There is a peculiar thing happening in this country, and it would be quite the curiosity if it weren’t so predictable. A great many fathers are being handed time—free, government-sanctioned, state-financed time—to stay home with their newborn children, and what do they do? They drop it like a hot horseshoe and head straight back to work, as if the office were a gambling hall and they were one hand away from winning back the mortgage money.
Now, a person with an ounce of sense might wonder: “Why would any man, weary from the great labor of pacing outside a delivery room, refuse a paid opportunity to sit at home in his slippers, balance an infant on one knee, and engage in the grand domestic experiment of not being the biggest nuisance in his own house?”
The answer, dear reader, is not found in logic but in a long-standing American tradition: the deep-seated fear that a man at home, when he might be elsewhere, is a man in danger of losing his God-given right to be taken seriously.
The Two Kinds of Fathers
I have observed that fathers in this fine country can be divided into two principal species.
The first group are those who would very much like to take leave but find themselves at the mercy of their employers, whose official stance is “Of course we support fatherhood” and whose actual stance is “We’ll see you at your desk Monday.” These men know that while their government has made generous provisions, their company has made none, and their professional survival depends on ignoring the fine print of their supposed benefits.
The second group, however, are a more curious breed. These men see their office chair not as a piece of furniture but as a throne. They regard the morning train to work as a nobleman would a carriage, and they see the act of staying home as an insult to their purpose in life—which is to work, to be seen working, and to die having worked so much that people will be forced to say, “My, what a committed fellow he was.”
For them, paternity leave is not a gift but an insult. The very idea suggests that their absence would not cause the immediate collapse of civilization. And that is a thought they cannot bear.
What A Man Cannot Be Seen Doing
Now, I do not mean to suggest that these men dislike their children. Quite the opposite. They will speak fondly of their offspring at work, recounting with great amusement the way the little creatures scream all night, deposit an ungodly number of messes into their diapers, and seem to recognize their mothers immediately while regarding their fathers as mere spectators. They will find all this charming—provided they are hearing about it secondhand.
For these men, the notion of taking leave is offensive not because of the time away from work, but because of the time at home. There is a silent code, deeply understood:
• A man may bring a child into the world, but he must not be caught knowing too much about how to care for it.
• A man may provide for his family, but he must not be seen actively being in the family.
• A man may have his name spoken reverently in his household, but if he is seen too often within its walls during daylight hours, he has failed.
A woman who leaves work to care for her child is fulfilling the expectation. A man who does the same is defying it. He is suspect, as all men are who stray too far from the herd.
A Self-Inflicted Wound
The great irony of the matter is that the work these men cling to so fiercely will not, in the end, remember them. The company will not mourn them. The office will not bear their absence in its bones. The desk will simply be reassigned, the chair reoccupied, and the salary—which seemed to justify so many sacrifices—quietly repurposed.
Meanwhile, the child, having been studied only in passing moments, will grow into a person who regards his father much the same way: a figure glimpsed briefly, heard about often, but never quite known.
And so, with great pride and no small amount of self-inflicted suffering, these men will have proven their point: that work was, indeed, their life. And they will be congratulated for it, though not necessarily by the people whose opinions ought to matter most.
And the cycle will continue, with each generation of men stubbornly refusing to be present for the very thing they claim to work for.
But at least they’ll die knowing they never once let anyone mistake them for the kind of man who took a day off.
This investigation is ongoing.
The Curious Case of the Vanishing Fathers is part of The Deductionists—a league of sharp minds unraveling the peculiar paradoxes of modern life. Because if we don’t question them, who will?
🎙 Hear more irreverent insights on The Deductionists Podcast—available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts.
🔗 Listen now:
👉 Apple Podcasts
👉 Spotify
Subscribe to the Newsletter on LinkedIn: The Deductionists Newsletter.