Thrown on the Daddy Track

I read a very interesting article in the Telegraph last week about men choosing a path that made them become more involved in parenting and ultimately choosing this path over a career.

This was following the announcement that a leading Labour MP stepped down from possibly becoming the next Leader of the party because he ultimately wanted to put his family first.

The article addresses this as a rarity to have men “take a step down from the career ladder” and put their families first.

Firstly, I would just say that I completely admire him for doing this and doing it so publically. It really made a nice change to see and hear someone showing their family values above all else especially in the position he was in.

As a teacher I knew of the “Mummy Track” as I saw a bit of it during my time; a female teacher was expecting, then has the baby and shortly after decides to stay at home, step back from her career and care for the children.

The Daddy track therefore is no different.

This article got me thinking though about how I ended up on the Daddy track:

I was working full time as a Primary School teacher I left my permanent role for many different reasons, some of which were health related. With my MD starting to show aspects of degeneration the physical aspects of the role became significantly harder. Yet this also happened around the time of when William was born.

Three things happened:

1. I realised that I was spending far too much time at work, calculating almost 11 hours a day and still bringing work home.

2. That I was getting updates on what William was doing and it pained me to be missing out on so much of his early development.

3. I could physically feel the strain of working in the job I was in.

The interesting thing here is that although I had the above things happen I didn’t make the decision to be on the Daddy track. When the news of my MD cropped up it did seem that it was the perfect time to take a slight career change.

So although at this point my career had changed it still continued, just in a different way, rather than me taking a step down. In reality though nothing had changed.

So the more I have thought about it the more the realisation hit me: I didn’t choose the Daddy track. Life threw me on it.

Between Separation and Divorce, Health problems, both physical and mental, and changes in housing and work I seemed to have arrived at being here.

This is now something that I am incredibly happy about; I truly enjoy every aspect of being a Stay at Home Parent and part of the estimated 234,000 Men who do not work because they are at home with their children.

I suppose that I am lucky because I haven’t gone through any realisation where I had to sit and decide who had the higher income or if I needed to take a step back from a certain role because it was stopping me from being a husband or father. I saw this when reading John's from Dad Blog UK , who recently wrote a post on this topic, when he said: 

"With the knowledge I had from working in this field, I made an informed decision to become a stay at home dad. I knew this would all apply to me. I also guessed I would be killing off my old career."

For me though life forced my hand and I am actually pleased that it did because of who I am today.

This does mean though that I have a greater respect for those families that have to sit down and work out the harder aspects of having a father on the Daddy track. I imagine that it is something that can be a difficult decision to make.

I have often wondered if having an active choice in being a stay at home parent would make a difference to how I parent, especially being a Dad that’s doing it, until recently reading Harry Potter and I came across this:

“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it.  Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.” J.K. Rowling

I think the fact that any family might have to choose the decision to have one member stay at home is a big thing. I also think the fact that Dads are seemingly growing into that role is also great. Either way it can be tough but we all seem to be doing a great job and I admire anyone who makes the decision to climb on board the Track.

All awareness of this is good in my eyes but I wanted to highlight something that the article missed and that is the fact that some of us don’t actually make the decision to choose the Daddy track but even then we are in the same position.