Dad Club

I mentioned in a previous post the idea that pretty much everybody has unrealised ambitions. Never getting scouted for a professional football career, perhaps, despite two outstanding seasons in a  local amateur team; failing to write a prize-winning novel (or, more likely, to finish any novel at all); never getting a cabinet post (or even winning a seat on the local Council) despite years of scheming and collegial sabotage; or even just to ride through Paris in a sports car, and so on. You cain't always git what you want... I suppose an important part of any ambition is that you have to know what it is, even if that knowledge is relatively content-free. You can want to be a doctor or the owner of a bookshop without much idea of what either job entails. Ambitions can be mutually exclusive, too: did Tony Blair want to be the singer in a band or to become Prime Minister? You certainly can't be both. Yet, anyway.

If I think back, what I really wanted to be when I was a kid was the David Attenborough of the Zoo Quest TV series or, failing that, the Gerald Durrell of his various creature-catching books, which were my main reading-matter at age ten, after I had been given The Bafut Beagles as a school prize. [1] I suppose I assumed there was a job called "naturalist", but had no idea of the job description or the credentials required beyond a beard, a way with words, and suitable knees for shorts. But by the time I was of an age to flaunt those credentials my ambitions had changed. Mainly, I think, what I wanted was to write the sort of book that would cause women to pester me with their attentions. So, sadly, having a beard (tick!), a way with words (tick!), and suitable knees for shorts (tick!) were now irrelevant, and having failed to publish any sort of book didn't help much, either.

One ambition I certainly didn't have as a young man was to be a father. I sort of assumed I would probably become a father at some point – although TBH I was mainly haunted by the worry that I might become one by mistake – but it had never really figured high on my "bucket list", as people say. And yet, as it turned out, becoming a father at the relatively late age of 37 has probably been the single most fulfilling experience of my entire life. I have loved being a father, with all its ups and downs, far more than any other identity I  have worn over my seventy-two years; which is just as well as – unlike, say, "student", "librarian", "photographer", or "blogger" – this one is permanent and non-negotiable.

It is easy for other identities to get swallowed up by the all-consuming role of "parent". I'm sure this is the main reason some suffer from an "empty nest" crisis when their children leave home, especially in the case of those for whom becoming a parent had been high on, if not at the top of their list of ambitions, and who had not really developed any competing identities before starting a family when still quite young. Middle-age can be enough of a crisis in itself, without suddenly realising that, without any children around, you have no idea who you really are, or what you might have been. Which is one very good reason for becoming a parent later in life, I suppose. It worked for us, anyway, and I like to think it worked out well for our children, too.

Given justifiable claims that we still live in a "patriarchy", you'd think being a father would be a pretty well-defined job. "Here you are, son: these are the rules of Dad Club. Pay particular attention to the sections on Dad Jokes and Dad Dancing..." But "being a father" is actually a very fuzzily defined condition, on a spectrum ranging from irresponsible absentee through unapproachable family CEO to the annoying sort of kidult dad who wants to be his children's best friend. So you pretty much have to make a role up for yourself, and find a way of dealing with the helplessness, guilt, and irrelevance you feel as you watch the woman you love go through trial by childbirth. 

I found myself happiest somewhere towards the "hands-on" end of the spectrum. There is a practical man inside me, a maker and fixer, and having children to entertain was all the encouragement he needed to come out. When the kids were small, I really enjoyed the endless improvised making of props and playthings with card, scissors, and tape, whether it was an elaborate crawl-through tunnel of joined-up cardboard boxes or a carefully painted and fitted Power Rangers mask made from robust watercolour paper. It was a bit like being a primary school teacher with a class of just two. Or perhaps more like home-schooling, where the only lesson is always Art & Craft. But I'm afraid putting up the occasional shelf, fixing a dripping tap, or redecorating the bathroom just don't hit the same spot, and Mr. Inner-Fixit does have a tendency to put his feet up and put those jobs off.

So being a father is an occupation with an open and evolving job description. The world has changed a great deal in the last 70 years, and it's impossible to know what part any one of us has played in bringing about those changes. I certainly make no grand claims to agency, but I can claim to have participated in a quiet revolution that has been reconfiguring the acceptable spectrum of paternal masculinity, and I take some pride in having nudged that dial, even a little.

