(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]
 

The Guardian has been polling #StayAtHomeDad-s about their career choices; I have no idea if this will ever go anywhere but it gave me a chance to talk about the #OnlineSafetyBill

2022-12-29 00:51:37+00:00

The Guardian seem mildly obsessed with this topic, but a few weeks ago they posted a request for stories about being a StayAtHomeDad (having previously done so in 2017) — and I responded as attached. Of course I have no idea if they will use it, but it strikes me as worth sharing.

Tell us about your experience of being a stay-at-home father

It’s been exhausting – moreso coming to this as an older dad but I can’t do anything about that – but also cathartic and amazing.

My partner works from home and I juggle caring for the baby (nearly 18 months old) as well as immense amounts of laundry, cooking, cleaning, and other household logistics.

I have no idea how I would do this without bringing project management skills and tools from the tech industry; and I have vast respect for anyone doing this job without the benefit of an amazing and dedicated partner; but the reason I’m doing this at all is that in my 30s I saw too many of my male peers crying into their beers after late nights and weekends at the office and on travel, telling me how much they hated not being at home with their kids.

It’s not a story of it gets told very much, but I also privately vowed not to be that person if ever I’ve got the opportunity.

Social media is a lifeline, especially some parts of Reddit and its associated forums. The stuff about mental health and self-care are existentially important to manage.

Do you have any concerns?

Oh yes, I have concerns, but the most enormous one at the moment is the “Online Safety Bill” which to most parents sounds great but speaking as an acknowledged expert in encryption and online privacy, it is… well, it’s stripping from my daughter the opportunity to have the kinds of privacy, assurance and integrity that to date we have all taken for granted, in the names of “protecting” her now.

But that matter is meant to be my job, and if in 20 or 30 years time my daughter becomes a whistleblower, or a climate activist, or something entirely new, and if the online safety bill is allowed to take away from her (in the old section 104, it may have been renumbered this week) privacy tools like end-to-end encryption and WhatsApp and Signal and SecureDrop and Tor which are necessary to do that work, then I will have failed to keep her future self, safe.
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[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/16471
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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