The MomSpeak

I’m not a mom, but I play one on the weekdays.  I’m one of those elusive creatures known as a stay-at-home dad: I’m one of those guys who burned out at his job right after his kids were born and his wife’s career started to get really exciting; one of those guys who missed his kids so much while he was working that he decided to quit; one of those guys who cleans the house every day, makes dinner and makes the kids’ lunches and tells them stories and plays with them all day long. I give my wife footrubs when she gets home from the office. If I was better looking, I could probably videotape my life and sell it as pornography to busy career-oriented mothers.

But no matter how much time I spend painting my daughter’s toenails or changing diapers, I am still very much a dad. And with being a dad comes that sort of unruly competitiveness endemic to my gender: If I’m going to be a stay-at-home dad, I’m going to be the very best stay-at-home dad possible, I say to myself. And that means keeping the house perfectly clean. Somehow my warped brain has turned vacuuming into a macho sport.

I can handle the messes made by my 4-year-old daughter and my extremely curious 1-year-old son. But I fear that I am starting to lose control of the household because my wife won’t stop buying things. Being the breadwinner gives her this sense of entitlement to buy whatever she wants. Every day, the UPS guy shows up with more packages (usually shoe boxes). “Are you working or shopping all day?” I yell over the phone. Fighting ever-growing piles of toys and high heels and knee-length boots has turned me into a minimalist. The less clutter to begin with, the less mess the kids can make. And I can’t stand the clutter that comes from buying all kinds of unnecessary toys and baby products. My wife, on the other hand, never saw a baby product that she didn’t immediately need. Out of this conflict I devised the Sacajawea Theory.

Every time she tells me about some new product that just might make our parenting experience .000027% easier, I cough and grumble “Sacajawea.” You see, it’s often forgotten that the Shoshone maiden who led Lewis and Clark to the Pacific started on that journey just a few weeks after giving birth. Believe it or not, that baby, Jean-Baptiste, made it all the way to Oregon’s coast and back without a single ear thermometer or Breathe Easy Sleep Positioner! Sacajawea brought her baby on a journey of many thousands of miles without a “travel system.” She just stuck him in a papoose and led a band of lusty legionnaires through the wilderness. And don’t even get me started about childproofing. How do you childproof the entire Louisiana Purchase?

The Sacajawea Theory, in short, is that all newborn babies really need is boobs. Everything else is just marketing.

Don’t get me wrong: some of all that extra stuff really does make parenting easier. Like diapers. But I rely on the Sacajawea Theory as a necessary opposition to the spendthrift inclinations of my wife. I push for minimalism, she advocates the latest gadgets. Hopefully we meet somewhere in the middle where everything is just right, and I can keep my house clean.