Mothering Essay by Sean Szeps

When I was a kid, parenting came with very specific job descriptions: dads went to work and mums did everything else.

He took the bins out, sure. He changed lightbulbs and occasionally pointed with a barbecue tong while muttering something about mowing the lawn. But she remembered birthdays. She did back-to-school shopping, packed lunches, organised the class teddy-bear roster and somehow built a scarecrow for Book Week using only two coat hangers and a pillowcase.

This wasn’t just a stereotype. It was presented (and digested by me) as the truth. In every movie, every TV show and in (almost) every house I visited.

And for a little kid like me who was, well, different — a sensitive, theatrical, deeply organised boy who enjoyed crafting more than lawn work — it meant only one thing: I wanted the wrong job.

I was a boy who wanted to be a mother.

Long before I understood gender or sexuality or how babies were made, I knew I wanted to add “stay-at-home mother” to my future resume. The kind who baked cookies that actually resembled the cookie-cutter shape and could French braid an impressive plait while sipping a glass of wine.

It wasn’t just admiration. Not back then, at least. It was an obsession.

I worshipped the matriarchs of my childhood like they were deities: Mrs Potts. Didi Pickles. Carol Brady. Clair Huxtable. And the real women, too. My grandmothers, my aunties and my actual mother, Sally.

Sally was basically Martha Stewart. If Martha Stewart had been Cuban, raised three kids on a DIY budget and done it all without the internet or a single complaint. That woman could (still can) whip up costumes from scraps, meals from nothing and somehow still find time to colour-coordinate the holiday card.

She was the heart of our home. The emotional CEO of our lives.

Naturally, I wanted her job. But because I didn’t meet the application requirements, I buried the dream sometime before puberty.

I told myself I’d have to settle for being a dad, even though it seemed to mostly involve fixing shelves and asking, “what’s for dinner?”

But then, somewhere along the way, things started to change. Women worked more. Men were pushed to be more involved. The belief in men’s supposed inability to be empathetic was challenged internationally. And women, in every shape and shade, felt comfortable speaking publicly about the inequality at home.

The gender lines began to slowly blur and even though I didn’t yet have the language for it, I sensed that maybe my childhood fantasy of mothering wasn’t so far-fetched.

I had kids in my late twenties and stayed at home for the first few years to raise my boy-girl twins. My head was down, busy keeping tiny humans alive, to really notice how much had really changed.

Sure, there’s still room for growth. But every day at school pick-up and drop-off, the cars are equally split between dads and mums (and grandparents, too). I hear dads shouting “I love you!” as often as I hear their female counterparts do this same. Dads volunteer at school, the join the Parent Association and they scramble last minute to make an Easter Hat for the school parade.

Now, yes, this could be because I live in a fairly progressive inner-west bubble. But the data backs it up: stay-at-home dads are on the rise. So are the involved, empathetic fathers who change nappies and do back-to-school shopping in ways their fathers and grandfathers could only have dreamed of.

It was the wise Maggie Dent who once told me I was “a father who mothers.” It stuck with me for years, especially as I look around the playground and see “mothers who father” and vice versa. We all step in and out of the defined roles of the past, rising to the changing roles of the present. We leverage our unique skills, compromise with our partners and juggle our children’s needs in whatever way is required in the moment.

My childhood goal of “mothering” was never about gender. It was a desire to be tender and involved. It was about soft hands and a strong back. Empathy, stamina, softness. Tenderness in the face of chaos. Being consumed, happily, by a child’s well-being. Giving yourself fully to raising children.

And that responsibility, thankfully, is no longer placed solely on women’s shoulders.

Men can’t be mothers. But they be mothering. And thank God for that.

Sean Szeps is a writer, author and comedian who brings sharp humour and heart to the chaos of modern parenting. You can connect with him on Instagram at @seanszeps.