When the NYC At-Home Dads group pinged me a week or two ago about a request they’d received to help with a spot for the English-language branch of Al Jazeera, I was a bit flummoxed. I knew that Al Jazeera had been working to build a network that busted some of the stereotypes, but I had never had first-hand experience. How would a network best known as a powerhouse of the media world in the Arab world deal with at-home dads?
Pretty well, as it turns out. The piece below (a rough cut without graphics, etc.) is a nice, straightforward take on the subject, and one that isn’t wirhout its surprises.
My favorite bit? A quote or two from Audun Lysbakken, who is identified as the minister of gender equity in Norway. As it is, he is technically the head of the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion. Based on the existence of that office alone, Norway has jumped to the top of the list of places I would happily be an expat.
Permalink
Last week, I published a post about the importance of negotiations in winning the “daddy wars” between fathers and their employers. But the link I provided, as inspiring as it was, didn’t actually give much solid insight into how, exactly, dads are supposed to Fight! For Your Right! To Faaaaaaather! (Apologies to Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock)
So it was fortuitious that I saw this tweet by Kristin Maschka on WorkOptions.com’s Max Maternity Leave guidelines. This is a really smart and straightforward how-to for moms-to-be who are interested in having a baby and taking leave without blowing up a career. And while following this advice certainly doesn’t ensure that the maternal wall will be torn down, it’s certainly a start.
Now, the issue of guys taking paternity leave is fraught with issues that are different but just as tricky to navigate (if not more so). In a world of infinite time, I’d love to screw together this kind of resource for the guys, so that men who wanted to take full advantage of paternity leave could do so. My experience with leave was ultimately positive (and life-changing), but getting my employer to understand what the hell I was doing was far more complicated and dispiriting than I had expected.
If you have any tips on this, let me know in the comments …
Permalink
Earlier this week, I received a little surprise in my inbox: someone from the Martha Stewart show contacted me and asked me about the kinds of crafts and fun projects I did with my kids. This exposed the ugly underbelly of my real life: I don’t consider myself a particularly craft-oriented guy, and though I’d like to have a huge pile of fun projects in my arsenal, the fact is that I’m not a very creative parent. So I politely declined the opportunity to rub shoulders with Martha, but they are interested in hearing from guys who might be a little more, well, Martha Stewart-ish.
BUT … if you fit that bill, please let me know (rebeldad@gmail.com), and I’ll pass your contact information along to the folks at the show.
For what it’s worth, I did suggest a couple of dad blogs that might have good nuggets of how dads are getting creative with their kids: dadlabs.com and geekdad.com. Any others worth thinking about as the weekend approaches?
Permalink
One of my most fundamental beliefs is that we’re coming ever-closer to widespread “daddy wars.” Unlike the mommy wars, which is a media-created fiction in which go-to-work moms and at-home moms are engaged in some sort of rivalry, the daddy wars reflects the growing conflict between fathers and their employers on the exact contours of work-family balance. The old model in which dad trucks off to work for 8 or 10 or 12 hours, then comes home and sits in the recliner is long gone. Today’s dads want to have it all, and — increasingly — they’re going to be asking their bosses to give it to them. That’s instant conflict. Maybe even a cold war.
But it doesn’t have to been a shooting war. The Australian site, dadsclub.au, ran a nice piece on why negotiation is so important in making sure that employers understand how important family time is. Of course, proactively talking about work-life balance isn’t instantly going to change a century-plus of misplaced expectations, but it’s a good start. (Thanks to Marc at Equally Shared Parenting for the link.)
Interestingly, the whole daddy wars topic has quieted down. It was really hip three or four years ago, when people started wondering if the growing number of at-home dads would somehow get dads to snipe at one another, but I haven’t heard that much lately. Right now, the biggest dad-inspired parenting battle is over whether it’s a good idea to take your kid out to the bars …
Permalink
If you’ve been following RebelDad for a while, you know that I’ve been waiting with anticipation for a documentary film on dads from Dana Glazer called the Evolution of Dad. It’s slated to open on Father’s Day this year, and Dana just put up a new trailer for the film. Take 3 minutes out of your day, take a look, and be affirmed.
(My favorite line? “Fatherhood is growing up.”)
Permalink
I’m a week late on this, but over at the New York Times, columnists Gail Collins and David Brooks had an interesting debate about the future of men, given the ugly place we’re in right now, economy-wise. Collins makes a wonderful and compelling argument that perhaps we’d be better off if more guys were more willing to accept the mantle of at-home dad, thereby allowing their higher-earning spouse to go out and maximize her earning potential. (I realize this is a dangerous idea to get behind, because I don’t agree with the converse: that low-earning women should automatically default to the homemaker role. But still …)
Here is how Collins lays it out:
I think they should also be encouraged to stay home with the kids. In fact, we should celebrate it. In the grand sweep of American lifestyle choices, stay-at-home fatherhood is possibly the only one that doesn’t get eulogized in our popular culture.
