Last night, after we put little Sasquatch down for sleep, my wife sighed and shook her head.
"I wonder if I'll be able to look at her when she's sleeping, and not think, 'I could have done better for her today.'"
I was flummoxed. A) Feeling like I didn't do enough is an alien concept to me; I work hard for and with my family. But B) the notion that my wife--who stays at home and raises our daughter--somehow feels like she failed as a mother is heart-breaking. After all, from the moment they both wake up, B is on top of everything: feeding her, cleaning up after her, teaching her, playing with her, taking her to fun places (or staying home and enjoying the peace and solitude of a quiet day), caring for her, loving her... Everything that a parent should be doing.
And, in short, the proof is in the pudding. At 22 months, Sasquatch's nailed her two-year-old developmental guidelines (nailed them a while ago, actually), has made significant progress on her three-year-old guidelines, and is an incredibly sweet, active, intelligent child. To think that somehow B has failed...? Yeah, no.
I looked at B, and said "This is hilarious. I look at her sleeping and think to myself, 'I'm a badass.'"
She sorta just looked at me. So I had to keep explaining.
"Like, for guys, socially, stereotypically, we've been conditioned to think that if we acknowledge the kid, that's saying a lot. And if we actually happen to play with her, that's going above and beyond. So we look at the kid at night, see she's still alive, and that makes us feel like, compared to all the other jerk dads out there, we've done pretty all right."
She was still sorta looking at me. Which is understandable. Like I said, I feel like I work my ass off for my family. I'm up every morning at about 5:00; when the weather permits, it's earlier than that so I can go for a run. Then, I empty the dishwasher, make my breakfast and lunch, iron my clothes, go get Sasquatch from the Pack 'n Play, change her diaper, put her in her crib, brush my teeth, take my shower, get dressed, make sure the baby monitor is next to B's head, get in traffic from anywhere to an hour to two hours, work at a mentally taxing job for eight or nine hours, get back in traffic for an hour-and-a-half, get in the door, hug and kiss my wife and kid, get changed, make dinner while B takes a bath, feed the family, clean up after dinner, do the dishes, play and read with Sasquatch for a little bit, give her a bath, and help put her down to sleep. Two hours later, we head to bed, and the cycle repeats. On weekends, I am point man, and when the little dynamo was just a wee little baby, I was on night bottle duty. It has been an exhausting 22-some-odd months.
But you know what? As hard as I work, and as involved as I am as a father, the amount of time I actually get to spend with my daughter during the work week is maybe, at the very most, three hours a day. The amount of input I have in our child's development is significantly less than what B is able to provide. So it is perhaps understandable that my wife might think about herself "I could do more."
I didn't really have an answer for B, though. I suspect that those feelings will dissipate over time, and I also suspect that it's something that a lot of mothers tend to feel. I'm not going to suggest that it's necessarily something mystical like the special bond that is created by being the host to an internal parasite for 10 months--though, no doubt, there's probably something to that--or that there is something about being biologically capable of providing the nourishment that sustains the little creature's life once she pops out--again, though, that probably has something to do with it. It could also just be that my wife wants to provide the best possible life to this little person who has changed our lives immeasurably for the better, and she worries that she isn't doing enough to make that happen.
My feelings about how she raises our kid? She's done pretty all right. And that's saying a lot.
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