RebelDad

Posted on 28. Oct, 2003 by Brian Reid in General

For a look at a very different side of at-home fatherhood, the latest New York Magazine is worth a read. The cover story focuses on a growing but generally ignored cross section of Rebel Dads: gay parents. It’s a topic I haven’t seen elsewhere in the media, at least not with this kind of treatment, but bloggers might be familiar with one first-person (actually, first-persons) account from Daddy, Papa and Me. The New York piece has a lot of detailed anecdotes and makes for a compelling read.

The Better Homes and Gardens story that I had heard about was every bit as hackneyed as the New York piece was novel. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a good story, or a positive one, it’s just that I’m beginning to feel, after a year of blogging and years of reading every at-home dad story I can find, that it is plenty easy to write the same ain’t-this-interesting story about dads (funny anecdote, marginal statistics, brief bit on the challenges, another anecdote, etc. etc.). Even the stat the author plucks out of the ether (2 million at-home dads, according to the 2000 Census) is probably inaccurate (can anyone point me to a 2000 Census doc on the number of at-home dads? I’m fairly certain — but not convinced — that number doesn’t exist).

Finally, Sunday’s New York Times Magazine story on “The Opt-Out Revolution,” is being knocked from all kinds of angles in the Times’ reader feedback section. There are some good posts from the RD perspective and some nasty critiques from elsewhere in the parenting spectrum. Rebel Dad didn’t feel capable enough to point out some of the feelings of modern feminists or those who don’t have the economic options as middle-aged white women married to six-figure-making men. The Times readers, however, appear to be more than capable of making those points.