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I Refuse To Babysit My Children
Shawn Henfling is tired of people calling every dad with his kids a babysitter.
I haven’t babysat my children in almost ten years. I won’t. Babysitting isn’t my responsibility. I’m their stepdad, not some sixteen-year-old girl making 9 dollars an hour. My job is to work and provide for them in every way. I simply refuse to spend a few hours every week in some misguided effort to spend “quality time” with my kids. Screw that and screw everyone who believes otherwise. I will not conform to the accepted societal notion of what fatherhood is supposed to look like. I’m not some bungling idiot who cannot be trusted to do the laundry, cook a meal or change a diaper. Ok, so I wouldn’t trust me to change a diaper, but that is irrelevant to the conversation.
No father should ever be labeled a babysitter. Collectively we are better than that, better than some misguided notion of fatherhood. We, single dads, stepdads, adopted dads, and biological dads are all just one thing: dads. I haven’t babysat in so long because I started being a parent instead of some place holder only necessary when mom isn’t around. We get a pretty bum rap in public and in the media. Somehow, a dad actually being a dad gets looked at as some kind of aberration.
