My wife just launched a new, very cool thing. And my tenure as the deputy editor of this website began six long weeks ago.

But when you've got a sick kid, there's no sending him with the nanny or bundling him off to the daycare. Someone has got to take care of that kid, and if your family lives far away, that someone is going to be one of the parents.

Through this episode, I've been thinking about the difficulties of the two-working-parent household. Whose job should take precedence? Who has to call everyone and cancel meetings? Who shoulders the responsibility of family?

For most of the people in previous generations, the answer was easy: Mom. She'd take care of it! In our family, we have tried to maintain as much parity in parenting as possible, for my sake, as much as for hers. I love spending time with our son, and have arranged my whole life to see as much of him as possible. Being a competent father is important to me, and I'm doing pretty well for a first-timer, I think.

And yet—in this first real moment of distress—we found ourselves defaulting to the societal norm. We both assumed that my wife would take care of our son, and my work days would continue like normal.

Our son, however, had other ideas. For some reason, and for the first time in his life, he decided that he could not be more than three inches from me at any time. Eating, he sat in his high chair, holding onto my shirt. Nursing, he wanted to dangle his feet onto my arms. Sleeping, he crouched next to me and laid his head on my belly, before scooting up onto my chest and drifting into dreams as he had as a newborn.

Alexis Madrigal

My wife handled this state of affairs beautifully, not least because she had some essays to edit. I, on the other hand, felt the full weight of parenthood finally pressing down on me. The buck stops with me, I thought, but I am not the buckstopper. For as involved as I've been, and as much as I've tried to prioritize our family, when cry came to scream, I could always hand him off to my wife and she could always pacify him.

Now, it was on me, and he was sick, and he was sad. And I had work. Lots of it. Something had to give.

It was exceedingly hard to say, "Hey, I need to take some time off to care for my sick son." Most workplaces, blue or white collar, would not be nearly as receptive to this request as The Atlantic. But even having a sane, respectful employer didn't make it easy. What was holding me back was something bigger than the company.

The state of affairs is absurd and is worth saying out loud: I've been led by a sexist culture to believe that men don't take care of sick kids. That's what Moms do.

But here was my son clinging to my legs, crying, and lifting his arms to me like I was the only person in the whole world who could make him feel better. And, for these few days at least, I was.