The Alpha Daddies
Mr Darnbrough is off on his travels. Between now and Christmas, he will be mostly away from home – including stints in Nigeria and South Africa.
I realize that not having Daddy around is nothing new for a great many families but it is going to be quite a change for us. Having spent the greater part of the last six years working from home, Daddy is an integral part of his children’s lives (and mine). I know women who would go berserk if their husbands were around all day. I know of women with pre-school children who are not allowed to make any noise in the house when their husbands work from home. All I can say is, I love having him here. It’s worked incredibly well for us and we are going to miss him (and all the help and support he gives us) lots.
In spite of what you hear, mothers are not the only parents who want to be around to see their children grow up. A lot of men want that too. While the media spotlight tends to be focused on the conflicting pressures faced by women struggling to combine – or choose between - motherhood and a career, a growing number of men have quietly decided that there is a way to have their cake and eat it. I’ve nicknamed them the Alpha Daddies.
There are a growing number of well qualified professional men with young families who have rejected a conventional career in order to play more of a part in their children’s lives. Like other Alpha Daddies I have spoken to (and there are half a dozen in our immediate vicinity), he believes that he has gained on all fronts as a result of his decision.
Like many ambitious young men, Mr Darnbrough saw his career progressing towards a top management post: in his case, in the telecoms industry. It was not until we had children that he began to question the benefits of the long hours, the traveling, the late nights and the weekend working. “It was part of the life,” he says, “You did it to ‘get on’". But once our second child was born, he began to question why he was doing this. He realised that to have the good salary and the job title that went with it meant sacrificing his time with his children at the altar of his career.”
Instead of a future spent gloriously scaling the corporate heights, what he saw was years of working fifty to sixty hour weeks. “It is true that we would have had a better standard of living, but by the time I’d ‘made it’ and could afford to relax, the children would be grown up and gone. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a great deal.”
As a self-employed business consultant, Mr Darnbrough is his own boss AND he gets to be around while his children are growing up. His hours are (mostly) flexible enough to fit in with the children’s routine and he still gets to enjoy some of the good things in life. He has had to accept that he will never be the MD of a Times Top 100 company, “but at least I will know my children and they will know me.”
Alpha Daddies have re-defined what success means to them and their families. These men want to be there to enjoy their children’s early years. They have thought through the various alternative ways of achieving this goal and concluded that they are in work for what makes them happy and fulfilled and that achieving this objective is not the same as reaching the “top” of their professions.
Alpha Daddies still want the material things in life: they like nice cars and comfortable lifestyles and going on holiday and playing with electronic gadgets. They still want to feel “successful” in terms of the values of the rest of their career-minded peers. Alpha Daddies, to recast a phrase that used to be very popular in parenting theory about fifteen years ago, have decided that when it comes to work and renumeration, there is such a thing as being “good enough”.
Like other Alpha Daddies, Mr Darnbrough admits to moments of doubt about his decision to go independent. These tend to come after a visit to a friend who has a bigger house or a nicer car, or who has just come back from yet another holiday. But these friends invariably work in London, leave home before seven o’clock in the morning and are often not back before their children have gone to bed. So far, his doubts have always been squashed by the experience of traveling into London for a client meeting. “All I need,” he laughs, “is one journey into London at peak time . . . standing in a crowded train for half an hour . . . .then I think, ‘I know why I don’t do this’”.
The other side of the coin, of course, is what it means for the children. There is abundant research to suggest that as well as having a loving and committed mother, the presence of a loving, involved father increases the chance of producing happy, well-balanced children, who then grow up to become successful adults. Could the children of Alpha Daddies have an even greater advantage? By simply being around more than most fathers, at least in their children’s early years, Mr Darnbrough and his fellow Alpha Daddies hope that they can only strengthen those odds: it would probably be unwise to expect anything more.
Mr Darnbrough is off on his travels. Between now and Christmas, he will be mostly away from home – including stints in Nigeria and South Africa.
I realize that not having Daddy around is nothing new for a great many families but it is going to be quite a change for us. Having spent the greater part of the last six years working from home, Daddy is an integral part of his children’s lives (and mine). I know women who would go berserk if their husbands were around all day. I know of women with pre-school children who are not allowed to make any noise in the house when their husbands work from home. All I can say is, I love having him here. It’s worked incredibly well for us and we are going to miss him (and all the help and support he gives us) lots.
In spite of what you hear, mothers are not the only parents who want to be around to see their children grow up. A lot of men want that too. While the media spotlight tends to be focused on the conflicting pressures faced by women struggling to combine – or choose between - motherhood and a career, a growing number of men have quietly decided that there is a way to have their cake and eat it. I’ve nicknamed them the Alpha Daddies.
There are a growing number of well qualified professional men with young families who have rejected a conventional career in order to play more of a part in their children’s lives. Like other Alpha Daddies I have spoken to (and there are half a dozen in our immediate vicinity), he believes that he has gained on all fronts as a result of his decision.
Like many ambitious young men, Mr Darnbrough saw his career progressing towards a top management post: in his case, in the telecoms industry. It was not until we had children that he began to question the benefits of the long hours, the traveling, the late nights and the weekend working. “It was part of the life,” he says, “You did it to ‘get on’". But once our second child was born, he began to question why he was doing this. He realised that to have the good salary and the job title that went with it meant sacrificing his time with his children at the altar of his career.”
Instead of a future spent gloriously scaling the corporate heights, what he saw was years of working fifty to sixty hour weeks. “It is true that we would have had a better standard of living, but by the time I’d ‘made it’ and could afford to relax, the children would be grown up and gone. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a great deal.”
As a self-employed business consultant, Mr Darnbrough is his own boss AND he gets to be around while his children are growing up. His hours are (mostly) flexible enough to fit in with the children’s routine and he still gets to enjoy some of the good things in life. He has had to accept that he will never be the MD of a Times Top 100 company, “but at least I will know my children and they will know me.”
Alpha Daddies have re-defined what success means to them and their families. These men want to be there to enjoy their children’s early years. They have thought through the various alternative ways of achieving this goal and concluded that they are in work for what makes them happy and fulfilled and that achieving this objective is not the same as reaching the “top” of their professions.
Alpha Daddies still want the material things in life: they like nice cars and comfortable lifestyles and going on holiday and playing with electronic gadgets. They still want to feel “successful” in terms of the values of the rest of their career-minded peers. Alpha Daddies, to recast a phrase that used to be very popular in parenting theory about fifteen years ago, have decided that when it comes to work and renumeration, there is such a thing as being “good enough”.
Like other Alpha Daddies, Mr Darnbrough admits to moments of doubt about his decision to go independent. These tend to come after a visit to a friend who has a bigger house or a nicer car, or who has just come back from yet another holiday. But these friends invariably work in London, leave home before seven o’clock in the morning and are often not back before their children have gone to bed. So far, his doubts have always been squashed by the experience of traveling into London for a client meeting. “All I need,” he laughs, “is one journey into London at peak time . . . standing in a crowded train for half an hour . . . .then I think, ‘I know why I don’t do this’”.
The other side of the coin, of course, is what it means for the children. There is abundant research to suggest that as well as having a loving and committed mother, the presence of a loving, involved father increases the chance of producing happy, well-balanced children, who then grow up to become successful adults. Could the children of Alpha Daddies have an even greater advantage? By simply being around more than most fathers, at least in their children’s early years, Mr Darnbrough and his fellow Alpha Daddies hope that they can only strengthen those odds: it would probably be unwise to expect anything more.
posted by Susan Darnbrough at
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