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From Catherine Captain, TODAYshow.com general manager
Roy cooks, cleans, packs nutritious lunches, irons like a pro, can remove any carpet stain, and leaves the neatest vacuum tracks I’ve ever seen (something about backing out of the room as you go?). He’s also a full-time, stay-at-home dad. I am the sole breadwinner in our family.
One day last week, after we got our two daughters off to first and third grade, I dashed about the house getting ready to head to the airport for a business trip. As I rushed out the door, I asked Roy what he had planned for the day. His response? Gym, shopping, lunch with a friend. I paused. Talk about complete traditional role reversal. And, by the way, I wanted that. Or did I?
After a 30-year career, Roy stepped off the path five years ago. It was a gradual transition to stay-at-home fatherhood. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I always joked that Roy should stay home because he was so much more domestic. (Case in point -- the now famous story about our early dating days when he asked me to make him a cup of coffee. I eagerly obliged and promptly added boiling water to a mug of loose tea leaves instead of coffee grounds. It was the last time he asked.) Our first daughter, Anna, spent her infancy in daycare. When our second daughter, Poppy, was born, we had the same intentions. As my career responsibilities increased and Roy’s hit a plateau, we entered an uncomfortable limbo culminating with a twice weekly in-home nanny. When we moved from Washington, D.C. to Seattle so I could take a new job, it was official. We decided Roy would stay home full-time with the girls. This was not a part of Roy's life plan, but financially it was the right decision for us. He finally claimed his stay-at-home parenthood status.
And at the same time I claimed my status as the out-of-home parent. I travel a lot. My heart aches every time I leave my babies. Every night before an early-morning departure, I put on my thickest, darkest, waxiest lipstick, sneak into their rooms, and kiss each of their tummies. It stays on for a few days (even after showers!) and is a visual reminder that I love them so. (Learned that tip from another mom…this is why we need each other!) How many times have I cried in the back of a sleek, black town car as I leave for yet another business trip? Once my daughters started talking, it became even harder because they could outright express their dissatisfaction with my departures. I was fully aware that I was conditioning my children to exist happily without me.
I have come to accept my life as the phantom parent. I've become used to the moms at school looking quizzically at me because I am an unfamiliar face. When I explain which children are mine, I can see the light bulb go off-- “You’re Roy’s wife!” -- with the expression of someone who has just sighted a mythical creature.
We are certainly a nontraditional family. When we first moved to the Seattle area we bought a house smack-dab in the middle of Microsoft country. (If I had a dollar for every time I met someone new – male or female – who said to me matter-of-factly, “Oh, so your husband works for Microsoft…”) A few years ago at a gathering of girlfriends, one woman was talking about how the kids next door had (gasp!) never baked cookies before. I casually mentioned that I had never baked cookies with my daughters. The room fell silent.
My husband is, indeed, co-president of the PTA this year. He is at the school every day directing traffic, helping with art projects, cleaning out storerooms. There is no doubt that Anna and Poppy have a special relationship with their father. In addition to giving them a rock-solid foundation in their lives, I believe he is teaching them how to be loved and respected by men in the future. My beloved 85-year-old grandmother, who has dedicated her life to creating a home for her children and her husband, often looks wistfully at Roy as he moves about the house and says, “I wish I had a Roy.” We feel lucky to have ours.
I have since baked cookies with my girls. I asked them today if they wished I stayed home and Daddy worked. They said no. I asked if it was because I don’t cook very well and Poppy said, “It’s OK, Mommy, you’re pretty good at mac-and-cheese and stuff.” Anna replied, “But Mommy, you’re such a good worker.” I do like to think that I am a role model for my daughters, that the possibilities they will contemplate for their own lives are perhaps broadened because I am their mom, a mom with a career.
We know how fortunate we are to be able to have one parent stay home. I sometimes wish I had the option to be the at-home parent. But would I take it? I don’t think so. I love my job, I love my family and I feel like I have been given the rare and amazing opportunity to have it all. Here’s what I know to be true: As a family, we are where we should be. It works for us.
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