Quick Hits, Coming Attractions
Posted on 05. Apr, 2006 by Brian Reid in General
The at-home dad news stream is a bit dry right now, but there are a couple of corners of the blogosphere worth peaking at. Jeremy over at Daddy Dialetic has a long post on SAHDs and identity and the future. I disagree with some chunks of it — I don’t think the numbers are a good way to analyze at-home dads, and I happen to believe that “Mr. Mom,” is not the best term of art. And while dads are not pulling their weight at home, as Jeremy mentions, our share of the household labor continues to rise. But I agree that we’re moving in the right direction, towards a world where parenting isn’t a gendered concept.
One playground at a time.
Lest you think that I’m all about the rose-colored view of fatherhood, there is an interesting thread on SAHD burnout over at the forum at Dadstayshome.
Coming soon to a website near you: just a reminder that tomorrow at 1 p.m., I’ll be on a Washington Post chat with Leslie Morgan Steiner. Also, watch for the rollout of a major new rebeldad.com feature (beta) tomorrow morning …
Hogan
28. Nov, 2010
Let me clarify. My point is that I think most dads regardless of whether they work or stay home have a different parenting style or way they care for children than most moms. However, a person’s personality also comes into the equation. And yes, when it comes to gender there is always exceptions to the rule.
Tina admits that as much as she wanted to be the at-home parent it would be difficult for her. And that she would have done it differently than me. She also admits that I’ve done one hell of a job and maybe better than she might have been able to do.
Mr. Mucho Macho Man
Isn’t that a song by the Village People?
Jeff
05. Apr, 2006
oooooohhhhhhh
A new feature. I’ll just hang out here and wait the next 24 hours just hitting the “refresh” button every now and again.
That thread on burnout was a really good one. There’s some good advice to be found in there.
Stephen
05. Apr, 2006
The daddy dialectic link is broken.
I sort of agree with him about Mr. Mom. Setting ourselves up as being all sensitive about labels seems like a bit of a mistake. I find that people can use it in a fun pop-culture way, or throw it at you with some real derision. But at the end of the day creating a taboo just reflects our own insecurities.
As to the numbers, I wish there were an easy way to do a web census of SAHDs, with the role being defined as “primary caregiver”.
Jeff
05. Apr, 2006
Personally, I couldn’t disagree with the “Mr. Mom” thing more.
I am not a mom, I do not mother. I am a father, and by his definition, I do father…. and more. The ideals he’s mentioned are exactly the types of stereotypes that create the awkward looks we get on the playgrounds.
Its not an insecurity issue, at least for me. I’m parenting, not mothering. Usually, I’ll take the title with a grain of salt, unless its said in a negative tone. Then I tend to take the same defensive stance I would take were someone to call me a slacker for not “working”.
Jeff
05. Apr, 2006
and yeah…..
I’m still here waiting for the “new feature”
Jeremy
05. Apr, 2006
“The daddy dialectic link is broken.”
That might be my fault; I messed with the title. The link is http://daddy-dialectic.blogspot.com/2006/04/dad-vs-mr-mom.html
There Elizabeth at Half Changed World makes an interesting, cautionary point about my post: “As a working mom (whose husband is home with the kids), I worry that your definition of ‘mom’ implies that working moms — whether the kids are in day care or with dad — aren’t ‘real moms.’” There’s a dialogue developing around that; I won’t repeat here.
I suppose my post started with the visceral knowledge that the term Mr. Mom has not (to date) bothered me. Why? I worked backwards to find the answer. I suspect that there might be a very strong San Francisco bias at work here; this morning I talked to a couple of Bay Area dads, both “regular guys,” sort of, who agreed that Mr. Mom didn’t offend. For better or worse, most people here really do believe that a gender role is something you can put on and take off, like a hat. Genderbending is as much a part of San Francisco as fog and hills. From that perspective, being a SAHD puts you on the same continuum as drag kings and queens, etc. — people you see everyday in SF. I like the solidarity that can evolve from such an association, and what it implies: just one more queer in a city of queers. But it’s just one perspective. You can call me Mr. Mom, but I’m going to call you whatever you want to be called.
I think we all agree that we want to stretch the term “Dad” to encompass caregiving and “Mom” to include breadwinning, with everyone having more options.
