If You Read One At-Home Dad Piece This Year …

Posted on 24. Aug, 2010 by Brian Reid in at-home dads, gender equity, media

… read Salon’s “The shocking new normalcy of the stay-at-home dad,” by Aaron Traister.

Traister’s thesis is pretty simple: based on his experience in a blue-collar, old-school Philly neighborhood, at-home dads don’t shock or interest much of anyone. The lead anecdote is about a charming interaction with a representative character: a wizened old woman with a nasty racist streak who nonetheless had come to celebrate the new reality of the involved father.

Everywhere Traister looks, people are nonplussed about his at-home dadness. The other dads in his circle don’t feel isolated. His right-wing Texan in-laws are big fans. He says that “Ninety percent of the men’s rooms I visit have a changing table (the other 10 percent are usually in adult bookstores).” He celebrates the Swagger Wagon commercial, the commercial where a dad eats an Oreo over a webcam with his kid and the spooky Earl Woods Nike ads are all proof that active fatherhood is hip. (All of those examples are a bit of a stretch, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that.)

Here’s the thing: though Traister’s experiences match mine — I’ve never received the cold shoulder on the playground — I’m not sure I buy the argument. We’re not there yet. I still don’t see universal changing tables. I still meet dads who feel isolated. My new PTO has about two dozen officers and committee chairs, and only a single one is a guy (he is on the “safety committee”).

But the fact that Traister can make a compelling case for the fact that primary caretaker dads are ho-hum means that we are getting closer to gender equity. It’s good news for dads, like Traister, who are confident in what they’re doing: they’re going to be accepted almost anywhere. (One of the unexplored ideas in Traister’s story — which matches research findings by Texas’ Aaron Rochlen — is that dads who are comfortable with the at-home thing tend not to be isolated or negative about their position.)

So go read the piece. It might not reflect reality for most of us, but the fact that it’s not total fantasy is a huge step forward.

[NOTE: I should note that I'm saying these nice things despite the fact that Traister takes a good-natured dig at me and my obession, earlier this year, with diaper marketing. He may have a point.]