A little time off at birth doesn’t solve the working-parent dilemma

So Tony Blair is back at the office, his parental leave fading into memory. The arrival of little Leo gave rise all too briefly to earnest adult rumination about work, gender roles, and child care. But it’s not too late to parse the chatter.

Could the UK afford the PM’s absence? Well, Great Britain is charming, but a half dozen Microsoft VPs run bigger operations. Anyway, he lives above the shop and has access to all the magic of British Telecom, not to mention a staff. Blair is more out of touch when he takes his yearly holiday on the continent. Who’s so indispensable, anyway? Janitors in high-rise buildings and ER doctors on Saturday nights, maybe. The rest of us are kidding ourselves.

For that matter, how indispensable was Blair at home with the newborn? The handwringing that preceded the New Labourite’s leave was all about the political symbolism of parental involvement clashing with Tony’s self-image as a World Leader, not about whether Cherie and Leo needed his full-time presence that week in May.

Then there’s Tony’s duration in the nursery. Five days! Tony, Tony, Tony. . . Neither you, the Missus, nor any of your four kids is going to remember this little blip any more than you will remember the final episode of “Beverly Hills 90210.” Trust me. It takes more than a week to raise a child. It’s so obvious when you say it. But we’re so constricted in our thinking that we consider three months unpaid leave–maybe collecting unemployment benefits, someday!–as the gold standard. It ain’t. Small children change with the speed and beauty of those time-lapse movies of buds turning into flowers. Three months is just tease, a snapshot. Then it’s back to day care for them and work for you.

I’ve had it better than most fathers, Tony included. I stayed home for a year and a half with my first child, a year with my third, but only three months with the middle child and I still feel deprived. For much of my first 11 years as a father, I worked part-time. I had a supportive wife who earned enough to feed us. In return, I washed the diapers, renovated our crumbling Victorian mausoleum, schmoozed with the neighbors, hung out in playgrounds and museums, and did my civic duty at leisure. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

That life isn’t for everybody. It takes a certain kind of personality. You have to be flexible, quick, a multi-tasker, self-confident, and not too fussy about the little stuff. Still, lots of people–men and women alike–have these attributes and might enjoy raising kids.

The nasty unspoken truth is that most people can’t stay home with the kids. When I graduated from high school in 1965, a man with a high school education could still get a decent if boring job, support a wife and family on his salary alone, eventually buy a house, take two weeks at the Cape, and retire in 30 years. No more. Do you think the mother working as a cashier at Stop & Shop likes standing there for eight hours at $7 an hour, dealing with an unending stream of grim-faced customers who think she’s going to do them out of a two-for-one sale? In Working, Studs Terkel quotes a meter reader who says that he just tries to “make the day go faster.” The cashier might rather be home with the kids, but she can’t, even if she has a husband reading meters for $12 an hour.

Professionals–women as well as men–face their own pressures against staying home. Will they fall off the career track, never to get back on? A mother with one child suffers a 13 percent lifetime earnings loss compared to a childless woman, according to a recent Rand Corp. study, 19 percent if she goes for two. Moreover, the combined pre-kid income of professionals ratchets up expectations. The Acura and the Expedition are a given now for these folks. You can’t pull into the Corporate Park in an Escort. And the starter home in the suburbs now comes with a two-income-sized mortgage.

Thanks for the week fluffing Cherie’s pillows, Tony, but let’s not read too much into this. It’s a nice gesture, but it doesn’t have much to do with raising children. Working parents are still trying to figure out how to do that.

Kit Binns is a technical writer and manager at a software company, as well as father of three children, ages 16, 12, and 10.