My Call to Fatherhood: Reimagining Our Narratives
If you told me as a kid what my life would be like today, I would never have believed my story would go the way it has. I suspect that’s probably true for a lot of us, but I seriously would not have envisioned any of this: moving across the U.S. from Atlanta to Los Angeles in order to pursue being a pastor, studying and having my views of church completely reshaped, having a daughter, living for a few years in Scotland as a stay-at-home dad (with a wee bit of golf on the side), having a son there, and moving our young family to literally the other side of the world in Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s been a whirlwind of altered expectations, and not always the most graceful adjustments on my part, but it has definitely been worth it.
My story started to evolve as a teenager in a mega-church in the American South. I was a kid who was keen to follow Jesus, and I wanted to find my place and make an impact. It was usually the pastors (exclusively men in my context) who seemed to be having the most impact. So I pursued the pastors in my church and told them I wanted to look more like Jesus, and they guided me to pursue becoming a pastor. From that, I started to tell people I felt “called” to pastor a church. Perhaps it actually was a call, but something always felt a bit off with that narrative in which I found myself.
Pastors in my context led congregations and staff, cast visions, made hospital visits, ran meetings, preached every week, saw to growth, managed budgets, and worked a lot. These things did not bring me life, and also were not primarily what I thought the church should be about, good as they may be. But the men who were my models of faith did these things, and I wanted to be like them. So, I pursued being a pastor, though I had a lingering sense that it wasn’t for me.
Over the next several years, I got married to Christa, and we moved to L.A. to go to seminary, where I would study to pursue the call I felt on my life. But the more I studied the Scriptures, the more my view on the church and being a pastor changed. This led to an uncomfortable time of questioning and wondering what else I was meant to do and where my story was heading. But I lacked alternative narratives that made sense of things.
During this time, Christa and I began having more conversations around having children. The thought of kids brought something to life in me, a desire hidden deep in my soul that I didn’t know was there. I started having dreams of kids running around the house and waking me up in the morning with shouts of “Daddy!” In our early thirties, Raya was born. Like most new parents, I’ll never forget the first time holding her. Those moments brought with them a sense of purpose and settling, like I was coming home from a long time away.
Shortly after, we moved to Scotland for Christa to pursue her PhD. Agreeing beforehand that I would stay home to care for our then six-month-old daughter, I was both excited and trepidatious. I felt completely unprepared for what lay ahead at the time, but I was confident that being “dad” was who I was meant to be. I’ll never forget my first full day on my own, Christa walking to work, and me keen to spend time with my little girl.
Honestly, I don’t remember much of what happened that day, or the months that followed. But I remember it being both amazing and terrible, soul-enriching and utterly life-eating. While I wouldn’t trade that time with my daughter for anything, I often struggled to thrive in my role as dad. There were many dads in the town, but most of them were studying while their partners took care of the kids. I felt isolated and alone, acutely aware that I was a bit of an anomaly as a stay-at-home-dad.
As a result, I didn’t have many consistent relationships that provided an encouraging community for me. I went to play and song groups for kids for a couple of years, almost exclusively with moms, apart from myself. I’ll never forget one of the first visits to such a group. I found a space in the circle next to a couple of women, one of whom was breastfeeding. She quickly shuffled to cover up a bit more when I sat down, and turned her body away from me. Looking back, it makes sense, and I don’t blame her, but I felt like I was intruding in a space I didn’t belong.
On most days, I walked into town with Raya and would bump into moms and kids on playdates with one another, but rarely with me. I tried to reach out to some of the moms and hang out, but I always felt like an outsider who couldn’t quite break in. To be fair, no one overtly treated me like an outsider, and the moms were always kind and encouraging to me. But it was difficult to build cross-sex friendships as a young parent in a new place. This isolation was probably exacerbated by my own anxieties around making new friends, but the loneliness was palpable.
After a couple of years in Scotland, we added John to our clan, and I spent nearly a year being full-time dad to a toddler and an infant. Let me just say it was an incredibly long year. We’ve since moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, adding a second international move along with a global pandemic to our lives. With no family close by, starting friendships from scratch, different cultures, school starts for both kids, and a seemingly endless list of “new and different,” I’ve been slow to evolve. So, when people use the word “grumpy” to describe me, they are being charitable.
But I really do love my life, and feel like this is the story I was meant to live.
Along the way, though, I have realised the deficit in my life of stories that looked like the one I am currently living. I didn’t have narratives presented to me of men who stayed home with the kids. Women were the ones who were nurturing and suited for the home, or so I was told. The men who did so were seen to be shirking some God-given duty of protecting and providing, or filling a temporary gap as they transitioned jobs or something else. But that role seemed meant to be a short-term accommodation, not a calling.
I should take a moment to say here that there probably were more men who were primary care-givers than I realised, and I came across some when I had children. But, it is certainly true that I was never told that being a nurturing dad, who stayed home while his partner worked and provided financially, was a viable calling for me. And the models of godly men in my life worked while their wives cared for the kids at home. While my experience is contextual, the general narrative rang true during our time in the UK and does so here in New Zealand.
I do wonder, however, if different stories could have prepared me for this life I love so much. Would it have been easier if I had male role models who were primary caregivers? Would less rigid views on gender roles have freed me to embrace my call as dad earlier? What if there wasn’t such a stigma around cross-sex friendships in the church? What if we gave men (and women) different narratives to embrace, telling young men and boys that full-time parent could be what God has for them?
I’ll never know what witnessing alternative narratives when I was younger would have meant for me today. It’s just as likely I would have been overwhelmed by being a parent anyway, because it’s freaking hard, and no one is ever truly prepared. In the meantime, I’m grateful I can press into this calling. I hope that my children, at least, will see different narratives that enable and encourage them to thrive no matter where they find themselves.
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Matt McKirland works at Carey Baptist College, is married to Christa, and together they have two children: Raya and John.