Welcome to the club

As New Zealand’s First Man prepares to become a stay-at-home dad, Amie Richardson puts in a request with the country’s playgroup mums.

When my late husband Wayne and I first moved to Dunedin, with our then 20-month-old son Oli, he became a full-time stay-at-home dad.

Before the move, we were both self-employed. And, we both wanted kids. So we decided whoever had the better contract would work full time while the other looked after babies. At the time, I had a TV contract and a major copywriting job, and so Wayne stayed at home.

Up until that point, I had juggled small PR contracts or copywriting gigs with caring for Oli. I was lucky that Oli slept well mostly, but when he was teething or over-stimulated, or a little unwell or one of the countless other reasons babies change their sleeping patterns, I’d stress and freak out, rushing to meet deadlines or begging clients to extend them. I felt unreliable, substandard, like I was a bad mother.

Welcome to the modern world of working parents – an experience soon to be shared by our prime minister. Thinking back to those sleep-deprived nights, the poo lahars that would result in late-night showers, the demands of breastfeeding, I can comfortably say that running a country and mothering a first baby will be a challenge.

Wayne was effortlessly good at most things he tried out – and full-time parenting was no different. But where he struggled was at the playgroup activities where he felt isolated and “other” more often than not. In those mother-dominated environments, he felt like no one wanted to talk to him for fear of befriending a heterosexual man without first knowing his partner. Thankfully at many of these groups, Wayne had our sister-in-law Gepke to manage introductions and help him to navigate this female world. But, on the days without her, he was continually surprised by the blanket snub from mums. It seemed like nothing was able to annul the fact that he was a married man and people might get the wrong idea.

Apart from one. A beautiful South American woman whose boy Wayne described as the cutest child he had ever seen. They would go to the beach. She’d talk to him about breastfeeding. He’d talk about Oli’s sleeping. If she had been in any other setting, my blue eyes would have turned green, but Wayne had made a friend outside of our family and that was a great thing. In the end, she moved from the Peninsula back into town but by then, the childcare split was becoming more even and our local community had embraced us both.

Being New Zealand’s First Man likely has benefits that Wayne didn’t have (like instant recognition as a happily relationship-entrenched man), but just in case any pregnant women with children due in June who have been living in a vacuum are reading this… welcome Clarke and any of these fathers into your circle. Don’t leave them stranded. It’s a smelly, grubby, make-you-go-crazy – albeit also infinitely rewarding – place.

It’s lonely. Throw them a lifeline.