but we’ve been inspired by some of those who have chosen (and had the opportunity) to do so, and hopefully our writing can have a similar impact on others too.

Look out for part 2 of “Being a dad” in which I reflect more about parenting as a political act, challenging gender norms, non-traditional families… and more!