B.A.B.E. Week 22: Is co-parenting fact or fiction? (Part 1)

Chilling in the hotel room bed

Yesterday, Elle turned 5 months old.  It feels like a milestone and I imagine that every month in these first few years of life will feel like a milestone as these first years can be intense.   Right now, I think these first few years may be harder than what is to come later in your kid’s childhood because at this point, communication is not easy.  It is hard to decipher the cooing and other communicative uhs and ahs – maybe she is upset and not happy? 

Then, trying to understand the reason for the distressed cooing rather than happy cooing is even harder. And finally when Elle begins full-on wailing, the stakes are even higher to (literally) dance around trying to hit the right calming button from an ever changing toolbox - bouncing her in a particular way to release a gas bubble, or removing her from an overstimulating situation, etc.

Hitting the right calming button (and a mom's ability to often hit that calming button faster and easier) is just one of the things that has made me and Wilson wonder whether co-parenting can truly be done at the baby stage.   What do I mean by co-parenting?  Co-parenting means 50/50 split sharing in parenting.  We are both full-time  professionals so shouldn’t we both equally share parenting?  Makes sense logically, but for us it is still up for debate whether co-parenting right now is actually fact or fiction.   

Striving for truly equal co-parenting has not been easy – I am going to tackle this idea on two fronts – one, Hurricane Joaquin over the last week in the Bahamas and how that is illustrative of work demands and societal expectations; and two, sleep, sleep “training” and how that is illustrative of biological comparative advantage. 

The Hurricane

Hurricane Joaquin, as a category 4 hurricane, was the worst hurricane that The Bahamas has seen in a 100 years.  So its impacts were devastating on a lot of the other islands.   Fortunately for us and majority of the population in The Bahamas,  Joaquin veered north and out to sea before our island felt its impacts.   That said, Wilson is the hurricane point person so he worked non-stop starting Wednesday and through the weekend to manage the embassy’s preparation for the hurricane, reporting on the impacts of the storm as it occurred, and then coordinating relief organized for the islands that experienced the brunt of Joaquin.   Here's a link to some of the relief delivered on Sunday, which Wilson helped organize.  

I am really proud of Wilson’s efforts but I am about to complain a lot, so a friendly heads up.***  I have basically been single parenting since Wednesday night because of the Joaquin.  On top of that I needed to prepare us to get ready to get hit by the hurricane as well as manage my work load.  Luckily, my work was very understanding and I took Thursday and Friday off.   Still, the days were complicated by the fact that we stayed at a hotel for 3days/2 nights because Wilson was across the street at the embassy working.  

It was huge pain to prepare for the hurricane.  First, I packed up the first floor of our house in case we were flooded by the storm surge (a real risk because of the high tides from the super moon). Then, I had to pack all the baby stuff (and our stuff) to move to the hotel.  In addition, to that I packed supplies (like 5 gallons of water) in case we did get hit.  And then after the risk subsided for Nassau, I had to move us back into our house.

Wilson helped as much as he could but it was hard for him to really help out when he was working really hard -- including working 17 hours on Saturday.  This leads me to my point that I parented Elle throughout all of this, including from a hotel room with limited baby tools.  And don’t get me wrong, I am very grateful that we are safe, that I got to spend the time with Elle (seeing her laugh and play throughout the hotel and engaging happily with strangers).   

My complaining is really about how easy it is to get sucked into work responsibilities where you have no time for your family.  This can happen at so many jobs, and I know the other side from working as a corporate lawyer.  Just when that happened, we didn't have our little baby girl to care for and hence it was a whole different ball game. And I think that this work pressure is particularly applicable to men.  I feel like there is still this thought process of, well you don’t have to worry as much about your infant because your wife will take care of her.   Whereas, for women, there is an idea that mothers don’t work as hard or can’t contribute as much because they are the “primary” parent.  This issue is compounded by the fact that it is often seen as a “treat” when our husbands are bearing the load of 100% parenting for a little while.  

So even though Wilson’s work in this instance was extremely important and necessary,  I think that there are other times when our work loads  are unnecessarily heavy. So like Elle who taught herself how to blow spit bubbles from her mouth yesterday, I want to blow spit bubbles at our societal expectations that (1) cause us to work so hard; (2) expect that mothers will take up the slack; and (3) give men a medal when they do more than 50% of the parenting.    These societal expectations can make co-parenting closer to fiction than to fact.

*** I actually feel really bad about my complaining especially in light of the “agony and gratitude” blog post.  In the larger scheme of things, I can’t really justify the above “first-world problem” complaints but I am just trying to use it as an example of how true co-parenting is hard to achieve.