The AP's Take on At-Home Dads
Posted on 12. Jun, 2008 by Brian Reid in General
These kinds of stories are going to be as common as ragweed pollen this weekend, but before I get swamped, I wanted to point to an AP story from a couple of weeks ago taking a 30,000-foot look at at-home fatherhood (and at athomedad.org’s Mike Biewenga). As much as I like Mike, it’s the kind of story that I’m looking forward to seeing less of as I get older. I don’t think that the cold shoulder from moms is a big problem today (though it may have been in the past), and I don’t think that the isolation that at-home dads feel is all that different from the isolation that *any* at-home parent faces.
I don’t mean to dismiss what are no doubt very real concerns for certain guys, but I get the feeling that these issues are slowly fading away.
Ethel
12. Jun, 2008
This line made the article worth it for me:
‘”Well be at a party and the moms will be talking about their stuff, and the guys will be talking about their work, and Im not really part of either conversation, he said.’
Been there. DH doesn’t fit into either conversation (like this guy) if the guys are talking about jobs (they seem to try to talk about other stuff to include him more), and I want to be in both conversations – talking jobs with the guys, and talking childbirth, grocery shopping, and parenting with the ladies and career with the guys. I feel ilke my choice of converstation symbolizes a dichotomy between “Mom” and “breadwiner” that I need to choose between. Most of our friends are traditional families, and there is a clear male / female split whenever more than two parents of each gender are in the same room.
It’s not a cold-shoulder issue for us, though – it’s a “common experience” issue. Childbirth and breastfeeding come up a lot with the women – DH can’t relate to that, and doesn’t really care. And while he can talk about his old job with the guys, that’s practically another life by now.
Strangely, it’s these traditional parents who really get the closest to “getting” it. But so help me, if I hear a woman tell me that “Men can’t multi-task” one more time . . .