You can
spot South London’s stay-at-home dads by our single scuffed brogues. It’s like
a crap middle-class gang sign. The reason, I finally figured out after weeks of
Sherlockian puzzling, is simple. Many prams and buggies have their brake lever
at foot level. Releasing it quickly requires a swift upwards flick of your
right foot, which ensures that you look like a pro whipping the buggy off a
Number 37 bus, but over time makes a real mess of your Jasper Conran uppers.
I’ve yet to
strike up a conversation about teething with a stranger simply because of the
state of his footwear. But since my partner and I decided to go halves on our
year’s parental leave, I’ve found myself, when I’m not with my daughter, on the
lookout for similar discreet tics and identifiers. Because daytime dads and
other male child-carers are a shy bunch. For some reason we tend not to get
chatting very naturally at playgrounds and library story sessions. There are a
few dedicated dads’ playgroups (most on Saturdays, aimed at working dads), but otherwise
few informal networks, no online Dadsnet (actually, I
shudder at the thought of what a Dadsnet chat forum might
look like). Men looking after young babies in particular, whose range of
out-of-the-house activities is more limited than that of toddlers, can easily
assume that we’re an exotic and endangered species.
