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Angela Bushby welcomes her son Karl Bushby as he arrives back home in Hull following his 28 year walk from Chile. Alamy Stock Photo
ColumnRAISING THEM RIGHT
Could a mother go off on a 28-year walk and still be called a hero? I doubt it
British man Karl Bushby’s world trek highlights the double standards around parenthood, where fathers are celebrated for adventures, while mothers are made to feel guilty.
BRITISH MAN AND father-of-one Karl Bushby recently returned to the UK after an epic 28-year walk around the world, setting records and receiving a hero’s welcome. He is the first person to walk around the globe in one unbroken journey, covering over 50,000km. On his odyssey, he swam the Caspian Sea, crossed the Bering Strait and trekked through a host of treacherous jungles, searing deserts and many dodgy situations.
While it all sounds great to some (or just plain selfish) on paper, the reality is that Bushby walked out the door when his son, Adam, was just eight years old, leaving his ex-wife to handle the parenting. The idea that I or any other mother I know could simply walk out the door for even a weekend without huge amounts of prep, stress, worry and guilt, let alone swan off for 28 years, is so far past comical I don’t think there’s a phrase to truly encapsulate it.
28 years later, Bushby’s son Adam is now a 36-year-old grown man with a 12-year-old daughter of his own, a granddaughter the adventurer has never met. I can’t help feeling that if a mother did anything even close to ditto, she would be less likely to come home being celebrated as a record-breaking hero with crowds cheering and more likely to be branded as a bad mother.
A man’s world?
You think not? Just look at women in the public eye like Sophie Turner, Jess Redden, Rochelle Humes and Jacquleine Jossa to name but a few, who have been pilloried on the internet for having a child free night away, a holiday with friends or for working away from their children for short periods of time.
Bushby’s record-breaking global journey is clearly on the extreme end of the spectrum. In fact, it is the stuff of Hollywood movies. Forrest Gump just felt like running and set off across America. Matthew McConnaghy went into space to save the world and, in the process, missed the bulk of his children’s lives in Interstellar. Matt Damon got lost in The Odyssey for decades, only coming back when his son was a grown man and even then, he wasn’t in a huge rush to connect.
But it’s not just the land of make-believe that celebrates men who head off on long, heroic adventures. Bear Grylls, Ben Fogle and Alex Honnold have built successful TV careers out of it. Passions they have only been able to pursue because they have a partner at home who can do the school run, stick on an auld stir-fry, keep on top of the laundry and put the kids to bed every night they are off doing, you know, important explorer stuff.
Still, I don’t know many fathers who could be cool with leaving their child for a full 28 years. Bushby’s extraordinary journey is thankfully unique, but it highlights the glaring double standard that still exists when it comes to fatherhood and motherhood. Most mothers can’t just walk out the door at the drop of a hat to have some long, personally fulfilling adventure, and if they do, they often face much harsher judgment for doing so.
They are rarely, if ever, framed as a hero and are usually racked with guilt.
The hard yards
Parenthood requires personal sacrifice from both parties. Men and women often give up plenty of themselves along the way. Most have little time for hobbies they once loved or friends they used to see with ease, but from the very start, it’s women who tend to be tied more to their child and put their own freedoms or dreams on hold.
At first, it’s simple biology. We do the physical carrying of the baby; we go through labour and the bulk of the feeding. Beyond simple biology, however, systems soon get set by the society we live in. Paternity leave in Ireland is still just a measly two weeks, whereas maternity leave gives mothers six months and up to a year to bond with their baby and then often ends up being the one who gets set up as the default parent, with the mental load tacked on for good measure. It’s a tag that tends to stick with them for most of the child-rearing years, and one that might be shared more equally if there were a shared approach to leave in a child’s first year.
The truth is that for most mothers, just getting out the door once a week to the gym or to a hobby takes huge effort, while dads tend to slip out more easily. We know many mothers carry the bulk of the mental load of households. Many are so bogged down in kids’ schedules, dinners, homework, household tasks, thinking ahead to birthday parties, play dates, medical appointments and dress-up days in school, along with balancing their careers and maybe even looking after ageing parents, that the idea of getting away for a night seems as unobtainable as high tailing it off for 28 years.
But when it comes down to it, who would want to leave their child for so long and miss out on so much of their lives? Bushby’s reasons seem complex and are, of course, his own business. He does at least seem aware of the distance he still has to make in repairing his relationship with his now grown-up son.
He told The Telegraph, “It’s an odd one. There’s guilt there. That cross gets heavier the more the years go by. But you wrap it up in that container that is the mission. It’s the job. The way I squared the circle with Adam was by thinking that by doing this maybe I’ll have more meaning in his life, more value doing what I’m doing.”
While we listen, and we don’t judge, I imagine being there for the 28 years, seeing Adam grow, playing football with him, going to parent-teacher meetings, putting him to bed, reading him a story, or just having the lols on the school run might have added far more value to his life than being largely absent for it?
Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance writer, journalist and columnist with TheJournal.ie.
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