Free Little Kids, Big City: Tales from a Real House in New York City (With Lessons on Life and Love for Your Own Concrete Jungle) by Alex McCord, Simon van Kempen Page A

so fortunate that I was 20 years into my career when François was born, which meant that I’d passed the stage of working 70 plus hours and six days each week. I remember early on in my first marriage, when I was just launching my hotel finance career, that in addition to those 70 hours I was also at night school four nights each week. Putting in those hours both at work and school is no way to conduct a successful relationship let alone parenthood, at least not for me.
    While I was always incredibly ambitious and held day dreams of being a millionaire by the time I was nowell make that 40… the reality is that I still must work for a living. However I am at a level where I can earn an incredibly good salary while only spending around 50 hours away from home each week, including my commute. After François was born I made a decision to slow down a little career-wise as I felt it more important to have a couple of extra hours a day with my son(s) than work extra hours to add thousands more on to my pay package. I was in the fortunate position that I was earning enough to make that decision. I know many can’t, BUT I have also watched many dads, particularly in banking and law, who work incredibly long hours and whose time with their children is pretty much limited to weekends. It’s now just over six years since François was born and the time really has flown. I can say that I would have missed an awful lot of fun watching François and then Johan develop if our time together had more or less been limited to non-working weekends. And not a day goes by when I regret the time we’ve had together.
     
    Alex
    Although I would never describe myself as a social conservative, I do believe in honoring relationship commitments. I believe that marriage should be allowed for everyone, gay and straight, and divorce should be difficult. Marriage is not disposable, and for that reason when the kids are about to drive you crazy you have to remember that you and your spouse were there first. We’re very lucky that we’re able to pay our nanny extra for two evenings a week to go out, either just the two of us or with friends or to events around the city.
    I think it’s important to remember what we like to do, and make time to do it every once in a while. It may seem absolutely ludicrous when you are balancing one or more children and who knows what else in your life, but sometimes even a lost hour of sleep after the kids are in bed, spent reading a book, watching a movie or just talking with another adult is an investment in your sanity. I love to read, we both love opera, shopping and theatre, and Simon loves vegging on the couch watching tennis or golf while checking the cricket scores online. Simon and I love to take advantage of the new restaurants opening in our city constantly, and are big fans of tasting menus. We like to get dressed up in tuxes and ball gowns and sit in darkened opera houses while men and women sing beautiful, heart-wrenching music in front of gorgeous sets. The bottom line is this: whatever it is, be it facials once a month, bowling with the guys or underwater basket weaving, every happy parent I know has figured out what they need to maintain in order to stay “them,” and work with their partners to make it happen. There’s nothing worse than parents being so focused on the kids that there’s no time left to nurture the relationship. Once the kids are grown, then what?
    When we do spend time together away from the kids, we make sure the children are happy when we leave and have been very careful to choose caregivers we trust whose presence is also a treat for the boys.
     
    Simon
    Honestly the hardest thing about parenting in a city is not that we are in New York City, but that we are both thousands of miles from our own families. Alex’s mom lives in Dallas, Texas, her two brothers in Texas and Kansas and my mum lives in Australia. I have two brothers also in Australia as well as a sister in Hungary.