In recent weeks this poem has swiftly taken on a life of its own, resonating wherever I have read it out, and online too. Someone suggested I republish it for Mothers’ Day – what a gift for a mum, among the flowers and cards, to have a vision for a world in which fairness for all was arrived at by healing men and boys. So to add visuals to the vision, I have added photos of men and babies and road trips from my life. Send this to your mum and any other mum you love, on Mothers’ Day.
Tell the mums we are on our way.
(Not a reader? Here’s a link to a video of the poem being recited)
We are on a road trip with Dad
We are sitting in the back
Marvelling at his broad shoulders and his thinning hair
Peering out the side windows at the now
Craning for a glimpse of the future through the windscreen
Are we there yet?
In suburb after suburb, town after town,
Men push prams on a Saturday
On a Sunday babies learn to swim with their men
Some of whom still drown in work and grog
Like their dads and grandads did
Are we there yet?
We drive past the centre for helping new families
The sign out the front still says
Dads don’t matter like mums do,
And so the men believe it:
“She’s here for the baby, I guess I’m here for her.”
No wonder some men don’t answer to Dad
For the first year or two
They feel optional.
For so many years so many have said
It’s time to change the sign.
Are we there yet?
On a weekday a man with a pram still stands out
When he’s trying to blend in
Patronised by a matriarch in the food court
She coos at him, as much as at his baby
Calls him the babysitter, thinks it’s his day off.
He thinks: paid work is easy
This is bloody hard.
He had hoped we were getting somewhere.
Are we there yet?
Later, on the news, it’s still mostly men behaving badly
Mostly men denying crises
Mostly men resisting reckonings
With women, children, the planet
Still clutching wealth, still buying power
Still mostly men, rich and poor, throwing their weight around
Must the world wait around so long for men?
Are we there yet?
Through suburb after suburb we drive on,
Through town after town,
Where mum after mum
Still carries more than she should have to.
But if you care to look,
You see men
Weighed down differently by the same wrong.
Dad after dad.
Weighed down by the shame of the centuries
And all that’s followed.
You see what they are carrying
You wonder where they’re going with it.
Are we there yet?
For so long men carried what they carried to the grave
As if no one told them
You can’t take it with you
It just gets left for your kids,
Unless you get it to somewhere better.
Are we there yet?
Imagine getting there!
Imagine rolling into town and knowing
You were somewhere better.
Where the work of loving pays as well as loving your work
Where women can walk alone down dark streets at night in peace
Where men in playgrounds and dance schools raise no eyebrows
Where teachers and nurses and child- and aged care workers
Are paid in money what they’re worth to people they help to live
And kids of all genders want to be like them when they grow up.
A town where babies born into the minds of all kids dreaming of parenthood
Are held there, the seeds of a someday childhood
Nourished equally in his mind, her mind, their mind.
So that all parenting, however different, starts out valued the same.
A town where a baby born to any parent from anywhere on earth
Has a fair chance at a good life.
What town can deliver such a miracle
That shouldn’t have to be a miracle?
This town, that delivers another miracle
That shouldn’t have to be a miracle
A town built from love of men
And grown rich beyond words
From their primary industry
The work of their hearts
The work of his heart:
To rest his gaze to meet who matters most
To play so playfully all forget
Everything else for a while
To be here, truly here
To make up for lost time
Lost by lost men in droves
Who drove us all to distraction
By things that do not matter
Who drove some – and sometimes themselves
To despair
To repair
What was thought
Beyond repair
To live longer, wiser lives
Fairer, more connected lives
More restful, less lonely lives
Where boys grow up tenderly held
And held lovingly to account
So all in town can thrive.
We are not there yet.
That town isn’t even on the roadside signs
With the distant numbers yet.
But we can imagine.
We can and we must imagine
We can and we must lie back
In the back seat
So we see only sky
And hear only Dad’s off-key singing
And smell his birthday aftershave
And feel the road under his steering.
Because we can and we must dream
Of driving into this town.
Of knowing at last we are there
Because he is there with us.
Easter Sunday – Mothers’ Day, 2025.
With thanks to the men and babies who appear above – and the women who don’t.
(We see you, and see that being better to you, and better for you, means seeing ourselves…better.)
The Normal Grown-Up 