An Ode to Shared Parental Leave

Like most teachers staring down the end of the summer holidays, I am about to go back to work. I’ll be jumping back into the classroom, however, after five months of shared parental leave and this blog post will serve as both ode and eulogy for my time with my two beautiful little humans. 

I should state that I am nervous about writing this. I am very conscious of that fact that these are the revelations of a man, experiencing the primary care of his children properly for the first time (holidays, schmolidays), and that they are neither new nor earth-shattering. But I want to be an advocate for shared parental leave and I feel that the best way I can do that is by sharing my experiences. 

I am also anxious of taking up unwarranted space. Even in the great abyss of the internet I am all too aware of the blinking lights of a New Mexican server flickering away as it digests my ramblings and stores them for all eternity alongside those of worthier peers. For that reason, I hope that capturing my feelings, which I have been journaling for these past five months, will be a personally cathartic exercise with perhaps some relevant insights for those embarking on similar adventures. It is not easy for me to shout my feelings into the void and certainly I am still finding my voice, nevertheless, I am going to give it a go…

I should start by saying that mine is a profession driven by guilt. As a teacher I am very aware of the fact that I fail people every day, and for that I feel an often overwhelming sense of guilt:

I haven’t given precise enough feedback to one student – I had a set of books to mark and they were last in the pile as I was rushing to finish before the tolling of the bell that signals the end of lunch.

I don’t know enough about that quiet student in my tutor group and I am too awkward/busy/afraid to ask why they prefer to sit on their own. 

I’ve just picked up the PSHE resources and haven’t really thought about the significance of having this conversation with young people. 

What is Orwellian about my profession is that we know these to be truths, yet the culture is such that we find it too shaming to admit these to each other and so we work away in isolation, failing a little more every day. The first two weeks of my parental leave were consumed by this guilt. By a feeling of being found out as an imposter at work. Would my department prefer the leadership of my (excellent, highly competent) colleague who took on my Head of Department role? Would my cover teacher discover holes in my professional practice?

At the same time, mine is a profession that is all-consuming (as many are). When I am in the thick of it, I find it hard to find the head space for anything else – family, friends, hobbies. 

What happened was that in the first week of my parental leave, I became very quickly aware of my how all-encompassing my work life had been and of my own inadequacies as a co-parent. I had always thought of (and publicly declared) myself to be a co-parent, but leaving early, returning late and getting full nights of sleep were stark reminders to the contrary. I think it’s very telling that in my journal for week one I’ve written that I’m ‘feeling lots of guilt and shame about not being more present when [partner] was on leave with the kids’, and I think that this was an important, but painful realisation for me. 

Again, as a teacher (and a historian and a human being) I’ve always held that you can only begin to comprehend someone else’s experience if you too have lived it. I soon discovered that, in parenting, I did not have a shared experience with my partner. My role had always been, essentially four-fold: 1. To swoop in at the end of the day and be fun; 2. To read stories at bed time; 3. To have fun at the weekends; 4. To do fun stuff over the holidays.

It turns out that actual parenting is really hard. Who knew? So many parental leave days, I would think to myself you’re doing well before quickly becoming overwhelmed by a baby who would not sleep for love nor money (nor pleading) or by a 4-year old with a randomised inability to cross a threshold without a screaming fit. I became aware of the fact that, in my previous role as a parent, I had been somewhat blind to these moments and, in that sense, I don’t think that I truly understood my children for the complex humans that they are. I saw them mostly as angels (which they certainly can be), but not for their whole wonderful, weird selves. The consequence was that our relationships could never be as full and truthful as when I learned to hold all aspects of their personality in mind. Over the past five months, I have experienced the spectrum of emotions that my children feel on a daily basis. When they’ve laughed, I’ve laughed with them. When they’ve been sad, I’ve tried to hold that distress. Our relationships are stronger than ever.

I also discovered that parenting is a lesson in over-crowded loneliness. I have been surrounded by lovely people (children, parents, library-staff), but suffocated by the lack of meaningful conversation, silly in-jokes, or obscure reference points with any of them. It’s a feeling that can draw you in on yourself and it requires some determination to get out again the next day and go through the same conversations about the number of teeth your child has with the next stranger. It’s the kind of lethargic feeling that binds you to the house and I often worry, when walking the streets, about all the lonely parents behind closed doors, struggling (like my 4 year old) with thresholds of their own.

As a man with a baby my experience has been somewhat different to that of my partner. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been told ‘daddy day-care today, is it?’ or ‘she’s let you have them, has she?’ or ‘how does she feel about you being off?’. What has effected me is that in this setting I have felt other. (Ha, and how many times have I discussed Simone de Beauvoir with female students as if I get it.) For a white, cis-male, hetero, middle-class person to experience some of the societal exclusion that pervades the lives of many is perhaps no bad thing. If shared parental leave is indeed a lesson in empathy, then one of my biggest revelations is how crippling that feeling of exclusion can be. As a teacher, this has led me to reflect on the feelings of those students who feel excluded from the school system. I think more and more about the damage that the re-emergence of draconian behaviour policies is doing to the emotional well-being of young people.

Nevertheless, my overwhelming feeling is one of shared insight. I understand what it is like to be at home all day with two children. I have watched the seconds tick down until my partner gets home to help. I have seen every hour the night has to offer, rocking my baby back to sleep. I have sat awkwardly on the floor of a library, singing nursery rhymes out of tune. Sharing our parenting has given us an insight into my each other’s life experience that has made us closer and stronger than ever before. I also know what it is like to work 60+ hours a week away from the home, to feel disenfranchised from my children. I know what it’s like to have a head so full of the needs of the couple of hundred children I teach each week, that I can’t respond to the those of the two in my home. I now realise that I have been working too much. As a man, I have been encouraged to focus on my career and expect my partner to take on the brunt of the parenting. I hoped that I had circumvented this insidious gender stereotype, but I had not. At the same time, teachers (as with many jobs) have a responsibility not to set unrealistic expectations of our profession. We should be proud when we see kindness, determination, resilience, independence, creativity, joy in our students. Not when we’ve worked a 50-hour week.

Looking back at these five months, I’ve seen my youngest: sit up for the first time; crawl; try all kinds of new foods; clap; laugh; cruise; walk; speak; sleep through the night(!!). I better understand my children. I better understand my partner. I have head space. I have reconnected with my best friend. I feel closer to my parents. I have written the opening jokes for my stand-up set (all terrible). I have achieved level 26 on PokemonGo. And I have begun a children’s book series about New Labour politicians (Who’da thunk it, David Blunkett? Who’da thought, Clare Short? Are you sure, Jack Straw? Do you care, Tony Blair? Why do you frown, Gordon Brown?)

I urge and implore all parents to make use of shared parental leave. This world doesn’t change until we all understand each other just a little bit more – this is one way in which we can do it.