FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Life as a Soccer Dad
by ken auletta
In 1997, Ken wrote this piece for the magazine of the Nightingale-Bamford School in Manhattan, where his daughter was a student at the time.
I’ve never been called a “soccer mom,” but I qualify. Unlike my dad, who left the house
early each morning and returned expecting dinner on the table, I neither go to an office
nor stray far from my refrigerator. As a writer I fit into another category: Work-at-home
dad. Which is not so different from “soccer mom.”
Since I cook, I’m the one who nags my daughter Kate in the morning about what she’d like
for dinner, the one who hears from Mrs. Gouge if Kate is sick, the “mom” other moms
usually get on the phone when they call our home, the “mom” who retreats with the family
to the country each July and August and waits at the train station on Fridays for the
arrival of “dad,” who is really mom. Usually, I’m the first person Kate sees when she
arrives home from Nightingale, the one who gets the first report on the day or gets to
answer, “What’s to snack on?”
Not surprisingly, Kate has a somewhat different take. She writes: It annoys me that my
father talks about food and what to eat incessantly. I wake up in the morning and the
first words I hear from my dad are, “Good morning. What do you want for breakfast?” After
a brief pause he asks, “What should I defrost for dinner? “Sometimes I think he’s
auditioning to be a waiter in a restaurant! On the other hand, I love the comfort of
knowing he’s home, of knowing there’s someone to talk to about my day at school. I talk
about almost everything with my dad. And when I’ve had a bad day, he’s right there telling
me that everything will be fine.
For the ten years Kate has been at Nightingale, I’ve enjoyed many of the traditional
joys — and frustrations — of motherhood. I get the early “buzz” about music, get to taste the
new Frappucino from Starbuck’s, and re¬ceive those I-can’t-believe-you’re-asking-such-a-dumb-question
looks I’d prefer that mom would get. I wish Gloria Steinem
represented me on those occasions when my family blithely assumes I can pick something up
at the store because I’m home, presumably just pigging out on chips and tv.
Dads are no different from moms in that we get the same monosyllabic “fine” when we ask
how the day went, the same “Do we really have to talk about dinner when I just ate
breakfast?” But the rewards of being a work-at-home dad are immense. I know my daughter in
ways I never expected. How many dads get to “gossip” with “the girls” who come over on
play-dates?
Just as moms carve out special activities with daughters, so do dads. A favorite has been
going to Knick games at the Garden. The one time we let mom (who believes basketball died
in the seventies when Walt “Clyde” Frazier retired) in on the action was last season when
I had two tickets for the Knicks vs. the Chicago Bulls. I didn’t want to give up being a
“soccer dad,” but I had to fly to Seattle on Sunday afternoon to report a story. Mom
agreed to take my place, but did she moan. As you may recall, the Knicks pulled a huge
upset. The next morning, when I phoned from the west coast, both women in my house
chorused that it was “the greatest game ever!” I was miserable.
Each summer I plan my writing schedule so that Kate and I can spend time together at the
beach. I write early, then ferry Kate to an activity, then write some more; we bicycle
together to the farmstand for a melon, sway in the hammock with a book we read together,
go to a movie and out for pizza, jump in the pool, barbecue chicken and vegetables, watch
the sun slip below the horizon. More than once, mom has threatened to quit work because
she thought she was missing out on the fun. She was.
Kate and I have developed a playful relationship. Once when I spoke at a school assembly
about the 1996 presidential campaign, Kate pleaded beforehand: “Please don’t mention me.”
Then, presumably because teenagers assume that fathers are thick, she added, “Don’t you
dare embarrass me by singling me out.” I kept my word, sort of. I began by saying, “My
daughter Kate asked my not to talk about her. And I won’t!” People laughed — even Kate.
Kate, naturally, gets the last word on this subject: He isn ’t the only one who plays
tricks. My dad hates mice. He may be six feet tall and with muscles, but at the sight of a
mouse he does what moms do: jumps up on a chair! Each April Fools Day, my mom and I put a
plastic mouse that moves on the floor and shriek and jump up on chairs, expecting, like
every year, that he will jump on a chair. He does.
You don’t have to be a stay-at-home dad to learn from your daughter. Once, when Kate was
in the fifth grade and jogging with her class around the reservoir, a group of teenage
girls am¬bushed her alone on the track, demanding that she give them her Swatch watch. She
at first refused. She then wisely thought better and gave it to them. She was scared. But
she was also determined. Instead of retreating, she agreed to go out in a squad car to
look for the perpetrators. Her reaction was neither that of knee-jerk liberal nor a
reactionary conservative. Unlike many liberals, she hoped to see them caught and punished.
Unlike many conservatives, she wasn’t vengeful. She agreed with Ms. Heller, who told the
police officers, “If these girls get help now maybe they won’t rob anymore.” Some parents
wanted Nightingale to stop using “unsafe” Central Park. Kate argued that her class had as
much right to the park as muggers. Her classmates were magnificent in their defiance of
fear, as was Nightingale.
Being a “soccer dad” is a microcosm of the shifting roles played by males and females. A
majority of women now work. Schools teach more that the three Rs. At Nightingale,
tentative Lower School girls like Kate are transformed into self-assured young women,
liberated to understand that women no longer Just say yes. Women, as well as men,
now wear pants. Men have learned from women (and, no doubt, from psychotherapy) to be less
afraid to show emotion, to be less fearful of revealing their “feminine” side. So much has
changed.
But one thing doesn’t change for parents, male or female. As daughters enter high school,
parents have to learn something as well. We have to leam to let go a bit, to grant
daughters more freedom, more space. This is probably, I confess, a little harder for a
work-at-home dad.
