Life in my household can be split
into two distinct eras –BC (“Before child”) and well you know, the obvious, AD
(After Daughter). While my daughter has been the motivation behind many of my
posts, this Father’s Day weekend, I decided to focus on the often-neglected 3rd
member of my home – the husband, but again the trigger for the post comes from
a card he received for Father’s Day from our little one.
The qualities I saw in him during
the BC years should have given me some clue as to what the AD years should look
like, but I was still not prepared for what the AD years would bring. 7 years
into AD it is so obvious now and the small note from my daughter triggered enough in me to take the time to write about what I felt.
The influence and impact of a
Father on a Daughter can never be understated. I am a prime example of one positively
influenced heavily by everything my dad did and did not do or say, that it has
lasted well beyond my dad’s passing. So
every time I see my husband and daughter bonding, I get this warm glow inside me
as I feel she is going to have what I used to have. If my husband ever had any doubt of his
abilities as a dad, she put it to rest this weekend with a simple phrase. “I
love my dad because” was the prompt on her cliched card from school, she had
completed the sentence with “he loves to play silly games with me and cooks me any food that I ask him to”.
The message was accompanied by a picture of dad and daughter both dressed in
pink with clouds above them raining hearts!
Over the years we’ve tried to
raise her with the mantra that although boys and girls are different in some
ways, there is no such thing as boys’ stuff and girls’ stuff – whether it is in
books, games, toys or work. Every book, game we choose is well thought out and
carefully considered, but I’ve still felt that it is just too darn difficult
unless we decide to raise her in an androgynous bubble. Girls love princesses,
they wear pink, they love to bake and do art – these are refrains from the
environment that creep up on you all the time. The number of mother’s day cards
with the statement my mom is the best cook in the whole world, I am sure far
outnumbers the cards that state my mom is the best engineer in the world, and
yes we have millenia of gender roles to thank for that.
Now do you see where I am going
with her card for her dad? We were just plain thrilled that dad’s card had
something about his willingness to cook for her anything she likes. Despite ourselves we do have certain set
roles w.r.t her and if you ask her what each does for her, I bet she will say
something like this – Mom packs lunch and has dinner with her, Dad makes
breakfast and drops in school; Mom plays Circuits and builds legos, Dad does Carrom
and chess; Mom reads and Dad (in her own words) “doesn’t read at all”; Dad is
an engineer, Mom works with a bunch of them; Mom picks out outfits despite
hating shopping, but Dad makes me look good in them including doing my hair;
Dad chooses the car, Mom argues with the car dealer; Mom plans, Dad executes… and the list goes on – but we’ve realized that we’ve
fallen into these roles based on 2 important things 1) Nature and schedule of
our work 2) Individual talents/skill set which strangely have nothing to do
with our gender.
She probably didn’t think twice
when she wrote the card, but that speaks volumes by itself, and set me off to
write this about him. I don’t want to make it sound that everything is rosy in
our home and we just seamlessly adjust and fill gaps for each other. Just like
any other household we have our good days and our bad ones, but I can certainly
say we seriously try to make sure the good days far outnumber the bad ones.
This Father’s Day, while I reflected on my own dad and all the things he has done for me, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that my daughter is luckier than I in having for a dad a man, for whom being a man is not mainly about making the big bucks, tinkering with DIY, driving a fast(er) car, and following sports, but more about being around for us and doing whatever it takes. I know he is not alone, so here's a shout out to all the dads who choose to cross the role barriers
This Father’s Day, while I reflected on my own dad and all the things he has done for me, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that my daughter is luckier than I in having for a dad a man, for whom being a man is not mainly about making the big bucks, tinkering with DIY, driving a fast(er) car, and following sports, but more about being around for us and doing whatever it takes. I know he is not alone, so here's a shout out to all the dads who choose to cross the role barriers
