I made a choice not many dads feel able to. I quit my job to be with my baby

I've quit plenty of jobs before.

I quit my first full-time job as a charity mugger after two days when a potential customer tried to break my hand.

I've quit because of low pay, toxic working environments, better offers coming along, or just curiosity to try something different.

My last job was with a trade union. By some margin, it was the best one I've ever had. It had good pay and conditions. It gave me the opportunity to use my brain, to be a part of a larger movement, and to help people.

When I took the job, I saw myself being there for a long time.

But I just quit that job too — not to take up something with better pay or more seniority, but to stay at home with my newborn daughter.

Reactions to my decision from friends and family have ranged from supportive to bemused.

More than one person expressed surprise that I would quit altogether rather than go part time. "Babies are expensive," one coworker helpfully reminded me.

It was a scary decision, but the choice I made feels more right as the weeks and months go on, and not just because I'm spending more time with my new family than I possibly could have otherwise.

It's made me reassess my own relationship with work — as a dad, as a man, and as someone who wants to live a good life.

I defined myself by my work

Whether it was in my last job or in my former career as a journalist, I defined myself by my work.

I looked to work to give me enjoyment and fulfilment, and to feel like I was contributing to something larger than myself. 

In my 20s I took jobs that were horrendously underpaid, or with debilitating workloads, and was grateful for the "opportunity". I worked countless unpaid hours on evenings and weekends and wondered why I didn't feel good.

Because my daughter was born just before reforms to parental leave took effect on July 1, 2023, I was only entitled to two weeks' parental leave from the government, paid at minimum wage. My workplace didn't offer any additional leave, they only offered to top up the two weeks' government leave to match my usual salary.

Rather than leave my wife at home with our newborn daughter before her stitches had even healed, I saved up every morsel of leave I could in advance — annual leave, carer's leave, rostered days off — and took six weeks' unpaid leave on top of that. I'm glad I did it, but it left us financially worse off during an already-stressful time.

The choice no-one wants to make

As our daughter's due date came closer, I expected I'd be back at work within a couple of months. But when she was born, she had some medical complications that resulted in her staying in a NICU ward for nearly a month.

During those weeks of fear, grief, exhaustion and hope, work had never seemed less important.

It made me ask questions I'd never considered before. If I went back to work, what exactly would I be working towards?

Would anything I did in my job be more important than going with my wife to our daughter's appointments? How would being in an office five days a week "provide for my family" more than holding my baby in the morning so my wife can eat breakfast and have a shower?

When I answered these questions honestly, the decision was obvious. I quit. I had given up enough in my life for work.

Working as a freelance writer, and with my wife's parental leave, we can just about make enough money to get by.

Public libraries are our new best friends, giving us somewhere to take our daughter and get ourselves out of the house without having to pay for the privilege.

More than six months after she was born, she's a happy, cheeky, thriving little girl.

I'm obsessed with her.

Many things about being a parent are miserable — I'm covered in an indeterminate amount of vomit as I write this.

But nothing would be as bad as having to say goodbye to her at 8am each day and watching her become who she's going to be as a distant spectator.

The other week she rolled over for the first time. Being there to see it felt more important and rewarding than anything I've ever done at work.

Everyone deserves to see those moments. I would have quit the best job on Earth to be there for it.

If you're wondering whether you should, stop wondering.

Alex McKinnon is a writer and journalist based in Sydney.