Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Pampers First, Now Graco
Note to baby-product makers: alienating half of your potential market is not a bright move for you (and frustrating for those of us out here trying to make the point that dads and moms are equally capable of parenting. And buying stuff.).
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Lawyer Dads (The Inbox is Full Today!)
And here's a request for lawyers-turned-at-home-dads. E-mail Julie directly: athomelawyer@ <at> yahoo.com:
I am an attorney/mom who is writing a book for the legal audience (to be published with a legal publisher), and I am looking to interview stay-at-home lawyer dads about their experiences. Might you know of any lawyers turned at-home dads who might be willing to speak with me by phone or email? Or, might you be willing to post on your site that I am looking to interview men who fit this description? I am finding locating at-home lawyer dads somewhat challenging, and can only imagine that your site must get hits from dads meeting this criteria.
Thank you in advance for your consideration. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Julie Tower-Pierce
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Call for NYC Area At-Home Dads
In my inbox this morning:
You can contact Alice directly ...I'm a reporter for 1010 WINS NYC's all news radio station - Wanted to know if there are any "rebel dad's" in the NYC metro area- I am looking to do a Fathers Day story - and need the latest frustrations and issues concerning stay at home dads-
I can be reached by email or 646-739-7904
I look forward to hearing from you!Alice Stockton-Rossini (alice@asrvo.com)
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Thursday, May 24, 2007
What At-Home Parents Do All Day
Carolyn Hax -- who writes an amazing advice column for young people -- let loose yesterday with probably the best answer ever to the staggeringly dumb but omnipresent question of what at-home parents do all day.
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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
News You Can Use
I am far too busy this week to do a very good job of posting here, but I have information that I felt it important for you to have immediate:
Before I pulled the plug on the reader poll, I managed to get some relatively good perspective on the beer drinking habits of y'all. Guiness was far and away the most popular brew, with about 20 percent of you noting it as your favorite (sorry, Dayv).
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Monday, May 21, 2007
Amy Joyce Post: Revision/Apology
Last week, I took down the reader poll when it looked like it wasn't an entirely fair way to learn more about you all, and today I took down part of my post last week on the maternity plans for Washington Post reporter Amy Joyce when Amy wrote to let me know that I wasn't being accurate or particularly fair. Here is the amended section:
[In the original posting, I wondered aloud why there wasn't more discussion of Steven's time off in all of this. Amy was gracious enough to post about their plans in the comments to this post -- "Steven's taking up to seven weeks of vacation time to spend with the little one. He won't take it all at one time, but he'll try to take it all, depending on the bosses. The Post offers four weeks of parental leave for men and women. However, if both spouses work here, only one can take it." I've deleted the original conclusion, as it was -- quite simply -- wrong. Apologies to Amy and Steven, and best of luck with the little one.]
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Anne Heche and At-Home Dads
For a number of reasons, I don't post much about celebrities here. I'm not sure that they're particularly representative parents, and I quickly tired of pieces about how Michael Douglas/Russell Crowe/Ryan Phillipe were doing the at-home dad thing only to see them continue to pump out films.
But this Anne Heche thing caught my eye -- not the part about all of the wild charges thrown at Heche by her husband (and at-home dad) which may or may not be true and which I really don't care about -- but rather this part of Heche's response to the accusations:
For the past several years, the child's father has refused to get a job in order to contribute financially to the child's care.
I recall, in happier times, Heche crowing about how great it was to have an at-home dad. And I don't know if this is some sort of lawyer-driven positioning, but it makes it sound like at-home fatherhood is just an excuse to avoid paid work ...
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
A High-Profile Maternity Leave
The Washington Post's work reporter, Amy Joyce, is about to go out on maternity leave, and she wrote a thoughful piece on it last Sunday. Earlier this week, much of her weekly WashingtonPost.com chat focused on the column. I was ready to give her a hard time for not mentioning her husband's role in all of this (he's also at the Post), but she *did* mention that he was part of the whole calculus.
During the chat, someone asked her point-blank about the prospect of paternity leave:
Washington, D.C.: Have you and Steven discussed the possibility of his staying home with the baby for some period of time? A guy in my office worked for the first six months of his baby's life while his wife stayed home, then he stayed home for the next six months. It can work.[In the original posting, I wondered aloud why there wasn't more discussion of Steven's time off in all of this. Amy was gracious enough to post about their plans in the comments to this post -- "Steven's taking up to seven weeks of vacation time to spend with the little one. He won't take it all at one time, but he'll try to take it all, depending on the bosses. The Post offers four weeks of parental leave for men and women. However, if both spouses work here, only one can take it." I've deleted the original conclusion, as it was -- quite simply -- wrong. Apologies to Amy and Steven, and best of luck with the little one.]Amy Joyce: We have. We've discussed just about everything, it seems. And I'm thrilled that there are so many choices out there these days (it seems). I think Gen X has changed the way we work, frankly. Things our parents never would have considered are bring proposed to bosses in many different workplaces now. I know not everyone can do many of the options that are out there, but it's nice to know some companies are willing to give different proposals a try--for working parents or non-parents alike.
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More Evidence of the Utter Lack of Daddy Wars
Chip wrote me yesterday to point out a wonderful American Prospect article (not available without subscription) written by the wonderful Echidne on the lack of coverage of the show-stopping report from the UK that suggested dads who don't take paternity leave royally screw up their kids.
