If you have been watching The Kids Are In Bed, you understand that bedtime has been a battle for my wife, Jenni, and me. I am not one to compare myself to other people regarding parenting. I have little interest in how people choose to attack the day-to-day challenges that come with raising children. It’s not that I think I know better. Instead, countless independent variables vary due to numerous factors. 

I am the independent variable that led to the bedtime trouble in our house. 

There was a day Jenni informed me our son would start falling asleep by himself when he was four. I almost cried hearing this news. While I want the best for my children, I am selfish with my time with them now. I know that the clock is counting down, far too quickly, to the day Jenni and I cease to be the sun they orbit.

When Jenni suggested we read a couple of stories to my son and leave the room for the night, all I saw was the vast, infinitely expanding universe awaiting the tangential path my kids would be slung into when they exited our orbit. 

Some moments catch me off guard and highlight how quickly my children are growing up. It’s not the milestone moments. It’s the little things that only a parent can notice in their child. New words popping up in their vocabulary or the ability to put on their own shoes are the things that steal my breath and put a lump in my throat. 

Determined to right my wrongs with bedtime, I have been working on keeping a stiff upper lip with my daughter. My five-year-old daughter doesn’t run out of her bedroom, down the stairs, and out into the street when we tell her it’s time to go to sleep, as her brother did. Rather, she has the unique ability to lie in bed in the dark with her eyes closed for hours without falling asleep. 

It is beyond maddening.

Because of her resolve to show off this talent, we informed her daycare that we didn’t want her napping during the day. As a result, my daughter began falling asleep in as little as twenty minutes some nights. 

We were rounding the final turn and could see the finish line when a new teacher took over her class. Jenni sent her a message a little after midnight on a night our daughter didn’t fall asleep until after 11:00 PM. She asked the new teacher not to put our daughter to sleep at naptime. I had pegged this new instructor as the zealous type, so after Jenni sent the message off, I asked, “What are you going to do when she responds tonight?”

Jenni laughed at the question. Ten minutes later, we got a long reply that suggested she would not honor our request. After a few more days of late bedtimes and inside information from our daughter about what happens at nap time, it was clear our request had fallen on deaf ears. 

On a typical day, I take both of our children to school, allowing Jenni to get out of the house and make her commute to work. This morning, my daughter requested that Jenni take her to school so she could talk to the teacher about what was happening at nap time. 

I felt like a batter being called back to the dugout, replaced by a pinch-hitter in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line. In other words, it stung. As the sting began to retreat, shame-filled its space. 

As her father, she should be asking for me to have a serious conversation with her teacher.

Since I am on a mission to get to the bottom of why I allow almost every scenario to lead to anxiety and self-loathing, I caught my thought, and I asked myself a simple question: 

Why do you think that?

It’s the same question I would ask a friend confiding in me if I heard them say something that didn’t make much sense.

Driving home from dropping my son off at school, I smiled. I smiled because I wasn’t on the receiving end of my wife’s serious conversation. I was relieved not to be responsible for initiating the discussion. More than anything, I was proud—proud of my daughter for recognizing Jenni as the right person for the job and asking for what she thought was best for her.

The answer to my simple question began to form in front of me.  

Since I quit my job and have been pretending to be whatever I have been for the past four months, I have been battling the societal pressures that have been challenging my masculinity. Throughout the spring, I have been called a house husband and given tips on organizing the house’s daily upkeep. I’ve seen the judgment in the eyes of people I have talked to about my chosen path. I also hear the imaginary opinions I have crafted from everyone I have ever known. 

As a male, I am supposed to work and make money, to be handy, and to be stoic. 

As I write this, my new venture has earned me $6.68. Jenni has called me handsy many times but never called me handy unless the statement was dripping with sarcasm. If you Google “stoic antonyms,” you will find the following: caring, concerned, emotional, feeling, interested, and responsive. I am all of the antonyms. 

I have been programmed to believe I am supposed to be something I can never be. 

Like my teenage self in an Abercrombie & Fitch dressing room, I have been trying to fit into something that will never fit, no matter how much I suck in. 

According to an annual Gallup poll that asks Americans whether they are satisfied or dissatisfied with their personal lives, we are near a record low. Of course, people who make the most money are also the happiest. I imagine some people report being happy because, on paper, they should be. Yet, if you got them to have an honest conversation, they would tell you about what they’d rather be doing for free, which would make them truly happy. That’s nothing new.

What is new is those people’s ability to pick up their phones and scroll through videos of people doing the things they’d rather be doing while getting paid to do it. These are the people who claim all of social media is terrible. It’s far too complex to admit you’ve become a cog in a wheel and can’t get it out. 

I refuse to become an old curmudgeon who is beaten down by doing what I should do instead of what I want to do. 

I intend to write and do everything I can to influence the future Gallup polls to trend in the right direction.

I can only do that because of my wife, Jenni Severson. A woman who sees barriers as nothing more than minor obstacles in her way. I have had a front-row seat for nearly twenty-five years as I’ve watched her battle society’s expectations of what she should grow up to be. She will stand up for what is right regardless of social pressure. She is so beloved by everyone she comes into contact with that if you hear someone disparaging her, it reflects poorly on them rather than her. 

My daughter made the decision that she decisively made this morning because of her mother. 

If I could design a friend, wife, and mother in a lab, the result would be Jenni every time. However, the lab version may have a slightly better memory. 

I blame so many situations in life on my bad luck. I don’t have bad luck. I used up all my good luck when I met Jenni and would make that trade a thousand times over. 

Thanks to Jenni. We are creating a space where our children are not told they can be what they want to be; they are shown. I am happy to get out of the way so my children can take my front-row seat to watch Jenni in action.

While I’d love to say my courage and resolve led to me changing my life path by quitting my job, I can’t. Jenni saw what I couldn’t years ago, yet she kept her patience and never lost faith that I would wise up and listen to her. 

I’m listening now.

What’s more, Jenni surrounds herself with women just like her. There are people in this country who don’t want to see the Jennis of this world ascend. It’s threatening to see these exceptional people break through the patriarchal defenses that have been standing for centuries.

Those people are driven by their insecurities because, from where I sit, a world run by women like Jenni seems like paradise.

We’ll call this an early Mother’s Day piece, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I am not thankful for my partner on this journey through life.

Cheers.