weekend dad
- noun
- /ˈwiːkˌɛnd dæd/
:
padre de fin de semana
- As a weekend dad, he looked forward to taking his kids to the park every Saturday.
Examples
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Is it better to live unhappy for the rest of your life to be a daily fatherly figure in your children's life, when your unhappiness will surely rub off on them, or is it better to leave and be the weekend dad?
Blog text (19) -
Don't... don't make me do the weekend dad thing, please, Eve.
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The father is reduced to a weekend dad, unfortunately.
Blog text (22) -
After the divorce, he became a weekend dad, spending time with his children on only Saturdays and Sundays.
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Many families face challenges when one parent becomes a weekend dad due to separation.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a father who only sees or cares for his children on weekends' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'weekend' (the leisure period at the end of the week) with 'dad' (father); the noun–noun composition follows a common, predictable English pattern. This concept is also readily inferable cross-linguistically (many languages use an equivalent 'weekend father' construction), so a B1 learner who knows both words will very likely understand the MWE.
Etymology
The compound noun weekend dad comes from the simple image of a dad who only looks after his children on the weekend, usually Saturday and Sunday after a divorce or separation. That's why it means 'a father who only sees or takes care of his children on weekends'.
