A Sandy Hook Dad Is ‘Fathering On’—

When Parents Go

Suddenly Solo

By Nancy K. Crevier

When a spouse and parent dies, the imbalance in the partnership of the family can become painfully apparent.

As the father of three teenage girls, Bill Hart is amazed at how frequently families are willing to fall in to the trap of “single point failure” parenting, and not just because he was thrust two years ago into the role of a solo parent when his wife of 20 years, Kathleen, died.

Mr Hart, a self-employed engineering consultant, is familiar with the concept of single point failure; it is an engineering term designating a part of a system with no backup, so that if it fails the whole system fails. It can be applied, he has observed, to traditional parenting roles in which one parent holds the power concerning family and household matters and the other holds the power in earnings and outside matters. The inability to allow the other partner in on that information, he said, can be catastrophic when something happens  — whether it is divorce or death — to remove one of the parents from the picture.

The blog that Mr Hart created this spring, fatheringon.com, digs into that subject, as well as other life-lessons on gender roles, housekeeping tips, and solo parenting. He muses thoughtfully on acquiring skills to keep the household running, his good luck despite the sorrow in his life, and his frustration with a world that continues to believe it is only mothers who can keep the family on an even keel. Gender roles in particular are worth getting people talking about and interested in, said Mr Hart.

In his initial blog in March, he wrote, “When raising three daughters, one can’t help but be acutely aware of gender role issues. The pressure for girls to do ‘girl’ things is still there, even in this enlightened age. For example, trying to convince your daughter that an interest in science or technology won’t make you a social outcast is not easy.”

The blog is also somewhat cathartic, he admitted,  as he deals with the changes created by the loss of his wife to cancer, and more recently, the loss of his mother to cancer.

Prior to starting Lone Oak Technologies from his home five years ago, Mr Hart had fallen into the typical lifestyle of a corporate worker. He traveled a great deal of time and worked long hours. He counts himself ironically fortunate that even before he and his wife were aware of her illness, they had made the decision to move on from that particular lifestyle.

“It’s difficult to say what the roles should be [for fathers and mothers],” said Mr Hart. “I had seen, though, how women could be intensely obsessive about parenting. Kids probably do benefit from having mom and dad come at parenting from different directions, but if everyone protects their own little ‘fiefdom of knowledge’ it can become a problem,” he said.

Working from home allowed him to become more involved with his three daughters, Alex, now an NYU student, Bri, a freshman at Newtown High School, and Colleen, a student at Newtown Middle School. “One of the things I’ve observed is that ‘quality time’ is a wish. Parenting is a quantity thing, not a quality thing. You just have to be there. It’s the mundane things that become the important things.”

As he was merging into a role that integrated him more with his family, Kathleen was diagnosed in 2006 with a fast growing and very rare form of gall bladder cancer. “We knew very quickly that the outcome would not be good. There are not a lot of treatments available for this cancer,” said Mr Hart.

Even working from home, he realized there were still gaps in his knowledge that he had to fill to create a family would not succumb to a single point failure when his wife was no longer there.

“I don’t think Kathleen ever doubted my ability to raise the girls, nor do the women who know me. Other women — and men — were amazed that here was a man who knew how to cook and how to clean the house. My nightmare is that had we gotten that phone call five years earlier, it would have been overwhelming. How could I have been there, with a full-time corporate job, for Kathleen and for the girls?” he asked. “Kathleen and I laid out that what was important was raising the kids.”

New Responsibilities

While the immediate objective after Kathleen’s diagnosis was to allow her to spend as much time as possible with their daughters, some of the smaller routine jobs that had fallen on her now became his responsibilities. Not a morning person by nature, he was now the parent who got up at 5:30 am to make sure each of the girls was ready for school and on the bus at the right time. With each of the girls in a different school on a different bus schedule, it was a job that lasted from shortly after 6 am to nearly 9 am. He also became the point man for rides to and from after school activities. “I started finding out where all of the friends lived. At the time, I didn’t even have the phone numbers of the friends’ families,” recalled Mr Hart.

The learning curve since his wife’s diagnosis and death has been sharp at times, but not so sharp as it would have been had he and Kathleen not serendipitously decided to veer away from designated roles. He realizes that he is in an atypical position. Many men in corporate life are not able, mainly because of business practices, to step away from their demanding job roles and build up quantity time with their families. “I was lucky to be at home,” said Mr Hart. “I’ve also had time to think about gender roles in our society. We have to change our society and decide that raising children is a key part of life. We need to make child care an inherent part of our society. And businesses need to recognize that we need to be parenting, whether it is men or women in the workforce,” he said.

Because his family made the effort to make their family a multiway partnership, he has transitioned into the solo parenting role with a fair amount of ease. “The girls recognize that as a family we have a lot to overcome and want to help. We are all very flexible about how things are done, and don’t really even designate chores. We just have learned to recognize when things need to be done, and do them,” Mr Hart said.

Managing The Little Things

Even so, learning to manage the minor tasks of running a household to get everything accomplished can be surprisingly time-consuming, he said, and little things like keeping the inside of the dishwasher clean, must be demystified. Household chores are secondary, however, to navigating life with three young women.

“I try to deal with most things matter of factly,” said Mr Hart, “and the girls help each other a lot, even though Alex has been away at college.” What is difficult is dishing out advice on friendship and social situations from a male perspective. “That’s why this after school time is so important. I find the girls are more apt to open up to me at that time of day. You have to listen, and you have to be sensitive. I try to give them tools to put issues in context and not get hurt,” Mr Hart said.

There are some areas that he does not assume his knowledge is what his daughters need. He is doubtful his fashion sense would be well-received by teenage girls. In the blog of April 21, Mr Hart added, “My direct involvement in their clothing purchases would inevitably lead to fashion and parent-child relation disasters.”  He counts himself lucky that his daughters are at an age and capability that he can provide them with an allowance and the independence to do their own shopping. “If I stay out of the way I find that they make good choices,” he said.

He has also learned the necessity of managing his work time so that late nights do not interfere with family time or his ability to get up and at ’em early each day. Channeling his stress into healthy outlets has taken on more importance, as well.

“I used to motorcycle for recreation, but I stopped because I haven’t come to terms with the risk of my girls losing me, too,” he admitted. He does manage his stress through a serious exercise program, however, reading news, books, and listening to podcasts while he works out. “And I do enjoy my work time, as well as household projects; as long as they are going well, they can be relaxing,” Mr Hart said.

He returns to the importance of avoiding the single-point-failure trap of parenting, though. “I’ve learned that life is more valuable because it does end. It’s unfortunate when it comes earlier than you expect. I would ask parents, do you really have the balance you would like to have in family life? Families need to look at what is going to make them happiest as a family. Then you may have to make some difficult decisions, managed carefully,” suggested Mr Hart.  “You need to ask yourself if you are prepared as a family to deal with a loss, and not have a single point failure.”