An associate of my youngest daughter expressed incredulity: “Your father is watching her?” Lauren told me that she replied in the affirmative, with some complimentary words about me, the father who is the weekday caretaker for her 8-month-old daughter. When Lauren’s older sister was four years old, her mother went back to school to get an advanced degree, and Lisa spent the weekdays with her father: Me. And I also had some quality time with Lauren, when she was new. I have some experience with my girls which qualifies me for my duties with my granddaughter.
The number of single or divorced women caring for children by themselves far outnumbers any number of men who may be doing the same; I do not contend that there is anything equitable about the task of caretaking between men and women. But some men are, and have been, caretakers of minor children. And some advertisers have taken note of that and are aiming commercials at the “fathers and daughters” demographic.
There is a laundry soap commercial where the father says that he allows his daughter to wear her favorite outfit until he has to wash it. The galloping little girl appears to be about 5 years old. In this commercial, there is no mention of a female presence, nor an indication that there is one. In another commercial, a father and daughter are on a camping trip and the daughter aims jocular jabs at her father for his “aggressive yellow” jacket. Another cleaning product commercial shows a father cleaning the house and bathroom and putting a bandage on his daughter’s knee. A cookie commercial shows a father and daughter looking at the stars, and in another advertisement, the voice-over intones, “When … raising a child by yourself …” as a father, demonstrating on his own leg, shows his daughter how to shave hers. A “smart-house” device is the only advertisement that has a female presence, with the father listening to instructions from the smartbox and chasing around town to get his daughter to playdates, with an occasional electronic reminder that mom “thinks you are doing a good job.”
My youngest daughter has done her research on child care and has given me instructions on the care of her child — food and formula, meds and lotions and potions — and I follow them. But I need no instructions on the changing of a diaper, or the kind of clothes that the 8-month old will need on our walks about the neighborhood, and when she needs to take one of her two daily naps. She makes it pretty clear when she is sleepy, though one has to have some experience with interpreting cries to know if she is hungry, wet or sleepy. Or constipated. Or has a “gassy belly.”
When I was caring for my four year old eldest daughter while her mother was in college, when she had to use the restroom, I galloped her past the people at the urinals and into a stall, where she danced in anticipation while I swabbed the entire stall with soap-soaked paper towels, then suspended her over the seat. For many years afterward, she saw a scratch on a toilet seat as a sign that it was not clean.
My youngest grandchild, Myah, will probably never have to dance in a stall while I prepare her throne, but she laughs at me as I retch at the smell of her loaded diaper, and dances in her jumping-jack playground thingy, and practices spit-laden raspberries, and waves her hands and kicks her feet when she hears (help me!) “Baby Shark.
I got this.