A stay-at-home dad’s humble apology

A STAY-at-home dad has penned a hilarious apology for the assumptions he used to hold about parents who “sit around all day and watch TV”.

CUE a round of applause, cue a collective utterance of “phew, about time”.

A humble dad in the United States who used to be the breadwinner but is now the stay-at-home parent after the family’s fortunes changed has written a blog so popular that it has hit the news website Huffington Post, apologising to all stay-at-home mums for the assumptions he used to hold about what they did all day. You know — the tired old idea that all stay-at-home parents do it sit in front of daytime TV munching on chips?

Well, in one generous stroke father Michael Cavender (who has now started a daddy-blog) has blown that myth to smithereens.

Cavender started his piece ‘My Apology to Stay-at-home Mums’, on behalf of anyone who has ever caught themselves thinking or saying “what does she do all day?”

“I owe an apology to women everywhere, specifically, stay-at-home mums. A lot of men who think that they are the “breadwinners” of a family have this notion that mothers who stay-at-home with the kids all day are, in a way, either not pulling their weight or just sitting around, doing nothing the entire day. I’m a bit guilty of this. In the past, I would often get agitated with my wife when things around the house didn’t get done by the time I got home from work. I was guilty of thinking more than once ‘It must be nice to sit around all day and watch TV.’

How wrong was I? Dead wrong.”

He confessed that when he became the stay-at-home dad to a school-aged son and daughters aged three and 18 months he thought “it would be a breeze” (cue LOLs from every stay-at-home mum reading this). He very quickly realised how intense, tiring, and demanding hands-on parenting of little people all day at home can be.

Cavender with his daughter.

In a detailed breakdown of how the average stay-at-home dad day panned out for him, Cavender illustrated just how big a job it is to do parenting well and consistently, and just what it takes.

And he demonstrates in detail how extremely hard it can be for the stay-at-home parent to do anything for themselves, even shower when they feel they need one, let alone do some work.

By 9.06am, after he has packed the school-aged child off to school with the homework done, the other two children aged three and under have successfully whined long enough to be given chicken nuggets and juice. “My 18 month old is now eating chicken nuggets and drinking juice while sitting on my head,” Cavender confesses.

Nappy changes and toddler-entertainment and baby nap-duty ensues before he finally gets a shower at 10.35am; by noon he’s been so busy “not one ounce of housework has been done”.

Between 12.30 and 2pm he cleans the kitchen and does some laundry, and then sets about picking up “some of the 19,000+ toys and blocks laying on the living room floor”. Sound familiar ladies?

At 2.30pm he gets the girls out of their PJs to walk to the bus-stop and collect their brother. For the next few hours he does another whole bunch of stuff every stay-at-home mother will recognise; re-clean the kitchen after the kids have re-trashed it, split up spats, “help with homework, clean the house, sweep the floors, cook dinner”.

Tellingly, by the time his wife gets home at 6pm “I’m too exhausted to go into much detail of how the day went, and sometimes I’m so frustrated I eat dinner on the front porch, alone.”

my 3 year old was playing with mommy's utensils again. I crushed this thing under my foot. at least it wasn't a lego. pic.twitter.com/IuzsdE1O00

— Daddy Fishkins (@daddyfishkins) March 27, 2014

“NOTE: This is on a GOOD day. Every day is different. I didn’t add in the sick days, the 1 hour melt downs, the various random messes, the errands, the castles I build out of blocks, the shampoo I have to clean off the floor, the dish-washing detergent that I have to clean out of the dog’s water dish, refolding the clean laundry that the kids have strung all over the house, the pee puddles that I have to clean up from when the baby rips off her diaper and pees on the kitchen floor, the baths I give midday because one of them thought it would be funny to splash around in a mud puddle, the re-hanging of curtains that the kids have ripped from the walls, putting drawers back into the dressers that they’ve pulled out and slid around the house like cars, and so forth and so on.”

And bless you Michael for concluding that working spouses usually have no idea of all the work that goes into running things while you’re in the office, with grown-ups, not having people dribble on your clothing or eat chicken nuggets on your head.

“I sincerely apologise to any woman I might have said anything negative about, or joked about in regards to being a stay-at-home mom in the past. It’s not an easy job. In fact, it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. Sure, it has it’s moments, but it is a very challenging, very stressful job that is all held together, for most people at least, by a good bottle of wine, and a very warm and very quiet bath.”

He’s done us all a service but pointing out what stay-at-home mothers always knew: it’s a lovely job but a big one, and it deserves respect.

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