Stephen
05. Apr, 2006
I really think Jeremy’s instincts are ahead of the curve on the Mr. Mom thing.
Once you stretch the definition of dad to include nurturing, and mom to include working, then the distinction between the two becomes politically and socially meaningless.
If there are no distinct qualities that we can point to, then it makes no sense to differentiate between the two kinds of parent, except very narrowly for things like breast-feeding.
Of course statistically speaking it makes perfect sense to talk about moms and dads having a different set of preferences. As a group. But that doesn’t give us any safe assumptions about the role of any one individual.
Hogan
06. Apr, 2006
New movie release: Mrs. Dad
Tagline: Stay-at-home mom accepts her husband’s challenge to reverse roles.
After Chucks wife, Debbie, complains that he isnt living up to his role as the breadwinner, he challenges her to reverse roles. Chuck quickly adjusts to his new role as the primary caregiver and outperforms Debbie in every aspect. Debbie, however, just cant seem to get a handle on her new role as the breadwinner. Its just that shes never done it before, and really doesnt have a clue
Naahhh. Hollywood would never attempt to do such a movie.
Hogan
Hogan
06. Apr, 2006
Many women also seem to have this facination to want their husband’s or boyfriends to show their feminine side or turn them into “girly” dads. Sorry but I don’t have a feminine side. I’m a frieken guy! I only have a masculine side.
My wife, Tina, has never asked me to show my feminine side. And I have never asked her or would want Tina to show her masculine side.
Tina has also been great about letting me raise and care for our boys the way a dad does and is suppose to do it.
The other day Tina paid me a compliment and said how much she appreciated the way I parent as a DAD. And I told her how much I appreicate the way she parents as a MOM.
And then we had sex!
Hogan
Stephen
07. Apr, 2006
Well I guess that would make you a Mr. Mucho Macho Mom. (Just kidding-we dads can take joke right?!?
Actually that is a pretty good point. But I think it just adds the confusing layer of function vs style. The function SAHDs perform is primary caregiver (traditional mom role) even if they perform that role in a manly man way.
Most of us, including myself, have a more masculine parenting style than most moms. And we are probably more likely to enjoy beer or sports.
But you can’t nail down slippery gender roles with the masculine style argument. There must be plenty of Tom-boy moms out there who love wrestling with their kids, chugging pints, and playing baseball. I wonder if they would resent being referred to as Ms. Stay at home Dad?
Jeremy Adam Smith
08. Apr, 2006
Over at Half Changed World, Elizabeth wrote of working moms: “We [mothers] often beat ourselves up for the things that we don’t do, without giving ourselves corresponding brownie points for the things we do. Maybe we should stop worrying about whether we’re good enough mothers, and decide that we’re damned good fathers.”
The provoked a good discussion parallel to the one that’s happening here. I responded: Look at all the ways language has shifted over the past thirty years, in response to the newfound cultural confidence of populations that previously considered themselves oppressed or marginal in some way: once “heeb” was one of the worst things you could call a Jew; now it’s the name of a great magazine (http://www.heebmagazine.com/); once “Bitch” was a word no feminist would use; now we have blogs like Bitch Ph.D. and a magazine called Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. One of the fruits of greater social power and freedom is that such words lose their sting.
In the various threads, including this one, you can see that we as a culture (assuming you take the threads as representative) are very far from consensus about what mothering and fathering mean; things are changing in a big way, and if current trends continue, there might be a huge generation gap between us and our children and grandchildren, with many unintended consequences. Revolutions — maybe I should say evolutions — have a way of leaving the revolutionaries behind.
I don’t consider this outcome to be preordained. We can lose a lot of ground in thirty years.
But, taking a page from Hogan’s book:
New magazine titles for the year 2036: “Fathering: The Magazine for Working Parents” and “Mothering: The Magazine for Stay-at-Home Moms and Dads.”
Since this is 2036, print magazines won’t exist anymore. But I anticipate about 2 million unique visitors a week for “Fathering” and about one million for “Mothering.”
Of course, in 2046 they’ll merge and the new magazine will just call itself “Parenting.” Unlike the magazine that today holds that name, this one will really be for both men and women, and not just women. (Or maybe, they’ll fragment into smaller and smaller demo- and pyschographics. Or maybe there won’t be any magazines as we understand them, just blogs linking together. But now we’re rather off topic…)