A Dad Fighting The Good Fight – To Be Called First By School

When the phone rang from my daughter’s elementary school, with just two days left to the year, I scrambled to answer it. By some iPhone quirk it went to voicemail after just a ring.

I wasn’t overly worried. I figured there was a 90 percent chance that the school nurse was calling with a reminder to pick up my daughter’s inhaler.

More than that, I was thrilled the school was calling me and not my wife. One, she was in the city at an important client meeting. Two, I was the one picking our daughter up. And three, I had been banging on for years that schools should call the parent whose name was at the top of the list first; they shouldn’t scan the form and call mom. And, look, they were calling me!

Well, I was right about the first two.

When I listened to the message, it began, “Hello Mr. Sullivan, I spoke with your wife, and she said you’re doing pickup today so I should call you…”

That’s all I needed to hear. Once again, the school nurse had scanned the parent contact form to find my wife’s number and call her first. My wife isn’t at the top of that list. She’s not even second. It’s me, my father a.k.a. Grampy who helps out a lot, and then her.

Why is it set up this way? Because during the school day, my wife is most likely in a meeting where being interrupted wouldn’t be ideal, but even if she could take the call, there’s nothing she could do about it. She runs her own asset management firm, and her days are packed.

We’ve set up our life so I’m the one whose work schedule is designed to accommodate calls from schools, doctors and dentists. My name is at the top of all the forms, which I fill out.

Equity for parents, particularly working moms, begins when smart, well-meaning people stop doing stupid, lazy things. The irony? The school nurse, surely a smart, well-meaning person, also happens to be a working mom, but still she went into default mode. It cost her time – she had to scan for mom and then call two people – and it perpetuated the stereotype that all care-related tasks are done by women.

I’ve been banging this drum since my days as an Undercover Lead Dad and now have a platform through The Company of Dads to bang it louder – though evidently not loud enough.

Here’ the rub: my wife had taken our teenage daughters into the city with her. We decided they were old enough to go around alone while she was working. When the phone rang, my wife, fortunately, was done with her meeting and having lunch with our girls.

On our walk that night, she told me what our 15-year-old said after she hung up with the nurse: “Dad is going to lose it that the school is calling you first, again!”

She knows me well – and my hope is she’ll live in a world where she’s only called first if her name is at the top of the contact form.