Three years ago I quit my job to take care of my daughter and I’m going to tell you why every man should try the role of a homemaker

Just a few years ago I was a successful journalist, editor and presenter for a public TV channel. I used to leave the house early, come back at dawn, and in general I liked my routine. One day, my pregnant wife injured her knee. So I had to take a long vacation to take care of her. Who would have thought that, when it was time to return to work, I would give up returning to normal life?

For the first time in 15 years, I realized that all this time I had been struggling to properly play the role of who I really wasn’t. I worked hard to impress my parents, society, my boss, and even college friends.

My wife and I did not organize a family meeting to decide our future and we did not have “serious conversations” to make a decision. It seems that everything went as it should: although my wife had not yet taken maternity leave, I had already given up my job and had just become a “homemaker”. Today I would like to share my thoughts on this new role with readers of awesome.club🇧🇷

Afterwards, he pointed to our colleague who already had two children and asked me: “Why don’t you go on working like him?” My choice on behalf of the family left her confused. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find words to explain why I wanted to live the important and unique moments of my daughter’s life instead of following them on social media, following the example of that colleague of mine, who used to let his wife take care of the house and children alone sons. I also couldn’t say why my family’s life became a more meaningful topic for me than the news about traffic accidents, missing fishermen, or kittens rescued from the sewer. So I left the office without saying a word.

I left the room perfectly organized. It took me five minutes in the bathroom. When I left, I came across the image above.

I planned to spend time with my daughter playing on the swings, eating ice cream and reading books in a comfortable armchair, but those dreams were crushed by harsh reality. I spent literally every day cleaning the house and felt trapped in a vicious circle of mess, with no chance of breaking it. When I stopped for at least a second in order to do something different, (something I really wanted), the house suddenly turned into two paths “torn up by hurricanes”, one towards the kitchen and the other towards the bathroom.

My life came to resemble an anecdote about a husband and wife. Spouses are in bed about to sleep. The man decides to finish watching a TV program and stays there, calm. Meanwhile, the woman gets up, goes to the kitchen, puts all the products in the fridge, puts the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, prepares everything for breakfast and stops by the children’s rooms to wish them good night. Afterwards, she collects the garbage bags and, finally, returns to the bedroom, where her husband is waiting for her: “You got up first. Why did it take so long?” So in our family I became the wife of the anecdote.

My daily routine made it clear that I didn’t have time for anything, not even reading books to my daughter because I was completely exhausted. Attempts to read her books worked better than a tranquilizer. I don’t know if the problem was sleep deprivation or the fairy tales, which have more images than text and are capable of boring right from the first page. But the fact is, I fell asleep as soon as I started reading the first paragraph. My daughter, on the other hand, was not so sleepy and would poke me, pull my arms and cry, in an attempt to wake me up.

We once ventured to make an apple cake without a recipe. However, I couldn’t enjoy it, as my wife and daughter ate it all while I was making tea and washing the pan.

Honestly, I have no idea why the food I make every day runs out instantly. For example, I make a skillet full of meatballs with noodles, but it’s only a few hours before I need to make more servings. At first I was confused because I didn’t notice how my wife took care of the kitchen to feed us. When I tried to figure out how to cook a larger amount, she claimed that this is impossible, but she advised me to make snacks. Turns out my wife always had crackers saved for her and apple chips for our daughter! But what about me?

At first, I was hungry. First I fed my daughter, then left a portion for my wife. When it was my turn to eat, I was out of time. As soon as the little one finished her meal, she did everything to get my attention before falling asleep. At the same time, I couldn’t leave her alone throwing a tantrum, as I was in danger of depriving myself of that one hour of rest during the day. The time I would have with her. By the way, I gained five kilos in three weeks. Even if my lifestyle had become more sedentary and I stopped exercising, gaining so much weight in such a short period of time was not in my plans.

She had to go back to work before the end of her maternity leave, which means that during the day I would have to take care of our daughter alone. It was then that I discovered that life was easier before. I started to sleep less and work more.

When the door closed behind my wife on her first day of work, household chores fell to my shoulders. When I asked how she dealt with problems that arose, she laughed, patted my shoulder and said it was just a matter of time. However, when I tried to eradicate a day-to-day “headache”, other seven-headed bugs did not take long to appear. The piles of garbage grew, as well as the pile of dirty clothes and dishes; my daughter would get bored and the hungry cats would act even more outrageously. I started sleeping only three to four hours a day, and half of that time was napping with the little one after lunch.

Here is my workspace in the kitchen, because I often work and cook at the same time. I just don’t have time to dedicate myself to two activities separately.

As soon as I get up, another day begins full of household chores with no breaks to rest: I have to make breakfast and play with my daughter; then, make lunch, dinner and end the day with a cleaning. The saddest thing is that, from time to time, I get the impression that my wife doesn’t mind my busy schedule. Maybe she doesn’t even notice that I’m exhausted. I don’t know if my wife sees me as a tough man capable of moving mountains, but I’m also a human being and I need a break.

Gradually, all my college friends and classmates dropped out of my life. It seems like just yesterday that one of them offered me a photo shoot with our wives, drinking wine and listening to music. But today my call list only includes calls to children’s stores and a laundromat. For two years, I didn’t leave the house after 8 pm. As soon as my daughter fell asleep, she would do housework and also go to sleep. Also, I stopped being invited to birthdays in bars and to weddings.

I continued to follow my friends on social media and surprisingly I found that some blocked me. Interestingly, the first to break ties with me was my university colleague who was also the first to have a child. Now I wonder: could it be that he did this because our class had drifted away from him? The fact is that I went through the same situation.

Unfortunately, the person who is locked in the house also has bills to pay, so I found a job with home office🇧🇷 My home became my office. When I wasn’t taking care of my daughter I was working hard and vice versa. Obviously, he didn’t wait for visitors nor did he have extra money to borrow, since he spent a good part of it on diapers, food and bills.

Apparently, my cat is wondering, “Why did my owner leave his ties lying on the floor next to Moana?” There are no secrets. I gave up on special occasions and now ties are just for dressing a doll.

My parents are good people, educated and raised in the old fashioned way, who started working in high school and continue their journey even after retirement. When I tried to explain that working online is more than possible in the modern world, I got the answer: “What do you mean? It’s nonsense”. Once, I couldn’t contain myself and vented, expressing my opinion of his vision for my life and emphasizing that I am capable of taking care of myself and doing what I think is necessary to support myself. After that conversation, we stopped talking for a month, and in fact, to this day, our relationship is far from perfect.

I don’t know how to cook food 24 hours a day, tidy up the eternally messy house and pay all the attention in the world to my daughter. Also, I feel tired right after waking up. Once, I just sat in the middle of the clutter, holding back from screaming, flailing my arms and head. This felt like the scene that occurred after the conversation with my parents. Everything I had kept inside me since I resigned spilled out. I didn’t know…