An interview with a British-born educator who’s been living in the Netherlands with his Dutch wife since 2019. He became a father in 2021 and has been navigating the joys and pitfalls of international family life ever since.
How has fatherhood been so far?
Really great in some respects and really not great in other respects.
What do you enjoy most about being a father?
A sense of creating a family, having something with my wife that is unique.
What are three things you are very good at or believe are your strengths as a father?
I am good at playing with my son, possibly because I am a bit of a big kid myself. A lot of rough play like rolling around on the floor. Another strength of mine would be being patient and staying calm, if my child is stressed out. Just staying calm in general.
What are some things that you struggle with?
In the first year of being a father both my wife and I were ill a lot, just general infections. My son was going to nursery and catching loads of things, so parenting while not being able to sleep at night and also being sick. Other people may cope with a lack of sleep better than I do.
My wife is also better at letting him get messy and be messy, which I know intellectually is completely fine and good. But for whatever reason I find it very stressful. When he gets messy, I find myself cleaning him on the go and even though intellectually I know it isn’t necessary, emotionally I find it hard to deal with.
Do you and your son share any family rituals?
Playing wildly, throwing him around. Another ritual we share is bedtime, brushing his teeth, going upstairs, getting into his sleeping bag, reading a book or two, sing him a song that I have sung him since he was a newborn.
How was the first period after the birth? What did you appreciate the most and what would you do differently in case you were to have another child?
Something we would have done differently is my wife would have taken more paid leave off work. As this is our first child, we did not have a reference point how much time we should take off work. Our son did not sleep well, he was on the worse end of the spectrum, and we had a lot of sleepless nights. Had we known what we know now, one of us would have taken much more time off work, we really did not know what we were entitled to. On the other hand, something I appreciate is having taken my full paternity leave. I work three days a week and my wife works 4 days a week. I think it strikes a good balance between our child going to the nursery and our child being home.
How is being a father as an international?
The ability to live where I want is great, however, there are also downsides. You do not have your community around you. There’s a saying – it takes a village to raise a child – if you move away from your village it’s harder to raise your child.
I was brought up in the UK, but not in a typically ‘British’ way as both my parents are immigrants. As such I don’t feel a strong attachment to the UK. However, I notice the difficulty of not having family around. Although my wife is Dutch, she has only one parent and who lives an hour and 45 mins away by car, so he’s not very close by. So, we do not have so much of a support structure around, which is definitely something difficult when you are international young parents.
Besides not having a robust structure, are there other aspects such as the language or the culture that have impacted your journey as an international father?
We had my son during COVID and hence a lot of in-person things like playgroups were not operational and that made it harder to meet other parents early on. Although that’s now starting to happen, I do think it’s more difficult as an international to meet Dutch parents. There’s still a language barrier even if they speak good English and I speak okay Dutch. It still causes a little bit of friction in the normal social courtship. It would have been easier to make friends in the U.K. given the language.
However, there are many benefits to bringing up children in the Netherlands that are obvious now, like that kids are so much more independent here – they are cycling around from a very early age.
I feel very fortunate that I worked on my Dutch to a point where I can get by. I think I would feel much more isolated if I did not speak and of the language. At least with parents, you could have a conversation in English but as for other Dutch kids, you can only interact with them if you know Dutch.
Did you and your partner make any specific decisions or choices in that area that have helped you?
Besides me actively pursuing learning the language, I think joining a playgroup that has roughly the same parents every week is a great decision we made. You get to know these parents and I have made a couple of friends from that, which is much easier than going to a random play group with different parents every time. Consistency I feel is very helpful in making friends. I would definitely recommend this to parents who do not have friends in the same stage of life.
If you were back in the UK, do you think your partner would have a different experience as an international mother?
The language barrier would not have existed, and my wife would not have had her old friends, whom all happen to be around now. I probably find it easier to make new friends and for that reason coming to the Netherlands would have been easier. In general, though, I think it would have been relatively similar.
You expressed your interest in facilitating dialogue groups for fathers with Parenting across Borders, where does this interest come from?
I am very much into meditation and being a part of meditation groups has made me familiar with spaces where people share safely and openly, where we can talk about emotions, or about anything we need. Most men have few opportunities to learn the skills to talk about their emotions. Most men that I know will not talk about their struggles in helpful ways with their other male friends, unless given the right context. Having a space for men to do that would be very, very helpful. Differently helpful than for mothers, we experience slightly different challenges due to different cultural norms and different socialisations.
