Leslie Morgan Steiner Is Coming Around
Posted on 08. Dec, 2008 by Brian Reid in General
A couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time dinging Leslie Morgan Steiner for the utter failure to think about fathers in the compilation of essays, Mommy Wars, she had published. Ironically, those posts led to the Post asking me to contribute weekly to Leslie’s blog to give a voice to fathers.
I don’t think that I can claim credit for this, but it’s clear that Leslie is beginning to realize that parenthood is a two-sex kind of deal now. From her interview with my erstwhile colleague and the hardest-working guy on the parenthood beat, Paul Nyhan:
“Fatherhood has changed so much more than motherhood in the last 30 years.”
We were talking about research that shows dads are spending more time on childrearing in this era of co-parenting and two-career families. We appeared to agree the challenges of the modern dad are under covered in the media, though not underreported here. …
Few moms have spent more time ruminating on the challenges of modern motherhood, and Steiner wasn’t downplaying the juggle of modern moms. But we agreed dads are too often not part of the parenting dialogue, even though we are bigger players than ever.
RebelMom
08. Dec, 2008
How can fatherhood have changed so much without a corresponding change in motherhood? In other words, if fathers are doing so much more, why don’t the statistics show women doing that much less (we’re talking day-to-day parenting here)?
I find this disparity fascinating.
I fear the answer is that fatherhood has changed for a few men on the fringe of the bell curve (like Paul and RebelDad readers) but that for most, it has stayed quite the same. That’s a significant change, of course, but doesn’t fundamentally alter gender roles in parenting.
Dave
09. Dec, 2008
Why can’t the change mean that more kids have two parents operating at the same time… the team concept as opposed to the hand-off concept?
Kids have benefited from having Mom and Dad at the table at the same time. Dad doesn’t just take little Jimmy fishing.. and when he does Mom’s likely to come too. .. thus Jimmy gets to see both his primary role-models interacting and doing things differently.
Why are we so quick to think Mom’s are doing less because Dad’s are doing more? Isn’t there enough to do in parenting that we could all use a few more hours in the day?
If someone gave me an assistant my workload wouldn’t be less… but the amount of one-on-one attention my kids get would go up.
Ameda
09. Dec, 2008
It’s not a wise thing to say that Dad contributes more to the parenting or Mom, I strongly feel both sexes contribute equally, I mean there are so many other things apart from parenting both the sexes have to do, be it work, society or anything else, therefore I feel both contribute equally to parenting.