The default parent is usually Mum. So what happens when it's Dad? Adib Jalal writes about how showing up every single day taught him what it really means to be someone's safe person.
In the middle of the night, I would hear a shuffle and the crackle before a cry fully forms. In an instant, I would be up checking his cot, ensuring he is safe, ready to wipe him clean, checking the clock to see if it’s time to make a bottle of milk for him. His particular frequency had somehow been hardwired into me from the time he was a newborn, and over time it became something else. In most households, this wiring would be with the mother. In ours, it’s the dad.
How I became the default parent without realising it
There was no single moment when I understood that I had become the default parent, only moments I couldn’t ignore. He would pick a book and walk past everyone else in the room to sit in my lap. He would run to the door when I come home from work, even when his mother is standing right beside me. During meltdowns, I was the one who could bring him back. And sometimes, unprompted, in the middle of play, he sings my name. Abah. Just to say it. Just to check that I’m there.
The term “default parent” mostly lives in the language of mothers, and with good reason. Research shows it usually is them. But my son reached for me early and hard, and the role only deepened with time.
Why the default parent role fell to me
This was not by design. My wife navigated early motherhood while recovering from a difficult pregnancy, a C-section, and a wrist condition that made holding him painful for almost a year. While her body couldn’t do what she wanted to, she held other parts of him: ensuring he dressed well, ate nice food, and had good photos. For everything else, I was the parent keeping this little human alive and thriving.
Circumstances made me the default in the beginning. But as I kept showing up, the loop did the rest. The more present I became, the more he came to me, which made me more present, which made him come to me more. One storytime at a time. Because of this, I got better at picking up the slight changes in his tone and demeanour. I could meet him at how he wants to play or read. I could understand and interpret his mispronounced blabber. None of this knowledge was given to me. I accumulated it slowly, by being around, and trying repeatedly.
But as the default parent, his biggest meltdowns also come to me, not away from me. Sometimes I think this meant I was doing something wrong, but I also want to believe that he saves his biggest feelings for his safest person.
The part no one talks about: default parent burnout
It feels extraordinary to be needed this much. It is also exhausting to be needed this much. Both are true. Neither makes the other smaller.
On days that I am emptied out, his presence often lifts me in ways I don’t expect, but not always. He will not let me watch my shows. He pulls me away and demands something else entirely. But Mom can watch hers undisturbed. The result is jogs that never became habits, writing that went quiet, the football games that I stopped playing. Somewhere in the accumulation of his needs, I lost track of my own.
There are days and evenings where I slip into the bedroom and close the door, turn on white noise to soften the sounds of his playing, and lie down in the dark hoping he will find his way to someone else. Relief and guilt arrive together, every time. Sometimes I hear him ask for something and feel the pull to get up and help, but I don’t, because I need the hour to do my own thing.
Why I wouldn’t change it — and why that’s complicated
It feels ungrateful to name the exhaustion alongside the love. But I think the exhaustion is part of the love. I think you cannot carry something this fully without feeling its weight, and feeling the weight doesn’t mean you’d put it down. I grew up with a dad-shaped void, which makes me fully aware that being a dad, let alone a default parent, is a privilege. So all I do is be the dad I hope my son will be one day.
My son didn’t choose me as his default parent because I’m his father, or because he doesn’t love his mother. He chose me because I was able to show up in ways that he needed. That will change. In a different phase, his mother might become his safe space, the one he runs to, the one whose name he sings. I hope at some point, more of the world will feel safe to him, not just me. But for now, I am the one he defaults to.
Adib Jalal is a senior millennial who thinks about cities for a living. Outside of work, he writes about what he notices and creates things that don’t quite belong anywhere else. He is also an amateur dad.