Brooks on the other hand, a smart guy who has some of the most valuable real-estate in all of American, says that can’t work because of “evolutionary psychology, which suggests that women are just more nurturing.” Look, I love evoluationary psychology. I think it’s fascinating and thought-provoking. And I think that it does a piss-poor job of describing or explaining modern society. Swap the logic around, and women should be staying home in greater numbers and staying the heck out of boardrooms. Clearly, that’s not happening (thank goodness). Here’s his money quote:
In theory, I agree with you. Men should be staying home more. But I do think for many working-class men, we will find ourselves running into some pretty stiff headwinds. I come back to evolutionary psychology, which suggests that women are just more nurturing. … So I wonder how many former construction workers are really going to be willing to stay home, even if I suspect they would find it surprisingly rewarding.
The answer to Brook’s rhetorical question is simple: there are a lot of former construction workers who are “really” willing to stay home (I know some of them). What keeps those guys from taking the plunge has a lot more to do about outdated stereotypes (perpetuated by Brooks) than it does with evolutionary psychology.
Permalink
It seems like just yesterday that I was lamenting the continued discrimination against moms and would-be moms, warning that social forces that punished women for having children (or even looking like, maybe, someday, they might have children) would eventually come around and punish guys for the same thing.
Not, via the Wall Street Journal, comes the news that people are assuming that high profile men such as NASCAR’s Jimmy Johnson and tennis’ Roger Federer will get knocked down a peg or two by their impending paternity. The blog post by Sue Shellebarger has a telling headline: “Johnson, Federer and the New Dad Stereotype.” Kudos to the WSJ blog folks for the headline. The idea that parents suddenly lose their mind (or their career drive) when they have children is a pervasive and generally wrong stance.
While I suppose you could cheer that dads are slowly being held to a similar standard as moms, I’m not sure that’s the kind of gender equity we need. Maybe we should move in the other direction, and just start treating moms in the workplace the way we treat dads.
(As usual, the WSJ comments are pretty interesting on this one.)
Permalink
The Wall Street Journal published a by-the-number article on a new Catalyst report that shows that female MBAs are more likely to start at a lower level than their male counterparts, earning nearly $5,000 less. This isn’t a case of women with kids being hurt. The researchers assume that it’s a case of women being hurt because, maybe, someday they will have kids and set off of the fast track. From the WSJ:
Ann Bartel, an economics professor at Columbia Business School who studies labor economics and human resource management, says women may lag behind men for two reasons. In some cases, companies anticipate female employees will have children and do not include them in succession planning. The other reason is not driven by corporations, but rather by women themselves, who, anticipating the time commitment of a potential family do not lobby hard for plum positions.
I’m not sure about the second point, but they both make me uncomfortable. What it says is that a perceived willingness to put family first will sock you in the pocketbook. It’s worst for women, who are perceived as family-firsters just because of their gender, but it also suggest that if you’re a guy who wants to assume “daddy” as a core identity, you risk being cut out of the planning process.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue to say it: parental status does not signal bad workers, and may actually say the opposite. If you want to delve into this, get to your library and borrow Ann Crittenden’s “If You’ve Raised Kids, You Can Manage Anything.”
Permalink
Some quick hits as you go into your weekend:
- DadLabs.com just unveiled a redesign. Nice work, great site.
- If you missed it last week, the NY Times looked at President Obama’s work-life balance. I tend not to believe the air-brushed version of family presented for any public figure, which tempers the warm feelings generated by the piece. And I’m not aware of Obama putting any family-centric policies on his agenda.
- The Juggle at the WSJ tackled paternity leave. Comments are probably the most interesting part of the piece. I’d love to see a reporter really run paternity leave numbers. I think we might be close to the beginning of a revolution in that area. The very beginning …
- I get lots of crappy pitches from PR people. But I have to give credit to Clorox, which is pushing bleach by a) actually modifying their pitch to me so it seems to be about dads, b) invoking the 5-second rule and c) enlisting Samantha Bee (?) to hawk their products. I’m still a 5-second rule guy, but I give them points for effort.
Permalink
The “mommy wars” idea that woman can and do judge each other based on their current employment status is a real tragedy and something that has — for years — driven me bonkers. But at the end of the day, we’re all adults, and if some at-home moms want to give the stinkeye to go-to-work moms, it’s not the end of the world. Stupid, yes. Unnecessary, yes. But not off-the-charts tragic.
What is tragic is some new research from Kansas State. Here’s how it went down (from the K-State press release):
The researchers did a study involving undergraduate students, all of whom were single, and 99 percent of the sample had no children. Each participant first listened to one of three interviews that reflected a working mother, a stay-at-home mother and what the researchers called a middle mother.
The working mother said in the interview that she went back to work two weeks after giving birth and worked more than 40 hours per week. The stay-at-home mother reported having stopped working outside of the home after giving birth. The middle mother described taking 18 months away from work after giving birth and then going back to work part time and gradually increasing her work hours.
Then, each participant watched the same video of a mother and her 4-year-old son completing a puzzle and playing a game together. Because of the audiotape, the participants either thought she was a working mother, a stay-at-home mother or a middle mother.
The results? Not only were the go-to-work moms rated more negatively than the other two groups, that negativity extended to the kids. So, apparently, not only are we judgmental of the moms nowadays, we’re punishing the children as well. (I should be clear on the caveats here: these are undergraduates doing the evaluation, and 19-year-old college kids are probably not the most thoughtful or representative group on the planet. But that doesn’t make me less bothered.)
Of course, what I would be fascinated to see is a similar analysis of dads: I’m guessing that no one thinks that kids of working dads are screwups …