Never gonna give your teen spirit up

Last Tuesday night I drove to Montreal (and back to Ottawa the same night) to celebrate a friend's birthday. I figured four hours driving + four hours hanging out with an old friend sipping Beck's sans alcool is pretty much an honest day's work, unless you're in France. And since I was in New France I guess you could say I even managed an hour of overtime. This is the kind of friend I like to think I am.

I have always been somewhat suspicious of what Dave Eddie refers to as the "indelible social stigma of the stay-at-home dad". Pop culture supports this notion (Mr. Mom anyone?) but still, I am yet to find much evidence of this. I think this idea brought me to thinking about a social experiment of sorts. I thought I would tell my fellow birthday partiers that I was a stay at home Dad (SAHD) but not let on that I was merely on parental leave from my job. I figured it might be interesting to gauge reaction to the SAHD from a group of fellow Millenials whom I was meeting for the first time and were all part of the childfree set. But I decided that keeping harmless information from good people in a social setting in the name of some pseudo test case was silly. And I don't think it really would of mattered much. What I found was earnest curiosity and genuine interest in my situation, and a distinct lack of anything resembling derisive indifference. Conversation was mostly about how society treats a stay at home dad, navigating the world of modern parenthood, etc. but most interesting was how seamlessly the subject of parenthood fit within, and across a variety of subjects with a group of people who - let's be honest - would decidedly not be talking about kids if pops from Ottawa wasn't in the room. Luckily for me though, I find most people are pretty happy to talk about the parallel universe that is parenthood.

Because I am relatively new to the dad thing, I try to be conscious of not only talking about child-related subjects. I like to think I have lots to say about many things, but in fairness, fatherhood is really the only thing that ever inspired me to start a blog. As you may or may not be aware, Corrine Maier's No Kids: 40 good reasons not to have children was published in English this week to a somewhat predictable response, generating plenty of discussion much like it did in France where it was first released in 2007 (CBC Radio's Q had an interesting discussion on this August 5). Among the 40 reasons: "you will lose your identity and become just mom or dad". Although the author admits the book is "50% provocation and 50% a serious book about legitimate questions people ask themselves", how much of your former identity you either lose, let go of, or gleefully abandon is ultimately up to you.

Because raising kids is so all-consuming, it shouldn't be all that surprising to find people struggling to maintain what you could call their childfree identity. Especially in a time where people are waiting longer and longer to have kids - I think we probably have stronger ideas about the type of person we are at 35 than we do at 25. Which might make it all that much harder to let go of. Still, I prefer to think children add to your identity. And at its heart I think Corrine Maier's book is simply arguing that we all could be a bit more frank about the challenges and frustrations of raising kids these days. Did you ever see the Oprah episode The Truth About Motherhood? No? Well neither did I. But I am told this episode made it pretty clear (and not always intentionally) that we all still have a ways to go; even if everything seems just peachy and progressive from where I sit.

Then again, at times I am reminded that I just may live in a bit of a bubble here in the Nation's capital. Living in a place where almost everyone is a civil servant, pretty much all the men in town are entitled to much of the same deserved benefits as women. For them, taking parental leave at 93% salary is pretty much a no-brainer. Within roughly the last five years more and more men have been taking leave, and as result everyone thinks its pretty cool. For instance, when any of my male colleagues learned I was taking parental leave, their responses varied from: "good times, summer vacation" to "wow, I sure wish I had that option when my kids were young". Okay, so its not exactly summer vacation but I do have the opportunity to take two naps a day, hang out in parks, take long walks etc.

But wait, wasn't this supposed to be about the struggle to maintain your identity once you become a parent? In which case, I would like to dedicate this mashup to all of you out there who are never gonna give your teen spirit up: