Stand And Deliver
By Adam Evenson
Single dad Adam Evenson has always put his kids before work. If only there had been a way to make it Pay as well !!!
I don’t know if the highwaymen of old actually did confront their chosen victims with: “Stand and Deliver”. In the movies it is usually followed by a concise statement of the purpose of the spontaneously convened meeting: “Your money or your life!”
In regard to impact, the news that one is to become a father is at least the attention getting equivalent of the instruction to “Stand and Deliver”.
And each man will ask himself, in some way, “Will I give my children my money or my life?”
In an ideal world, I think that most fathers would give generously in both categories. In the real world, men often struggle to balance their responsibilities as providers and as nurturers, mentors and companions for their children.
In an ideal world, all fathers would have the option to work fewer hours, and the loss of income, or the loss of career advancement opportunities, would not impact too severely on the financial security of the family.
In an ideal world, parents would share, and would be able to equitably share, income earning responsibilities and all other parental and household responsibilities.
In the real world, where there is already high unemployment, and where ongoing restructuring in many sectors can mean recurring threats of redundancy, most workers do not have the power to negotiate better conditions of employment which might allow them to spend more time with their children.
In the real world, pressures on families too often result in the dissolutions of parenting partnerships.
The mother is usually given the children and expected to provide for their day to day care and nurturing, while the father is required to provide financially for the children, and may or may not be permitted to have contact with them to directly influence their development.
There are currently a number of initiatives intending to encourage fathers to be more involved as care givers and nurturers for their children.
But simultaneously, and perhaps more significantly, benefit reforms seem to be sending the message that all parents, mothers as well as fathers, have a primary responsibility to provide financially for their children, and only a secondary responsibility to directly parent, a job which the government is willing to subsidise if done by surrogate parents or caregivers, as long as they are not unregistered, and not blood relatives or whanau of the child going into paid child care.
I began writing this piece several weeks ago after seeing again in another newsletter the now fashionable, but oversimple, question:
“How many men will reach the end of their lives and say to themselves, ‘I wish I had spent more time at work’?”
At each point in my life, when I needed to make a choice between providing better financially for my children, or being present to nurture my children, I chose the latter. And, if I had it to do over, even knowing what I know now, I would probably still choose nurturing over earning.
If I could change anything, I would have found a better balance of the two.
I left a lucrative and interesting career in Europe to settle in New Zealand because I and my partner both thought it would be a better place to raise children.
We stayed in Auckland only long enough to get our residency status and then moved to a small provincial town because we thought it would be a better place for our children to spend their early childhoods.
We chose to live 20 minutes from town in a home which was built without any locks on the doors, in a setting where such precautions were unnecessary in 1980, and remain unnecessary still. It was a beautiful place, where children could play safely, surrounded by nature and by neighbours who all had the time to get to know one another.
My chosen career was less viable in New Zealand and required me to travel extensively within the country, for a fraction of the financial return I had earned in Europe.
I changed from a career which I loved passionately, to work that I could do closer to home so that I could be with my children every night; so that I could make and sit down to dinner with them, play with them, help them with their homework, and lie in bed and read with them every night.
There are so many precious memories of those times.
When my partner and I separated, about the only thing we could still agree on was the welfare of the children, and we both agreed that I was the better and more dedicated parent. We had a joint parenting agreement, but the children lived primarily with me.
I chose to arrange my life in a way which would still allow me to get the children off to school in the morning and be there each afternoon to greet them when they arrived home.
I applied for and received the Domestic Purposes Benefit which, at that time, was paid at a rate which enabled a family to survive if living frugally and budgeting very carefully.
When my youngest child started school, I started doing voluntary work in the community. I have always had a strong work ethic and it was only logical for me to look for things to do when parental obligations diminished during certain hours of the day.
Much of my work had to do with the ‘at-risk’ children of other families. I was particularly involved in youth drug and alcohol issues.
My youngest child, a son, will celebrate his 15th birthday in a few day. When he turned 14 I returned to work full time, securing paid positions with two of the many organisations I had volunteered for in past years.
I was 50 years old when I got those two jobs.
I soon discovered that for community workers, 20 hour per week jobs often tend to involve more defined work than can be done in 30 hours per week and, since I had two such jobs, I found myself working 60 hours per week.
I still managed to be there when my son left for school in the morning and, even though I could not be there when he arrived home, I did get back every night in time to prepare his dinner.
Then, after tidying up, I withdrew to my room to do the work I was bringing home with me.
I subsequently resigned from one of my positions, in part because I did not feel that I had enough time for my relationship with my son. I renegotiated the other position up to 30 hours a week, and simultaneously negotiated a pay increase.
I am now only about $80 a week worse off than I was on the DPB — with the maximum allowable supplementary income work I did on contracts — which, after the cuts of recent years, was itself not enough to provide for even the most basic needs of a sole parent family.
The bank has financed the difference between income and expenditure for several years, on the basis of personal borrowing with no collateral.
At 51, with significant debts and insufficient income to even cover current weekly obligations, I do have to say that: “I sometimes wish that I had spent more time at (income generating) work.”
In most respects, I think that my children have turned out well and I think that they have benefited as regards the development of their characters and values, because they had very significant and ongoing contact with a caring and present father.
However, I do wish I had a few dollars for every time I said to them: “I’m sorry, but we can’t afford to buy or do that.” And I wish I had not experienced such a painful sense of inadequacy every time I said it.
I wish now that I could contribute to the costs associated with the tertiary qualifications they all wish to seek. It distresses me to think that they may have to go deeply in debt to get qualifications which may or may not lead to paid work.
The last one should finish university when I am about 59. It should please the government to know that I intend to start saving for my retirement at that time.
