A friend from university texted last week. He’s now a fellow househusband, and the message read:
I never thought I’d hear myself saying, “Ow! Be careful with your fairy wand, you just hit Daddy on the hand!”
It was funny because, well, it’s funny. But it’s also eloquent of changed expectations. (When we were at university, he was something of an alpha – the one who went on quickest and most successfully to the career he wanted. We did drama degrees, so getting anywhere at all was remarkable.)
This is the crux of the matter for the househusband. Life is not what you expected. Of course, it never is, for anybody, but boys still grow up with the idea that they’ll be in charge of something, that they’ll be the breadwinner – no matter how ludicrous that idea has become. We still think we should be making enough so that our partners don’t have to work and can do the childcare – because, apparently, it’s supposed to be that way round. Intellectually, the househusband knows this is silly, but letting go of the idea remains a challenge. Even someone like me feels this – someone with about as much interest in being the alpha in a group as I have in what’s happening in The Archers (seriously, what’s the fucking point of that programme?)
Well, so what, you may think. Why should househusbands feel sorry for themselves? Anyone who’s got to 40 or more and found themselves doing what they wanted or expected in life, raise your hands. Exactly. But it makes us uncomfortable because it’s pretty unlikely that our partners – feeling similar social expectations – want to be the main earner. (They don’t necessarily want to be at home full time, either. You don’t have to enjoy childcare to feel that you should be doing more of it.)
All this imagined pressure is very odd. I feel I have to get things ‘right’. It’s partly the old OCD (in that the washing up has to be stacked correctly – obviously), and partly parental guilt. I feel I have to get the children ‘right’. Which essentially means that I think I’ve failed when I shout at them. (Which means I think I fail several times a day.) But, really: what balls. Perhaps there are those serene enough to rise above the provocation that children so effortlessly provide, but I haven’t time in the day for the chanting and meditation necessary – and part of me still suspects that serene is just another synonym for dull. And, of course, in memory of dear old Tony Curtis, I should remember that nobody’s perfect.
And, while we’re doing quotations, “Take no thought for the morrow, sufficient unto each day is the evil thereof”. (Yes, I know what I said last week. I still know bits of the bible, though. Very useful for crosswords, sometimes, a religious upbringing.) What I mean is, I should take my own advice and relax. Stop worrying about what I want to achieve in life, and think more about today. Or as Samuel Beckett put it. “Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
I like your blog very much. However – I have to disagree with your comment about The Archers. Or rather – Yes – you are right to question what the point of The Archers is – but that is the point of The Archers – there is no point. You just let it wash over you and at the end of it, know that you have achieved precisely nothing. But that is rather lovely in a world where everything has to have a point. And be very pointed.
While driving back from a very relaxing week in Northumberland, I discovered to my horror that The Archers is also on at length on Sunday mornings and that it is still as banal/ fatuous/boring and yet addictive as it was 30 years ago! It was an effort of great will to flick the little switch to Radio 3 but only possible after I had waited to find out if the drunk brat got a punch on the nose. I do have to declare an interest in commenting accurately on said prog. It replaced “Dick Barton, Special Agent” when I was at Grammar School and should have been axed after the pilot episode.