“You and Sam give each other a lot of space, don’t you?”
I remember a nursery mum making this comment last year, when I mentioned that I was leaving my husband and daughter at home to head off to Tuscany with a friend. It was one of those remarks that meant nothing but still jammed itself in my head, where it’s never quite come unstuck. Giving each other ‘a lot of space’ in a relationship is rarely viewed as a positive thing, and I’m certainly aware that the way in which Sam and I parent – i.e. both getting equal amounts of time off for trips and activities – is still kind of unusual, even in this day and age.
As I write this, my husband is away on a five-day skiing trip. In December, I spent 12 days in Thailand and Bali, and last June Sam was in the US and Mexico for two and a half weeks. In the interim we’ve both had various weekends away without each other, and even on weekends when we’re both at home, each of us will generally go off and do our own thing for at least a few hours while the other person holds the fort at home. To me, splitting up holidays makes sense, because it means the person going away might actually get time to sit by the pool and read a book (impossible when there’s a toddler pulling you off your sun lounger). Some tag-teaming of the parenting also gives us much more free time to nurture friendships, which can very easily wither away during this period of life.
In Bali I spent five days staying with one of my oldest, closest friends, who I rarely see since she moved to Sydney about seven years ago. The time we spent together was soul-nourishing stuff; much more so than any of the yoga classes or woo treatments I tried. I felt so reinvigorated after we’d hung out for a few days, just gossiping, laughing and being extremely silly. On the same trip I also got to unwind for the first time in exactly three years when I visited a retreat in Thailand, which I wrote about in a previous newsletter. The whole trip was so wildly rejuvenating that when I text my friend back home saying ‘I think every parent in the UK should be allowed to do this’, I genuinely meant it.
The thing is though, whenever I mention that either I or my husband are heading off for a family-free trip, people always say ‘I can’t believe you’re getting away with it!’ or ‘How have you signed off on that?!’ Of course I am very aware that being able to jet off on more than one holiday a year - in fact going on any trip away - is an enormous privilege, which is mainly available to me through press stays with my job. But for most of the people voicing their shock, I don’t think money is the issue. In fact all too often, I think it stems from the reality that parenting remains extremely unequal. The old-fashioned way of doing things (i.e. mum’s in charge) is still accepted to a far greater extent than I ever anticipated before having a child. I can count on one hand the number of couples I know who share parenting 50/50 between them, even if they both work full time. And don’t even get me started on the dads who need to go and spend all weekend playing golf or cycling round the Surrey Hills to “unwind” after a week in the office, leaving their wives to do all the childcare. Each to their own of course, but my eyes do roll out of my skull when I hear someone being described as a “hands-on dad” or when mothers have to rush off home to help fathers who don’t know how to look after the kids alone (except when it involves breastfeeding, because I’ll concede dads might struggle with that one).
Of course, I do sometimes worry that Sam and I give each other too much space. Should we be spending all our non-working hours in a little family cocoon? Is it bad for my daughter to spend so much time with either one parent or the other? It’s important that we don’t feel too much like shift workers in a child-rearing factory, so I’m conscious of balancing things out with plenty of fun, family time together (side note: sometimes the “fun” element is in air quotes because I’m actually freezing my bits off in a godforsaken playground, but you know what I mean).
A little secret I haven’t told my husband - because it might encourage him to take yet more holidays - is that even being the parent left behind can have its upsides. Of course solo parenting is knackering and stressful and absolutely impossible to balance with commuting into central London. Every time I do it, I take my imaginary hat off to single parents everywhere. Nevertheless, whenever I’m flying solo with my daughter I notice this feeling of “wow, I can’t believe I’m grown up enough to be allowed to look after an actual human child on my own, and I’m doing it” When I potty trained my daughter while Sam was away last summer, I thought I was the queen of the world. And when she shouts “Ni-night mummy, I wuv you” at me when I switch off her light at night, I do feel a sense of accomplishment at having kept us both fed, cleaned and entertained for the day. Even having to deal with a slightly horrendous toddler poo situation on a toilet-free train last weekend taught me I have reserves of courage I never knew existed – although I would like to put my plea out to the universe now, can we park that particular experience as a one-off please?
To add to this, any father (or indeed any parent) who describes themself as babysitting. You babysit someone else’s child. Not your own. That’s called parenting