[Waits for the jeers and loud scoffing noises of the mothers out there to die down]

If you want evidence that things have changed, just look on any high street, and count the men pushing prams and pushchairs. Not so long ago in Britain, for a man to be seen out with a shopping bag, never mind pushing a pram – or, bloody hell! Carrying a baby in a sling! – would have been like being caught trying on a dress. [2] Even when I was a child the division of labour around "man's work" and "woman's work" was still strictly gendered: not even an unemployed man would have been expected to take on any of the burden of housework or childcare. No wonder so many of my friends' mothers seemed always to simmer with barely repressed frustration and anger. I remember hearing from a girlfriend how her mother had exploded over the weekend, and thrown the family Christmas tree through a window. I don't recall now whether the window was open or shut at the time.

That said, in common with quite a few post-war working-class families, my parents seemed to have developed their own home-grown progressive theory of parenting: there was little smacking, much kindness, and bemused indulgence of my somewhat Martian personality. Times were changing. Mum was out at work part-time as soon as I started school, and full-time before I was eight. The money was welcome, of course, but I think Dad recognised that she needed the independence and a life outside "family" rather more. At home he was not some remote, unapproachable patriarch hidden behind a newspaper, never to be bothered with silly kid's stuff, but was always available, whether to help me in my efforts at drawing and painting, to patiently explicate the lyrics of the songs we would hear on the radio, or to play ball games in the back garden. Although it is also true that he had never cooked a meal in his entire married life until Mum had started to disappear into dementia, when he did finally figure out how to use a microwave oven.

1932: my paternal grandfather almost pushing a pushchair

In the 1970s some of us felt a rising wave of change – a metaphorical wave powered by the very real energetic output of angry young women – and began to push (or to be pushed to push) at the boundaries of our inherited ideas of masculinity. I am talking about housework and childcare here, not trying on dresses, although it's true that in 1972 I did once encounter a home-town friend on a remote Greek beach wearing his partner's long red Laura Ashley number in order to alleviate all-over sunburn, and to my surprise I learned not long ago that at least one college-era friend has since changed from Matthew to Matilda.

To arrive at Oxford University in the early 1970s – at that time an epicentre (or, perhaps more accurately, a distribution centre) of radical new ideas – meant that, for me, a traditionally-raised boy from a very ordinary family, the "learning curve" was dauntingly steep, and beset with pitfalls, tripwires, and the occasional landmine. I was constantly putting my foot in it, on it, and through it, when it came to the manners and shibboleths of my chosen new tribe. But I'm a quick learner, and it's no exaggeration to say that I entered university as one person and left as another. This was not without cost: I fell out of phase with old friends, and for many years felt at odds with a world where so many old certainties had turned out to be lazy choices, and not the eternal truths I had been led to believe.

So becoming a "hands on" dad may have come more easily to me than to many. Changing nappies, getting kids ready for school, or waking in the small hours to calm the big anxieties of small children simply became part of my daily routine. More than that, though, these small but significant things, taken together, felt like a rite of passage into a fully adult life. Although, as I never really enjoyed the bedtime preparation rituals, for example, I agreed to do all the cooking instead; no small undertaking, as anyone who has tried to keep up with their children's ever-changing food fads will attest. This was a deal which suited us both – my partner has never enjoyed cooking as much as I do – and still stands to this day, despite the fact that our "children" are now in their 30s and living busy lives in London (I really ought to check the wording of that contract). Somewhat annoyingly, though, for their one-time bespoke short-order cook, they are now truly adventurous diners who will eat, or at least try anything, up to and including durian-flavoured ice cream.

Sometimes a pram just can't get you where you want to go

Inevitably, though, there are problems when fundamental changes happen in a society which has not planned for them. Double income households with children have become the norm, pretty much as a financial necessity, and are no longer confined to the poorest families who need the cash or the professional classes juggling two careers. But small children still need to be looked after, and long and frequent school holidays – not to mention parental absences due to work commitments – need to be accommodated. Contracting this work out to childcare professionals is not cheap, whether in the home or a commercially-run nursery – it can eat up an entire second salary – and comes at an emotional cost, too. Which is why so many boomer-generation grandparents have found themselves back on a childcare duty roster, rather than out in the world enjoying a carefree retirement. So much for having "eaten all the pies".

