“Dad, how big is an Earth seed?”
This was the fifth question in my 5-year-old son’s line of questioning. At this point we had conceded to sitting down in the cereal aisle at Whole Foods to give him my full attention.
It started with, “Dad, I was wondering, is a virus bigger than a cell?” He’s asked a lot of questions about “the virus” this year as expected. He also loves to contextualize the size of things relative to one another…“Is the Golden Gate Bridge bigger than your work building? Is a killer whale bigger than an elephant?”
Cell talk led to, “So if people are made of cells then how do people get made?” One question after another took us through the origins of human life and, ultimately, the Earth. Now armed with his new understanding that everything starts small like a seed (he’s into gardening lately so this one landed), the next question in his line of logic was, of course, “Okay Dad, but how big is an Earth seed? It must be really big if it made the whole Earth.”
One of the joys of parenting is seeing my children’s brains forming right before my eyes and often requiring my assistance, a sobering responsibility. But what better way to participate in the child-like wonder that comes with not knowing answers, wanting to know all of them, and actually getting many of them, than being a parent?
The important context to this conversation is that it happened at 11am on a Tuesday while I was on paternity leave after the arrival of our third child. I have very high confidence that if this were a typical post-work grocery run – in a slight rush to get dinner and bed-time going – the answers to my son’s questions would have been shorter, worse, and perhaps even designed to dissuade follow-ups. Not rude or annoyed, but effectively saying in words and/or tone, “Great questions, but we’ve got to get going.”
There is at least one difference between the experiences of primary and secondary caregivers. On a typical work day, I have an hour or two with the kids before we move into dinner and bed time routines. This scene at the grocery store would have realistically lasted a minute or two at best. In this case, the time limit was the later of 1) my son’s questions being exhausted and 2) his hunger setting in. I wonder how many of the short and unmemorable discussions we’ve had could have turned into something more meaningful had I allowed it.
Try as I may to make the limited hours with my kids as quality as possible, kids don’t think about it in the same way. Never has my 5-year-old thought, “Dad’s home from work! Time to break out my favorite games, ask curious questions, save my whining for tomorrow, and fail at something so that he can use it as an opportunity to teach me to keep trying and never give up!” His curiosity and interest in something lasts for a while and then it’s gone. And it’s not on demand, as convenient as that might be for me and my employer.
The obvious caveat is that I can of course impact the quality of the time that I spend with my kids. Let's use a quality hours (QH) score and a quality to quantity (QTQ) ratio. Watching Garfield with my kids for 12hrs = 0 QH and a 0 QTQ ratio. Working on a fun, creative project with them for 30 minutes = 0.5 QH and a QTQ ratio of 1 (perfect). Where does Monopoly fall? Maybe I'm getting a cumulative 0.25 QH out of a three hour game, a dismal 0.08 QTQ ratio. So for a secondary caregiver like me looking to spend quality time with my kids, am I looking to maximize my QH score or my QTQ ratio?
The day after Whole Foods nothing particularly memorable happened. I probably could have logged in to work and pounded out some emails without missing too much quality time. Same with the next day. And the next. But the one after that was different. During craft time he asked, “Dad, how do you make glue?” My normal response would go something like, “Good question. I’m not sure, but whatever it is it’s a bunch of really sticky stuff mixed together.” Basically a hand wave and a “just keep gluing bro.” But not paternity leave dad! I said, “I don’t know. Want to learn?” So we spent all morning between YouTube and the kitchen making glue from scratch.
Later that day I was rowing on the porch and he joined me with his little sister to say hi. Working dad says, “Hey guys, I’m working out right now. Can you go get mom. Maybe we’ll play some games after I’m done. Love you!” Paternity dad says, “You wanna try?” And they both learned how to work the rowing machine and how fun the sliding seat is. In retrospect, I should have maximized my QTQ ratio by not working on the grocery day, working the next three days, then taken work off for glue and row day. The perfect ratio!
Of course we just don't know when these moments will happen. And my proclivity to maximize efficiency in other areas of life turns out to be a false positive for parenting – a perfect QTQ ratio with a low QH score sounds more like a spin class instructor, not a parent. My ultimate goal is to maximize quality hours, which I can of course increase in part by trying to improve my quality ratio. But as I've learned this month, there's only so much creating I can do. Most of the quality time creation comes when my kids are ready, not me. There doesn't seem to be a substitute for actually having the time to allow for those moments to happen naturally. Let me offer an alternative and more simplified formula: All time = Quality Time.
Now I’m not necessarily going to quit my job so that I don’t miss out on glue making time. And I’m not in a position to parent full-time. And I’m not even necessarily sure that I would want to. But what I can do is appreciate that there is a difference between being a primary caregiver, who can have those quality hours as a matter of practice if they choose, and the secondary, who maybe gets more than enough time with the kids to be an objectively good parent, but simply has a different kind of bond with their kids. Not necessarily worse, but not the same. And after getting a taste of the primary life, I’ve spent some time more deeply reflecting on what work/life balance means to me, and it’s not what it used to be.
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