Daddy types

I want to be a man – but not any man, a stay-at-home dad.

You see them now and again in my liberal neighborhood, and they’re always so relaxed, rolling with their kids in the dirt at the playground; calmly reading a newspaper at the coffeehouse while the kid drives a hotwheel along the bench; looking relaxed and unfussed and handsome in their hipster trilbies or blue Oaklandish tees with an adorable toddler on their shoulders.

They seem so calm – maybe they didn’t remember extra clothes, a water bottle, the favorite stuffed bunny, but they don’t seem to care. They’re just taking the world as it goes.

It’s just that man thing, isn’t it? Less stuff to worry about so less worry. The optimism of the young, white, well-off bay area guy is justified, because things are pretty great for him. I just want to relax sometimes, not worry about all that household executive crap and just have some of the confidence of these men.

And then I pass a guy struggling to put his screaming baby in a backpack, looking harried and close to panic, obviously wishing with all his might that the mother would come and work that magic…

Then I pity them.

(T-shirt)

I don't like the way you parent

The other day I saw some bad parenting. Nothing horrible – no slap or vicious words. It’s just I was talking to this woman and every word that came out of her mouth was the antithesis of the kind of parenting I value.

This is America – so it’s none of my business what you do and how you live your life, unless you back your car into my house or something. Right?

Only when it’s about babies, it’s hard for me not to – at least – trash talk her in my mind. Some kin of maternal protectiveness, I suppose, makes it difficult not to hate someone that is damaging a child in some way, whether it’s their health or creative development or mental stability or whatever.

And I think that the fact I don’t engage people like that mother (constructively) probably means I don’t have the guts.