When I walk down 13th or Euclid Streets carrying my son Peter in his frayed, blue backpack, he is greeted by people leaning from fourth-floor windows, by children playing in the yards, and by old men sitting on their porches. He is the only white baby boy for miles around. And I am Peter's father. Most of the people in the neighborhood don't know my name.
That is the first lesson that all parents learn: You don't make a name for yourself by just raising children. Even though children are revered, parenting isn't highly valued in our culture.
It's been almost two years since Peter's birth, and only now am I beginning to adjust to the fact that I am indeed Peter's father. I was not at all prepared for the degree of change that Peter would bring into my marriage and relationship to the community.
Even though Peter was our first child, he was not really the first "birth" experience for Jackie and me. We had both struggled with the birth and growth of Sojourners community over the past 10 years. We had known the trauma of its birth pangs, the joy of new life growing among us, the pain and uncertainty of maturing as a body of God's people. We had formed deep pastoral involvements and friendships with many people, and the church was our total life. Peter's birth and his growing demands on our time almost immediately began to conflict with our wide-ranging involvements within the community.
The full impact of becoming a parent grew much more slowly with me than with Jackie. With the decision to nurse Peter, Jackie was on call (we used to joke "on tap") every two or three hours and so could never stray very far from Peter's vicinity. She had to put him to sleep and get up in the night to feed him. Though I could bathe Peter, change him, and watch him between feedings, my time was more flexible, and I could be gone for whole days.
As Peter's eating habits became more predictable we decided to share equally, as much as we could, in his daily care. All of a sudden my productive work week was cut in half, raising basic identity questions within me. Peter's birth came at a time of pastoral burnout and a disturbing reassessment of my own role within the community. The changes brought by Peter heightened the intensity of these other struggles. Not only did I now only have half a work week, but the half that I did have I entered with a weariness that only new fathers and mothers can know.
I knew it was right that Jackie and I try to share equally in Peter's care so that we could each continue, at least part time, our prior involvements. Though I felt committed to this intellectually and theologically, the decision felt like a surgeon's knife cutting out my deepest identity, which grew from my work within the community.
Many women are culturally reared to expect to make drastic vocational and life changes with the birth of the first child. Most men, myself included, are raised with the cultural expectation that having children will mean little adjustment in their daily work and vocation. Our decision to reject those cultural premises has come at great emotional cost.
As my anger and grief over my loss of meaningful work mounted, I became protective and rigid about my days apart from Peter. Since I had fewer work days, I was going to try to squeeze five of them into two and a half. I began to pray less, partly because it seemed that I had so little time to do "productive" work: I wasn't going to let the few precious days I did have available be used up in the "useless" space of prayer.
I tried to justify the time I spent with Peter by doing other things while with him. I discovered that I could have (or at least try to have) conversations with community people and guests. Peter fell asleep on my lap numberless times while I was giving spiritual direction or conversing with a guest about the community. I carted him along on errands, prepared evening meals, did minor repair projects, household cleaning, or laundry. I child-proofed my office at Sojourners magazine and moved in an old crib, so that I could make last-minute excursions to the office even on those days I was responsible for Peter. At the end of a day I would fall exhausted into bed.
After a number of months of this routine, I gradually came to ask myself: What gives me the impression that being with Peter is not real work? Why must I do "important" things to justify spending a day "just" with Peter? I began to realize that I was operating with the same mentality that assumes prayer is not real work. I began to suspect that if I could learn to rest in being with Peter during a day, I could also learn to rest in God's presence. I could enjoy listening to God and not just doing for God.
Peter is teaching me that my identity does not come from the fruit or the quantity of my labor, and that I don't need to make myself indispensable to be loved. I am learning that I don't need to feel guilty about taking an afternoon or a day with Peter to go to a special place to play, or to explore Rock Creek, or take a bike ride through the park. He is teaching me that before I can be a pastor I must first be a friend. He is teaching me to relax and to enjoy myself and others. Some of my work addiction is slowly dying.
This experience has given me a profound respect for the millions of mothers through the centuries who have struggled with their own identity in raising families. I am learning ever so slowly with my heart as well as my mind that nurturing children is real work--perhaps among the most real and radical work that activists and community-builders can commit themselves to. Society does not place much value on raising children--daycare center staff are still among the lowest paid workers in any occupation. The premise is that caring for children is not actually work; or that it is work anyone can do.
I have come to feel that not only is it critical work, but it is work that men as well as women should be engaged in. It can not only foster our own healing, but also healing between the sexes. Some feminist writers believe that freedom from the psychological patterns of oppression between men and women will not be realized until child-rearing patterns are changed as men begin to participate more fully in the raising and nurturing of their own children.
Our own venture in shared raising of Peter made us see how men and women are locked by economic constraints into patterns of child raising that they might not otherwise choose. Indeed, Betty Freidan has said that an important agenda for the '80s should be to bring flexible hours and part-time job possibilities in the secular job market, so that both men and women can participate more fully in the nurturing of children.
Jackie and I realize that our venture with Peter's care is a gift from our community. Without the community's support we would not have the flexible work schedules that can change as needed. Our experience has helped us see that fresh patterns of creating family and raising children depend on renewal of the church's basic forms and structures. As new economic patterns emerge in the wake of church renewal, parents will be freed to experiment with different child-raising possibilities
These forays into new understandings of parenting come not only with renewal on the corporate level but with the sometimes costly opportunity for personal growth as well.
Most of the neighbors still don't know my name. I am still just Peter's father. That's good enough for me.
Bob Sabath was a web technologist of Sojourners when this article was written.
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