It's funny -- I had the UK report mentioned to me by all kinds of people, but Echidne is right -- it says a great deal that the marginally useful NICHD research on child care gets headlines way out of proportion to its conclusions, yet the news that absent fathers have a measurable negative effect get overlooked.
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Getting to Know You (Less Personally)
I wanted to you all to know that I've taken down the link to the reader survey from last week. Below is what I've appended to that post. I'm sorry for any suspicion or inconvenience this may have caused. -- Brian
[EDIT: After receiving a few e-mails and comments wondering about the personal information in the ready survey -- and the apparent inability to opt-out of those questions -- I've taken down the link to the survey. As always, you're more than welcome to e-mail me an introduction or just start commenting. Apologies.]
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Monday, May 14, 2007
The Gender-Role Revolution: We Still Have Work to Do
I'm emptying my inbox this morning and found this delightful note from the Pampers people (ital mine):
Dear Brian,
From the moment you first held your newborn
baby in your arms, you knew that things would
never be the same again. Suddenly, you’ve
become a teacher, a nurse, a coach, a playmate
and a friend. But, above all, you are a mother.
Because your little one may not yet realize how
hard you work every day, we at Pampers would
like to thank you for everything you do. Happy Mother’s Day!
The struggle continues ...
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Sunday, May 13, 2007
Happy Mother's Day
This Mother's Day, the recent addition to our family means that I am twice as lucky to have RebelMom as I was a year ago. She is an incredible and patient mother and wife, and my goal for the next year is to try to make every day Mother's Day for her.
RM, I love you.
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Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Last Word (Maybe) on Salary.com
I'm not the only one taking Salary.com to task for sillyness every year. The Wall Street Journal's numbers guy takes another swipe at the absurdity of it all, including this valuable and interesting commentary:
I asked Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who criticized the Salary.com estimate in my column last year, if she had any further comment. She replied, “What about my dog’s annual salary? She guards the house and warms the bed (Al Gore would approve — no electricity used). She cleans the floor — really well — if something spills. She’s my personal trainer and lowers my husband’s blood pressure. She heals as well as heels. Tally up that sum.”Credit where credit is due: at-home (and working) parent deserve a lot more respect/status than they generally get, but trying to stick a price tag on the whole thing kind of misses the point.
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Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Getting to Know You
I have to be honest: it's been nearly five years, and I really don't know you -- the readers -- all that well (other than you, Dayv. And Tim and Pete. And Keith. And some of the commenters).
[EDIT: After receiving a few e-mails and comments wondering about the personal information in the ready survey -- and the apparent inability to opt-out of those questions -- I've taken down the link to the survey. As always, you're more than welcome to e-mail me an introduction or just start commenting. Apologies.]
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Thursday, May 03, 2007
Cross-Promotion/Snip-Snips
Since vesectomies are the topic of the day, I'll put out yet another plea for a recording of Chad Curtis singing "Goodbye to Sperm" at the 2002 At-Home Dad Convention. Chad? Anyone? It was an instant classic.
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The Six-Figure Job You're Not Being Paid For
Salary.com is getting its annual boost from its goofy story on how much moms would get paid if at-home work was valued at market rates. Not much has changed since last year -- though upward pressure on wages means a $4,000 "raise" is what moms would be worth.
Despite having a year to fix it, the survey still does the same things wrong as last year. They still assume at-home dads work significantly less than at-home moms, and they assume that the mix of work is different, with dads doing stuff around the house that has a higher value in the marketplace.
Salary.com may have very good reason for twisting the number this way, and if they ever wanted to justify their contention that the work of at-home dads is somehow signficantly different, I'd love to hear it. But as it stands now, it's just puzzling ...
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Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Goodbye, Slowlane
As I noted yesterday, Jay Massey has taken down slowlane.com and Peter Baylies is transferring much of the applicable content to athomedad.com. It's an acknowledgement of the obvious and probably a healthy thing for the at-home dad community in general.
It's hard to imagine this now, but there was a time when slowlane was really the hub for all things at-home dad. It was central to the communication and planning around the At-Home Dad Convention, it encouraged and supported dads groups around the country, and it gave a forum to dads across the world. It published some of the best writing on fatherhood and managed to keep up -- for a time -- with media coverage and highlight resources. It was a one-stop shop. To the extent that there is anything approaching a national community of at-home dads, Jay deserves a good deal of credit.
But it was time for the site to go -- in addition to its virtual abandonment over the past five years, the growth of the web has made sites like slowlane less important. And while I celebrate the efforts of the guys behind athomedad.org to build the same kind of critical mass, they will have a massively harder time. When I started this blog about five years ago, there was nothing on the web for at-home dads beyond slowlane and a wonderful (now defunct) site called Being Daddy. Now there are all kinds of groups and blogs and forums and resources spread out all over the place. It's not one-stop shopping, but there is a richness and variety that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
I wish Peter the best of luck culling through the debris -- I'm sure there will be some real gems there -- and Jay the best of luck as he focuses on what's next.
And -- as always -- if you have a resource for at-home dads that I haven't yet linked to, please drop me a line.
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Tuesday, May 01, 2007
It's Official: Slowlane is No More
Peter Baylies made the announcement today: Slowlane.com has folded, and Peter's athomedad.com site will continue to host the parts of the site that remain active, and he'll be combing through the archives to preserve some of the quite-wonderful work that accumulated there during its decade of operation.
The end of slowlane.com deserves a more complete obit, and I'll get to that soon. Though I've been an advocate for the site's revival or elimination (one or the other) for some time, there is still sadness at seeing a part of SAHD culture disappear.
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