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* The Tribune has published a story about unemployed fathers…
This Father’s Day arrives in the midst of what has been dubbed a “he-cession.” Job losses have hit men with particular fury. The unemployment rate for men is 2.5 percentage points higher than that of women — the biggest gap since World War II — in large part due to plummeting employment in male-dominated fields like manufacturing and construction.
Perhaps reflecting the paper’s readership, the story focuses on upper-income men who’ve found themselves out of work and are enjoying their unemployment. The lede item is about a Lake Forest dad picking up his kids from day camp. Turns out, he was the president of a company whose severance payment “will last till the fall.”
Somehow, I don’t think that’s one of this state’s typical unemployed fathers.
* I’m actually writing from some experience here. As I think I’ve told you before, my father used to work at least two and often three jobs, mostly in factories, to support his five sons. When my mom took a civilian job with the Department of Defense and was sent to Savanna, IL for training, my dad quit his jobs and moved us there. The only available jobs in the region paid so poorly that Dad discovered he could make almost as much from unemployment insurance.
So, Dad stayed home and was “Mr. Mom” for a while. He grew a beard, bought a 1963 Cadillac convertible for a thousand dollars, read a lot of books, rented films and a projector from the local library for “family movie nights,” developed a love for “outlaw” country music, cooked our dinners, cleaned the house and generally ran things with military precision. We were able to rent a huge, gorgeous brick home on a hill in Hanover for practically nothing, and Dad turned out to be a genius at stretching every last dollar.
He was quite the talk of that little town back in the mid-1970s - an unemployed, bearded man who lived in a nice house, spent his days at the library and picked up his government check in a Cadillac.
Most importantly, though, Dad was able to get some real rest and do some extended philosophical reflection for the first time in his adult life. Also, my brothers and I got to know our father for the first time. I was 13 years old when we moved to Hanover.
It wasn’t all fun and games. We had lived for years near my maternal grandparents, whom we all loved dearly and missed terribly when we left. Also, like any unemployed person, Dad occasionally had too much time to think about things. In the long run, though, it was a positive experience for the family.
* My experience and the happy talk Tribune profile of upper-class dads are obviously not your usual unemployment stories. This economic crash has caused severe pain out there, even in leafy suburban villages. We shouldn’t ever forget that.
Still, that Tribune piece did bring back a lot of memories, and for that I’m thankful. I’ll close with a photo of my dad and my mom’s dad taken not long before we left on our excellent adventure, which eventually took us to the Great American West and then to Europe…
Happy Father’s Day to all.
posted by Rich Miller
Saturday, Jun 20, 09 @ 5:29 pm
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