My wife has encouraged me from the very beginning to be as involved with our babies as she is—time off work, babywearing, co-sleeping and the like. But we've still had our rocky baby moments, and most of them have revolved around gatekeeping.
We try to keep our life simple in the city. We don't have a car. We only work part-time. And we stretch out that generous Swedish parental leave. Yet still, modern life is modern life. We have jobs, a toddler to get to daycare and a baby to feed. We have laundry to do, dinner to cook and a tiny apartment that never stays clean. We do fine with this, but my wife and I have different parenting styles. The kids have their needs. The volume gets a little high. We feel too busy, too connected, too distracted.
I would never have come to this place without you, without your belief in co-parenting, without you teaching me how to do things like pack the snack bag, and without your willingness to take a step back.
Do I insist that today is the day I mow the entire lawn? That seems weird. Do I play golf? Well, I don’t play right now because I am consumed with the kids. Do I just lay in the hammock? My wife gives me that time already. When you co-parent like we do, it’s not such a burden to share sleep-ins and naps and hammock time.
Three years ago, my wife and I fled what we had hoped would be the idealistic suburban life. The idyll, however, was far from what we had hoped for. Now, I'm on nine months of paid parental leave with our 15-month-old son. I wouldn't call our arrangement a role reversal, exactly. Rather, we're co-parenting.