As it happened – and I appreciate how infuriatingly privileged this will seem to many – my job entitled our children to attend a subsidised and well-staffed university day nursery from a very early age: six months! Obviously, this was an enormous benefit. My partner could pursue her nascent academic career and I could spend every lunchtime with our kids until they started school, sharing a meal and then, as they grew, taking them for exploratory walks around the campus. I loved taking them through the landscaped grounds, usually ending up in the Valley Garden, back then an Edenic, post-human spot, with ruined greenhouses, overgrown taxonomically-arranged plant beds, and gigantic, fairy-tale Gunnera manicata plants along a stream that would flood after heavy rain, turning the valley bottom into a marsh. We would gather fat windfall apples from the abandoned orchard and check on the progress of the frogspawn in what had once been an ornamental pond. This, now I come to think of it, laid the groundwork for what were to become my lunchtime photographic expeditions, daily walks which continued right up until retirement, fifteen years later. See my book, The Garden.

Unless you are wealthy enough and ideologically inclined to abandon your children into the "care" of private boarding schools – unimaginable to me, I have to say – there does come a point when the relative priorities and practicalities of both parents' working lives and ambitions have to be assessed. So I persuaded my bosses that it would be the progressive thing to do to allow me – a key member of the technical and middle-management library staff, even if I say so myself – to go part-time at work. This was a very unusual request at the time, not least for a male member of staff, and they did take a lot of convincing. But, as I have often said, whereas my partner's star was clearly on the rise, mine had chosen to stay in bed, so it was not a difficult choice to make. Whatever ambitions I might once have had, career-wise, were spent. Besides, as the children grew older and more independent the more time I would have to pursue my own real interests and unsalaried ambitions at home.

In those days, the 1990s, I would collect them from school in the afternoon, and I was often the only man waiting in the school playground; being rather older than most of the mothers, some barely more than children themselves, I was presumed to be their grandfather. Sometimes I was also an awkward – and not entirely welcome – male presence at occasions like birthday parties. But I was not there to make any point, other than the fact that, unlike some families, our kids had two fully-functioning parents rather than the conventional one and a bit. I suspect – indeed I hope – this may have caused some righteous questioning in some of those other households. "OK, Darren, how about I wash the car this afternoon, and you take Jimmy to that little shit Luke's party? Hmm? I'm sure it'll be fun! Isn't that what you said?"

But kids quickly grow up and start building their own adult lives. It's the "journey" we're all on, after all, and for them, as it was for us in our own day, leaving home is something that can't happen too soon. [3] So the hands-on stage of being a parent doesn't really last very long. Tweenies and teens are far too busy inventing themselves and figuring out how, where, and with whom they might fit in out there in the wider world to require much attention from you. But I am so grateful that ours grew up before social media had parasitised young lives so completely.

Plus, let's be honest, to have finally become little more than a 24/7 cash machine, taxi service, and short-order cook does get old very quickly. But this awkward last phase is just nature's way of putting a cordon sanitaire between you and any unhealthy nostalgia for those adorable but long-gone little toddlers. You might shed a sentimental tear when you find those old photographs in a drawer, but then you recall the night your daughter called you [unpleasant names] for chucking some boy out of her bedroom at midnight, or came home incapably drunk at 3 a.m., or... Well, any parent will know the sort of thing I mean. These teen-parent traumas do make letting go rather easier.

But, if you're as fortunate as we have been, such memories are anaesthetised, if not entirely erased, by the knowledge of the delightful and responsible adults your children have since turned out to be. You might even allow yourself to reflect that things have turned out pretty well, family-wise, even though you say so yourself. It seems that, after all, the best ambitions are the ones you didn't even know you had, until you finally realise in retrospect that you had been working towards and have finally achieved something perfectly ordinary and yet totally remarkable. Wow, did we do that? Well done, us!

So wear that Dad Club tattoo with pride, but do go easy on the Dad Jokes, and please avoid any further dancing in public at all costs.

1. At that age I was immune to Durrell's condescending humour, verging on racism. I read his best known book, the autobiographical My Family and Other Animals many, many times, cover to cover, at bedtime for years. As a keen collector of moths, fossils and any natural historical debris that came to hand I was Gerald Durrell, in my dreams, at least. When they were of a suitable age, I gave copies to my children, fondly anticipating having to retrieve the book at night from across their sleeping faces, as my parents had. But: they found it unreadable, and I can understand why. The archness of Durrell's writing belongs to another era; what was once a model of imaginative writing handed out as school prizes has become irretrievably class-bound, its voice toe-curlingly patrician and smug. Just like the real Gerald Durrell, in fact.

2.  See this recent SMBC cartoon: Invisible...

3. Although I read that the average age to leave home is now 24 and even older in the case of young men. Something to do with all those pies we boomers are supposed have eaten...