When Men Do Nothing - Voice Male Magazine

Fathering
Staying Alive as a Stay-at-Home Father
By Gregory Collins
Writer-filmmaker Gregory Collins
and children.
There is a turd in the bathtub. Again.
I have studied my daughter’s digestive
patterns extensively, and I thought
I had this sorted out. My calculus is off. Or
maybe it is the plums.
Never mind the turd.
What the hell am I doing? I used to be
someone with a lot of potential. How did I—
dreamer of enormous dreams—reduce myself
to this, to being a stay-at-home father?
I despise it. And I despise that I despise
it. But I can’t help it. I hate the routine. I hate
the lack of stimuli. I hate the emasculation. I
hate the question, “What do you do?” I hate
the stretching gap in my résumé. And I really,
really hate fishing for turds.
But hatred is manageable, friendly even.
After all, who doesn’t hate their job? No—
the things that suffocate me are much more
menacing. Jealousy. Resentment. Anger.
And there she is: my wife. Or partner. Or
spouse. Or whatever. So accomplished. So
networked. So sought after. So in command
of her powers. So fucking beautiful. So ridiculously
interesting.
Where are my friends these days? My
conversation partners? My colleagues? My
collaborators? They have all gone away. My
brain, my entire life, is shrinking, and I have no
structural defense.
God I hate fishing turds out of the bathtub.
Used to be I drained the water first, then, with
rubber gloves and depending on consistency,
I’d either mash it down the drain or, if it was
sufficiently robust, I’d pick it up and drop it
into the toilet. I am less dedicated now. I am a
bare-hand man, and I am proud of it. If there
existed a tub-to-toilet turd tossing competition,
I’d be the best on the planet.
Whatever. Jealousy and resentment exist
in every relationship. So what if I am neither
defender nor provider? This is the 21st century:
age of the engaged father; the foodie father;
the emotionally attentive husband. This is the
age of modern man. Of course I am not above
childcare; what crushing privilege it is to have
such innocence in my charge. Of course I am
not threatened by my wife; she is the best friend
I have ever had.
Hatred, jealousy, resentment; these are
accidental symptoms. The real problems are
more comprehensive. They are: first, society’s
debilitating work fetish combined with its overpowering
expectation of domestic bliss; and,
second, the way we suffer the same struggles
in isolation.
Status does not discriminate. Whoever you
are, you must have a good job and a happy
home life. You must be a perfect professional,
a perfect partner, and a perfect parent. Never
mind that none of us have time or energy to
perfect even one of these roles. Anything less is
deficient. Anything less elicits condescension.
Or worse: pity.
And the consequences are pandemic: Prioritize
career over kids and you get an infertility
crisis; don’t prioritize your relationship and
you wind up with a divorce; don’t prioritize
your kids and you get…teenagers.
Now contextualize these pressures within
America’s aggressive nuclear focus and its
extreme individualism. We don’t live near
family. We all have our own houses, our own
cars, and our own way of doing things. We
prepare our food in isolation.
We live, there can be no other word, inefficiently.
What kind of culture tasks a single adult
with the rearing of a single child? What kind of
culture segregates generations so completely?
We are systematically stamping out the collective
memory that shaped our ideas about family
and culture. We are eliminating the tools while
idealizing the outcomes. We are a positively
masochistic bunch, I say.
Which is why this turd is pissing me off.
I put my daughter in the sink and fill it with
warm water. She looks like Marlon Brando in
a Jacuzzi. I return my attention to the bathtub.
Seems to be a hybrid, very noncommittal. I am
not confident this is a grab-and-drop situation.
Things are breaking apart. I see corn.
I formulate a solution: I will make a movie.
It is going to be about how we are set up for
failure. It is going to be about how this isn’t
anyone’s fault, really. There’s going to be
stuff about jealousy and resentment. There’s
going to be stuff about how we do not value
nontraditional expressions of masculinity, and
about how we put a premium on the cheapest
expressions of female sexuality. There is probably
going to be a scene where the woman is
nursing her baby while having sex with her
husband at the same time. Because that shit
really happens and it’s not dirty. It is going to
be a great big question mark about how this is
all supposed to work.
I grab what I can of the turd—three, two,
one—and I toss it in the toilet. Swish. I do a
Michael Jordan thing with my wrist. Damn I’m
good. I let the water swirl down the drain, and
I wash my hands.
I turn to my daughter. She is happily
mesmerized by another turd bobbing in the
sink.
Kenyan-born writer-filmmaker Gregory Collins
has worked in film and film production for more
than a decade. He recently wrote and directed
A Song Still Inside (asongstillinside.com), a
story about a stay-at-home father struggling
in the shadow of his wife’s success. The film is
expected to be completed later this year.
Summer 2012PREVIEW 11
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