By all accounts, one of the biggest concerns that Rep. [crscore]Paul Ryan[/crscore] had about running to become Speaker of the House was the loss of time spent with his family. Away from his wife and kids most of the week in Washington, D.C., weekends are the only time he gets to be with his family, at least when Congress is in session. Progressives chided Ryan for wanting to be with his kids on the weekends while not supporting paid parental leave (which is an apples to bicycle seats comparison, but whatever), while the media breathlessly wondered if his devotion to family was going to jumpstart a national conversation on work/home balance.
Honestly, I doubt it. Quite frankly, I’m not sure a national conversation is needed. Family discussions, on the other hand, are absolutely necessary, and I guarantee that Rep. Ryan didn’t decide to run without talking to his wife and kids about the sacrifices that would come with his election.
I certainly sat down with my wife to talk about writing a book with my friend Jim Geraghty, and both of us weighed what it would actually mean to my time at home, given the fact that I already have a full-time job that involves a fair amount of traveling. Ultimately, we both agreed that being a part of writing Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get A Job, Get Married and Other Manly Advice was too great an opportunity to pass up, both personally and professionally. We also set a writing schedule that guaranteed I’d be home to spend time with my family at least several nights a week and during weekend days. I crammed in a lot of writing in the early morning and late night hours, just as I’m sure Paul Ryan will be squeezing in even more work during his days in D.C. so he can maintain not just the semblance of a family life, but the real thing.
Dads (and moms) do this all the time, all over the country. I know long haul truck drivers who are gone from their family for weeks at a time in order to put food on the table and calling home each and every evening without fail. I’ve had friends deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq on multiple occasions, leaving ever-growing families behind for months at a time. They missed their loved ones fiercely, but that didn’t stop them from doing their job. It’s some of the heaviest lifting we can do as parents, and it doesn’t get any easier with time, but we’re grownups. We deal with the absence the best we can.
In Heavy Lifting, I talk about my own time working in the D.C. area during the week and commuting home on the weekend. I did it for a year and a half, and it never became routine. Tuesday nights were the worst. Monday night you could at least think back to the past weekend, and once Wednesday rolled around it was a downhill slide, but on Tuesday nights the weekend always felt a million years away. I had a weekend work obligation every so often, and when I couldn’t make it home for the weekend I’d drive three hours on a Wednesday or Thursday night just to sleep in bed with my wife, tuck my kids in bed and take them to school in the morning. And given the fact that my family was just three hours from me and not half a world away, I was always thankful that I could make that drive, unlike the men and women serving overseas. Some sacrifices are bigger than others.
I imagine the demands of a House Speaker are large, and the sacrifices that come with the job title are substantial. But I suspect that if the desire to be an involved parent and a loving spouse is there, some sort of balance can be found. As a fan of less government, I’m all in favor of politicians spending more time being parents and less time trying to serve as nannies to the American people.