I’ll go,” he’d say, throwing off the covers. And then there was the night I heard it. “Papa!” she screamed. What happened next is obvious. Papa leapt up, ran to her room, and Mama lay alone, listening through the monitor to sounds of cooing and comforting, not made by me. Not my sounds.
I smelled a skunk on our front lawn. I remembered as a child wanting to touch a de-scented skunk in a pet store, the thick stripe of white icing on its furred black back, the delectable snout. I wanted to touch my daughter, my baby girl; it would not be too much to say I ached for it, but someone had usurped me, at my insistence. I thought of all the other times, in all the other ways, she clamored for him first. It was he who had to put on her shoes, to brush her hair, to bathe her.
Papa papa papa
. But the night of the skunk was when I fully realized how the modern mother, freed from the burden of primary-care giving, gains a lot and loses a lot, in language and in love.
Most women, in becoming mothers, feel they finally come to understand their own mother with more depth and compassion. For me, in becoming a mother, I felt I finally came to understand my father and what must have been his inevitable feelings of “fringeness,” as the woman he married ran the domestic show. To be loved second best, how have men tolerated that all these years? How awful, how hurtful. It makes you want to withdraw. Now I see why fathers fade away. There is no way to compete with the fierce love a child has for its primary caretaker, and it’s so easy to feel rebuffed when the little one shakes off your hand and runs for her obvious favorite. So you retreat, to your study, your den, your desk, your TV, where there is always football. At one point, early in my daughter’s life, I actually started to watch football, half out of humor, half out of resignation. Men so padded they couldn’t feel a thing rammed helmeted heads and tossed a rawhide sphere through the air. “What are you
doing
?” Benjamin asked me, coming into the room one day as the Patriots and Jets had it out.
I looked up. He was carrying Clara in one arm, a stack of freshly washed bibs in the other. Crowds cheered, touchdown. The baby gave him a huge, open-mouthed kiss, and something lurched in me. “I hope you washed those bibs in Dreft,” I said, a detergent for very young skin.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t believe in Dreft. Tide’s just as good.”
“What do you mean you don’t
believe
in Dreft?” I said.
Whereupon followed a long, exhausting argument about the relative merits of Dreft over Tide. This is just one of the liabilities that happens when a husband becomes the mother, the mother the father. It’s sociologically complex, and the power plays perpetual. As “the primary caretaker,” Benjamin feels it’s within his purview to choose the detergent, the clothes, the types of diapers. While, on the one hand, I’ve asked him to do this, at least partially, on the other hand, I’m
a woman
; I gave birth to that baby, no one else, just me, and I secretly believe he should step aside and let me assert my innate rights over her life when I want. This leads to frequent bickering. In traditional arrangements, one parent inhabits the work sphere, one the domestic sphere, and the division of labor is not only clear but in keeping with gender. However, in our case, the gender thing is confused, and on top of that, or because of that, both of us dabble in both spheres, he a little more in one, I a little more in the other, but there is overlap. The politically correct thing to do is not always the easiest or most efficient or sanest. Having both parents mucking about in sex roles while also weighing in on detergent, binkies, and shoe size can make for pretty slow going. If I were a real football father, I’d just step out of the way, but I’m not. I’m also a mother. When Clara kisses him, calls for him over me, I feel in part resignation—
well, what
I smelled a skunk on our front lawn. I remembered as a child wanting to touch a de-scented skunk in a pet store, the thick stripe of white icing on its furred black back, the delectable snout. I wanted to touch my daughter, my baby girl; it would not be too much to say I ached for it, but someone had usurped me, at my insistence. I thought of all the other times, in all the other ways, she clamored for him first. It was he who had to put on her shoes, to brush her hair, to bathe her.
Papa papa papa
. But the night of the skunk was when I fully realized how the modern mother, freed from the burden of primary-care giving, gains a lot and loses a lot, in language and in love.
Most women, in becoming mothers, feel they finally come to understand their own mother with more depth and compassion. For me, in becoming a mother, I felt I finally came to understand my father and what must have been his inevitable feelings of “fringeness,” as the woman he married ran the domestic show. To be loved second best, how have men tolerated that all these years? How awful, how hurtful. It makes you want to withdraw. Now I see why fathers fade away. There is no way to compete with the fierce love a child has for its primary caretaker, and it’s so easy to feel rebuffed when the little one shakes off your hand and runs for her obvious favorite. So you retreat, to your study, your den, your desk, your TV, where there is always football. At one point, early in my daughter’s life, I actually started to watch football, half out of humor, half out of resignation. Men so padded they couldn’t feel a thing rammed helmeted heads and tossed a rawhide sphere through the air. “What are you
doing
?” Benjamin asked me, coming into the room one day as the Patriots and Jets had it out.
I looked up. He was carrying Clara in one arm, a stack of freshly washed bibs in the other. Crowds cheered, touchdown. The baby gave him a huge, open-mouthed kiss, and something lurched in me. “I hope you washed those bibs in Dreft,” I said, a detergent for very young skin.
“I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t believe in Dreft. Tide’s just as good.”
“What do you mean you don’t
believe
in Dreft?” I said.
Whereupon followed a long, exhausting argument about the relative merits of Dreft over Tide. This is just one of the liabilities that happens when a husband becomes the mother, the mother the father. It’s sociologically complex, and the power plays perpetual. As “the primary caretaker,” Benjamin feels it’s within his purview to choose the detergent, the clothes, the types of diapers. While, on the one hand, I’ve asked him to do this, at least partially, on the other hand, I’m
a woman
; I gave birth to that baby, no one else, just me, and I secretly believe he should step aside and let me assert my innate rights over her life when I want. This leads to frequent bickering. In traditional arrangements, one parent inhabits the work sphere, one the domestic sphere, and the division of labor is not only clear but in keeping with gender. However, in our case, the gender thing is confused, and on top of that, or because of that, both of us dabble in both spheres, he a little more in one, I a little more in the other, but there is overlap. The politically correct thing to do is not always the easiest or most efficient or sanest. Having both parents mucking about in sex roles while also weighing in on detergent, binkies, and shoe size can make for pretty slow going. If I were a real football father, I’d just step out of the way, but I’m not. I’m also a mother. When Clara kisses him, calls for him over me, I feel in part resignation—
well, what
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