It’s useful when either parent can handle things

Currently we have covid going around our house, and we’re taking turns parenting. Jeff got it first, so I took care of the kids while he isolated. I’d also had all three kids the weekend before, while Jeff was traveling.

Now I have covid, so he’s taking the kids and I’m in bed listening to podcasts. I’m still doing a few parenting tasks (pumping milk, calling the doctor’s office to ask about our child’s symptoms). But mostly I’m getting some much-needed rest and introvert time while he handles everything else.

It’s not unusual that a mother is solely responsible for childcare when a father is away or ill. What I think is less common is having a father who can fully take care of things too. I know very few families with young children where the mother could travel (or get sick) and the dad could take over.

Starting early

Starting at 3 weeks, I could go out for a couple of hours at a time while Jeff or his sisters cared for our baby.

We were lucky that Jeff’s employer gave a 12-week paternity leave when our kids were born. Jeff took two weeks at the beginning, then took the rest of it after I went back to work. So for two months, he was the main caregiver for each baby during the workday. (The arrangement the third time was somewhat different.)

This meant he learned to be fully capable for those 10 hour stretches. Our first baby flunked out of daycare at 8 months because she wouldn’t take a bottle from the provider, but she’d take it from Jeff. He could feed her, comfort her, clean her, and get her to sleep. Except for some patches where we hadn’t figured out bottle feeding details, we never had the feeling that I couldn’t go somewhere because he wouldn’t be capable to handle the baby’s needs.

Travel

The fact that we both travel for work means that we’ve both needed to be the sole parent on duty at times. I’ve done some work trips with the baby up until 1 year, then I start doing 2-5 day trips while Jeff has all the kids. When they’re older, Jeff has cared for everybody for up to 2 weeks at a time. If I’m breastfeeding during these trips, I pump and dump, and so far the babies/toddlers have been willing to resume afterwards (though some babies refuse to resume nursing after a gap).

Jeff does 1- to 10-day trips for work, often taking the older kids if it’s a music trip.

Sometimes during these stretches I feel like I have my act together, and sometimes I’m very ready for Jeff to come home asap. But overall we value getting to do the kinds of work we do, and travel is part of that.

Routines and standards

Some families have a morning or evening routine that requires both parents. Personally, I’m glad we have a one-parent method. Usually Jeff does mornings and I do bedtime, but either of us can do either. (Although my pancake game is not as strong as his, and he can’t nurse the baby.) By default I have the morning time free because he has things covered, and he has most of bedtime free because I have it covered. So we don’t need to coordinate it day-by-day unless something unusual is happening.

We’ve also chosen some modes of parenting that are less involved on our part; for example we had the kids sleep in their own cribs rather than sharing a bed with us after the first few months.

I don’t have high standards for things like meals and cleaning when I’m solo parenting. Everyone will get fed, but we’ll have a lot of cereal and pasta.

Some labor is evened out over time

When our first baby stopped breastfeeding at night, Jeff told me he would now be responsible for any care she needed at night. “You put in most of the nighttime work so far, so now it’s my turn to do more.” He still covers nights for all the kids.

(The exception is when a child throws up during the night, in which case one of us comforts and cleans up the child while the other changes the sheets.)

He’s also fully handled the initial stage of potty-training our kids. Once he did it while I was out of town.

Why is this so rare?

• Maternal gatekeeping: “I’ll just do it, you don’t know how to do it right.” This is self-reinforcing.

• Strategic incompetence: “I can’t seem to fasten the diaper properly, I guess you’re better at it.”
• Some kids are harder than others. We can get away with fewer parental hands on deck because our kids don’t have a lot of special needs or challenging behaviors. I do think being consistent has been helpful in making our kids easier to parent.
• Level of parental energy and interest. When Jeff was on a medication that affected his energy level at one point, he couldn’t muster the motivation to do some tasks he normally did. We also need different amounts of sleep, and I’d struggle more with an ongoing arrangement that cut into sleep a lot.
• Different work responsibilities: this would be different if one parent had long or inflexible work hours.

Lots of people do this by necessity

Single parents handle all the parenting all the time. Parents do it when their spouse is deployed, or with a job that takes them away a lot. Until recently a lot of fathers didn’t do much parenting work at all, so mothers handled nearly all of it.

I don’t fully grasp how this worked for my grandmother (widowed when she had two young kids) and other parents doing this in harder circumstances than mine, but I feel some comfort knowing millions of other parents have muddled through this somehow.

Related: Jeff on Equal parenting advice for dads