It is surprisingly hard to describe my first time attending the National At-Home Dad Network’s annual conference.
As I told the attendees during my keynote speech, “Stay-at-home dads are like exotic birds. Everybody knows they exist, but seeing one in the wild is completely disorienting.”
It was completely disorienting to speak, drink, and dine with such a large, diverse, and enthusiastic group of men who made the same decision I made three years ago to become a stay-at-home dad.
HomeDadCon (as it’s called) was amazing, empowering, and transformative – but so unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced.
When I try to describe it, I think of a difference I noticed between how the At-Home Dad audience reacted to a joke and how a typical audience would react.
I noticed it during a convention-wide session when the presenter asked everyone to describe ourselves without saying what we “do.”
My response was an “ok,” joke. Maybe a 5 or a 6 at best.
While a normal crowd would react with a respectable laugh or chuckle, the HomeDadCon crowd reacted like they were on Showtime at the Apollo when I responded, “My name is Chris Gaffney and I exist in-between the moments when my daughter needs to go potty.”
The different reaction illustrates HomeDadCon’s community-building superpower.
Everyone there just “gets it,” when it comes to an unconventional lifestyle that most other men don’t “get.”
Each of us speak the same language, tackle the same obstacles, experience the same highs and lows in the offbeat, isolating, and vulnerable lifestyle of: stay-at-home dad.
It’s the only convention I’ve ever attended where attendees are encouraged to skip sessions if they have even the faintest need for a nap.
The content is amazing but from start to finish the focus is on the dads. On the attendees, their self care, their families, and the flourishing community of HomeDadCon, now in its 27th year.
Though the presenter who asked me that question spoke frequently of sweat lodges, that’s not what HomeDadCon was – unless you count the fact that it was over 100 degrees outside and my hotel room’s air conditioner didn’t always work.*
*Which I count.
HomeDadCon couldn’t have been a sweat lodge because most of the communal spaces were freezing.
When it comes to temperature control at your next conference, I rate no place higher than the Residence Inn Phoenix Downtown.* **
*Provided that the environment you want is perfect for hugging a 7-foot-and-3-inches tall man who’s wearing a body-length Snuggie blanket with extra-long sleeves.
**And further provided that your conference is conducive to hugging and has at least one 7-foot-and-3-inches tall man (and correspondingly large body-length Snuggie with extra-long sleeves) as our’s did.
Everyone’s welcome at HomeDadCon; it is an open and affirming space.
During my keynote I asked the crowd if they all, “knew we were all feminists” and they shouted back, “yeah!” and, “obviously!” And were very receptive when I tied that energy to strong women of the past pointing out that there’s only space for us in the nursery now because we’re standing on the shoulder-pads of giants.
The convention’s opening remarks included a plug for the organization’s trans-positive t-shirt and the most-talked-about breakout session taught the art of fingernail painting.
Our most-disciplined attendees congregated for pre-dawn runs passing our differently-disciplined attendees who were just heading to bed after the late-night craft beer fundraiser for scholarships within our community.
It is a remarkable collection of people with a solid emphasis on mental and emotional well-being.
My only regret about attending HomeDadCon 2022 is that I also didn’t attend HomeDadCon 2021, 2020, and 2019. The prior ones would’ve been awkward since I was neither home nor a dad.
Having now opened the door to Dad jokes, I must amend my last statement to include the regret that on every elevator trip taken after learning superstitious people built our hotel, I was too slow answering the button-pusher’s question of, “Which floor?” with the hilariously misleading answer of, “13.”
So much for beginner’s luck.