I am not Mr. Mom

“Oh, you’re playing Mr. Mom this weekend, eh?”

“Get in touch with your motherly side.”

“Playing the mom role now that the wife is working?”

Raise your hand if you have ever heard any of these things from your friends and colleagues. I have both hands raised. I hear it quite often. When my wife was still going to school, I had sole child duty on Tuesday evenings and all day Wednesdays. It was a magical time of bonding with my children and also for learning my strengths and weaknesses as a dad. She is finished with school now and still a full-time SAHM right now, but I use those experiences and what I learned as guides to the kind of dad I am now.

During the time my wife was in school, I heard the three opening phrases more often than I would ever care to. I’m sure I’m not the only dad who has heard that before. I had even let the sting of those phrases lessen their effect on me until reading a recent comment on an article covering the study of testosterone levels in dads and single males. The commenter rants about how married men and dads are not losing testosterone, they are just wimping out. No doubt, probably a single dude who spends his free time bashing people online out of a lack of anything better to do.

At the end of the rant, the guys says “Stop worrying about your “man”hood and go be Mr. Mom, since that’s what you are supposed to be good at according to the study.” Right then and there, I signed into the commenting system, and started typing away. I decided to erase the comment as it would serve no purpose to just belittle someone. So I turned on the word processor and here I am.

Despite what culture says, despite what media says, despite the clowns who throw the term around loosely, the facts are simple. Dads are just that, dads. We cannot and will not ever be a mom. Simple anatomy will tell you this. The problem is that media, entertainment, and a lack of understanding have led it to be perfectly acceptable to look at involved dads as moms with a penis. Nothing more. When in fact, it is much more than that.

I cannot provide the same nurturing my wife does. She has different emotions, different tactics, and different responses to what is going on. I cannot feel the bond of having physically birthed children into the world. Something that I know for a fact is a type of bond I will never have. The fact that I have spent more time out of the home than my wife plays a role in our bonds as well. No matter how you look at it, the two roles, while providing the path to the same goal, are totally two different lives.

I do not try to be my wife. I do not try to be “mommy”. I am daddy. I’m daddyyo, dad, or simply, “hey!”. My children know the difference between my wife and I, but they also know that we are both here to care for them, to love them, and to do what we do to ensure that we are raising them the best we can. They test our limits differently, we play differently, and we talk differently. Why? Because I’m NOT Mr. Mom.