Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood

by Michael Lewis

A brief thought experiment: Two couples—Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice—get together for dinner. They haven’t known each other for long, and will discover during this dinner that they have cut slightly different parenting deals with their spouse. Carol and Bob split their parenting duties 60/40; Alice and Ted’s split is more like 80/20. Bob and Carol think children shouldn’t watch the Disney Channel; Ted and Alice think the Disney Channel, properly used, can be an excellent babysitter. After an otherwise delightful dinner they: a. Go home and leave unmentioned how differently the other couple parents and divides the parenting chores. b. Acknowledge their differences but agree, privately, to disagree. Parenting chores aren’t chores at all: they’re a joy! Plus, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, or raise children. c. Go home and haggle. Not right away, of course. Alice gets home and stews and promises herself she won’t say anything. But at some point she fails to suppress the soundtrack in her head. “I really like the idea of reducing the influence Disney has on our family,” she says. Or: “It’s nice the way Bob drives the kids to school and frees up Carol in the mornings.” Meanwhile, down the block, Bob is wondering why the hell he has to drive the kids to school every morning. Just before they agree that they won’t be having sex anytime soon, he says, “Alice really is a great mom, isn’t she?” And a funny thing happens: These two couples never see each other again. They h...