My Summer As a Stay-at-Home Dad
by Dean Hughes

Some might wonder whether a man really knows much about motherhood. But I can talk with a certain degree of authority. After all, I was once a mother myself.

Okay, so I didn’t actually give birth to a baby, but I was a stay-at-home “person” for an entire summer when my kids were five, three and three-months old, and at the same time I tended two other children, aged nine and seven. I’ve been there!

This all happened in 1973, just after I had finished my first year of teaching. I was an assistant professor of English, and I was only paid for the nine months I taught. When Kathy was offered a fellowship to work on her master’s degree—and even granted a stipend for living costs—the opportunity was just too good to pass up. I would be able to grow closer to my children and truly bond with them. I would also (this was my thought, not Kathy’s, as I recall) be able to have a laid-back summer with time to read and prepare for my fall classes.

A Fool’s Paradise

If this sounds a little too much like the plot to The Perfect Storm, you haven’t heard anything yet. We realized, for one thing, that the small stipend Kathy would receive would never be enough to keep us going for the entire summer. But Kathy was able to find an evening job at the local TG & Y variety store. Then serendipity struck again. A woman who taught in the English department, a friend of mine, was teaching that summer but didn’t want to leave her nine and seven-year-old daughters alone. I offered to look after them, and she said she would pay me!

Hey, I’m no fool. I saw the opportunity. Young girls love babies. I would “tend” the two girls, but in truth, they would play with my kids, feed my baby, change his diapers, and generally add to the level of fun around the house. Meanwhile, I would be able to get all the more study and research done. It’s amazing how things fall together sometimes. I was a happy man.

Okay. I know what you’re thinking. I was naïve. I was living in a fool’s paradise. But actually, things worked out exactly as I planned for the better part of the first morning. I don’t think the initial battle was engaged until the afternoon. But after that, it was open war!

No one got seriously hurt. Mostly I heard threats, warnings, screams of rage, and doors slamming.

Well, okay, here’s the point. I had my eyes opened that summer. Wide opened. I can now honestly say that I’ve been there, done that, and have the scars to prove it. And I’ll tell you this: men just don’t understand what we mothers go through.

My Never-ending Day

I didn’t read that summer. Not anything. I began to suffer symptoms of depression. I got to the point that I didn’t care much what I looked like. Who would see me anyway? And I snacked way too much. It was almost the only thing I had to look forward to—a little chocolate to comfort me when the stress got too great. When I think of that summer, I still get a mental picture of confusion and chaos. I hear noise, see toys scattered everywhere, smell sour milk, and feel Robert, our baby boy, squirm in my grasp as I try to pin him into his diapers.

Yes, that’s right. You young mothers don’t know what we used to go through. I was using cloth diapers that summer, the kind you fold yourself.

Changing a diaper back in those days was only the beginning. Once the new diaper was on, and the rubber pants were pulled over the diaper, the real work began. First, I had to dip the diaper in our toilet and wring it out. Then I would hold my breath, open the diaper pail and dump the thing in. Sometimes, just as I was wrestling with Robert and the pins, I would hear screams from the living room, or worse, I would hear nothing at all. A mom soon learns that silence is the most dangerous sound in a house.

And then there were the meals to prepare. Amazingly, time had a way of moving in opposite directions. On the one hand, the days seemed tediously long; on the other, meal times came every few minutes. The kids would show no interest at all in eating while at the table, but a few minutes after a meal they were not only firsty but hungwy.

Diapers and dishes (sorry to put those words together) were only two of the jobs I faced with shocking frequency. More than anything, I suffered from the never-ending job of controlling clutter.

Kids don’t know how to get a toy out. They know how to dump toy boxes upside down and then sort through the mess for something to play with (often finding nothing, and complaining about it). Here was my solution. I would let the kids dump everything out, leave it all out, and then, when they finally went to bed at night, even though I was exhausted, I would pick up everything, maybe run a vacuum over the floor, and Kathy would be pleased to see a clean house when she got home on those late evenings. But there was problem with that, too. Kathy would say, “I hope you’re teaching the kids to take care of their toys. If you pick up everything up for them, they won’t learn a thing.” Of course, I didn’t dare say, “Oh yeah? Do you have any idea what I’ve been through here today?”

Remembering the Goal

I had been out there going to college and working part-time all my life. That kind of life is a vacation compared to being home with a bunch of kids—and of all people, Kathy ought to know it. I wanted to tell her some of my trials, seek a little advice, maybe even sob on her shoulder for a minute or two. But she was too tired.

I hate to say this, but people who spend their lives away from home all day really don’t understand what it’s like to be a mother. All I wanted was to say something in a sentence with a few two-syllable words. The truth is, though, I was losing the power of speech. When you’ve said, “I know, honey, just a minute” twelve times in a row, only to hear, “No, Daddy. Wight now!” in response, you start saying strange things: “Daddy can’t come wight now. Baby Wob will cwy. He needs his baba.”

In all seriousness, I got depressed that summer. I’ve exaggerated some of these things, for fun, but I did struggle with myself. I didn’t go into a clinical depression; I knew that summer would end, eventually. But I was often very disappointed with myself for my impatience and crankiness, and for my failure to teach the kids what I wanted them to learn.

But the worst thing—the thing that kept me unhappy—was getting up in the morning and thinking, “This day will be just like yesterday and tomorrow.” My only goal each day was to get back to where I started in the morning. The house was always messier and dirtier than I wanted, and so were the kids.

I had spent my whole life feeling that a good day was one in which I either got a lot done or that I indulged myself a little by reading or traveling or having a rich and interesting conversation. I felt constantly as though I needed to get my work done, but there was never an end to keeping up with the immediate, constant needs of the children. And yet, I knew how important it was to treat them fairly and patiently, and how crucial my actions would be in their lives. I felt guilty virtually every day. It always seemed that I was letting them—and their “permanent mother”—down.

What did I learn by trying out motherhood? Not enough to start giving advice to women who don’t have short-term contracts, as I did. But I honestly believe that no other job on this planet is quite so big or important.

Maybe the hardest thing about being a mother is keeping a clear picture, amid confusion, of what the goal is. We dream our dreams and set our goals. But just at the age when we come into our own, we often become parents. And suddenly, life is not so much about “us” as we always thought it was going to be. Our parents had to do the same thing. Not long after they left their parents’ homes, they had to give up some of that self they were searching for—and put their children first. It happens over and over, and we all owe to our children what we got from our parents.

So, do all mothers go to heaven? I guess it depends on what we mean by heaven. I can’t imagine any woman getting through motherhood and not becoming a better person. Everything about being a mother demands the best of you.

That’s what God does, too. He makes the best of his daughters by trusting them with his children. Her job doesn’t guarantee that she’ll get home to him, but it’s certainly some of the best training a mortal can receive.

LDS Living Magazine