Nick Duerden in the Guardian - His wife "leaves me fully alone with my daughter for the first time" at 16 months!

[beanieb]

piece

Is this normal, for a father to not be left with their child alone until they are over a year old?

If I go away for even 5 minutes the thread will have 200 more posts and I will never catch up...

Before Mr D comes on, could I make a sucky-uppy plea for courtesy? He hasn't murdered anyone. He hasn't even been rude about breastfeeding. And he's big enough to come on here and talk to us.

Policywonk is right. We can at least start by being polite (even if the article is not exactly to your taste).

See my clever use of understatement?

Hi shiney, embarrassed any twats lately?

Shall we do some, ahem, sensible questions then?

Nick, you must see behind your individual reflections, that there is a much bigger question here about gender relations that your article (have not read the whole book) rather trivialises?

And by making your experience so public, you are bound to be under scrutiny about this?

'Shit it's hard' is fine: most mothers feel that too. But I think the indulgence of the double standard is what many of us find hard to take. The number of times I have had to take one of my many ill babies into work and been tut-tutted at by colleagues, the same colleagues who fawn and mutter 'oh isn't he a good dad' about my partner doing the same is just fucking galling to be honest.

So unreconstructed new men finding their feelings don't wash too well with some of us. Better had you not retched and not left it for 16 months for your wife to had a night off etc.

I do hope the 'oh look at me, I got pissed and gave my toddler inappropriate toys' was just posturing though. You must see why this wound everyone up?

So, where is he then?

Hello, and thank you very much for all your questions, even the somewhat painful ones. I hope you don't mind if I address a bunch of them together in this first post. Can I start by saying that the Guardian piece was an extract from the book, a heavily and necessarily condensed pick-and-mix from three separate chapters, the idea being that they hopefully conveyed how I went from initially reluctant father to a willing, and very happy, one. I had of course been left alone with my daughter many times in her first 16 months, but my wife hadn't gone away for a whole weekend - simply for the reason that no one had invited her to a hen party in Dublin before then. Though we were, and remain, very much a partnership in bringing up our daughters (we have two now), in those early months, I very much deferred to her, largely because, I think, motherhood seemed a much more instinctual thing to her than it did me. That's not the case these days, I?m relieved to say.

I didn't think I was perpetuating the myth that men are useless when it comes to childcare. Men aren't necessarily useless when it comes to childcare, are they? And I wasn't useless either, I was simply inexperienced and fearful that, because my father was never around very much when I was young and then disappeared altogether, I may follow suit - and I very much didn't want that to happen.

My daughter was an absolute delight the day my friends came round while my wife was away. The champagne, which had sat at the bottom shelf in the fridge for over a year as a leftover from our wedding party, was drunk while she had her afternoon nap, and the further bottles of wine were consumed after she went to bed. I stopped drinking earlier than they did, because I needed to, but you all are right, I shouldn't have drunk as much as I did when on sole duty, and I haven't since. When I called my friends selfish, I was being ironic. There was only one person to blame for me drinking, and that was me.

Oh, and the Japanese takeaway, incidentally, was from Wagamama. I would have said noodles, but we ordered more than just noodles.

ooh I love Wagamamas, can I ask a serious question do you think chocolate and horseradish really works together in a dessert

If I trivialised anything, Lupusina, I regret it, Lupusina. I simply told of my experiences in a way that I hoped would prove helpful to at least some. The whole area of children to me before we had them was a complete mystery. I didn't want to read the jokey How To books that seem to be aimed at fathers, I wanted something that told it really like it is, the way, say, Rachel Cusk did, or Anne Enright (and, no, nobody needs to tell me I am not in their class as writers...) That was my aim with the book, nothing more.

Nick, has it occured to you that all of us, mothers and fathers are clueless at the beginning. Yet how many articles do you read about a woman's discovery that she can actually put a nappy on the right way around? women are just expected to get on with it and, to a large extent, we do. Your article perepetuates the myth that men should somehow be applauded for doing the very things that mothers do routinely day after day.

(pretends to listen carefully to important points)

Nick, how much did you have to do with the editing of excerpts from your book into that particular article?

Ooh yes I like Wagamama too

Do you read the Family Guardian section regularly, Nick? Do you agree with us that it is, to use georgimama's phrase, total arse gravy? Endless acres given over to an incredibly narrow view of parenting (organic veg, camping, holidays in Cornwall, attendance at festivals in Victoria Park, sunday brunch at Bill's in Brighton).

Parenting is such a diverse and potentially fascinating topic (as mumsnet shows amply) - why does the Guardian get it so wrong?

hi nick

have you been surprised by the reactions to the piece?

"the idea being that they hopefully conveyed how I went from initially reluctant father to a willing, and very happy, one" - do you think the article did this in retrospect?

slug to be fair the Guardian has Zoe Williams on her child, but then she seems to be taking the piss out of mostly herself.

What PW said.

It would just be more interesting, actually, and novel, to read about a bloke recognising what underpins family life and relations between men and women. Hapless bloke coming of age is not such a new theme for most of us TBH and I still think women are going to be your main audience.

(Goes off topic, but wonders if this 'embellishing of the truth' reflects in Nick's other scenarios? Where there really foxes, for example?)

"the idea being that they hopefully conveyed how I went from initially reluctant father to a willing, and very happy, one"

well why were you actively trying to conceive then? what would have happened it you hadnt changed into a willing happy one?