Moms, Dads, Harmony, Baloney and Babble
Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
(I’m about to rant about an article on Babble. As my blood pressure is about to spike and my grammar and logic will go all to hell, please check out the story now, before you get blogged down in my spittle-spewing rage. (Unless you’re boycotting Babble. Which I totally respect.) Do not read the first half of the piece. Go down to where they start quoting kick-ass at-home dads like Phil Andrews, Hogan Hilling and Lance Somerfield. Just read that.)
Apparently, the Babble people have a friendly bet with the Pamper people to see who can drive me the most nuts. Up to this point, the Pamper people have had an edge, but Babble stuck back in a big way this week, with this piece called “Playdates with Other People’s Husbands.”
The title is a tip-off. The piece is about playdates with dads. But it doesn’t say “dad.” It says “other people’s husbands.” On the surface, this has a steamy OPP vibe to it. I mean, if this were a piece about the strange dynamics between, say, male and female surgeons, I can’t imagine someone referring to a respected female cardiologist as “another person’s wife,” as if that were the most salient fact. But, hoo boy, throw a dad and a kid into a coffeeshop at midday, and you apparently teleport into some kind of repressed-sexuality-driven soap opera.
It goes downhill from there, describing author Jamie Rich’s experience meeting an at-home dad for the first time. She writes about it as if she’s Jane Goodall and has just found some strange and alluring tribe of parents. I’m not saying that it’s inconceivable that a mom could go 3 years without seeing a caregiving dad, but I find it amazing that Rich finds it amazing to actually be talking to an AHD.
Apparently, Rich isn’t the only one who lives in her bubble. She does a very scientific poll of her 300-odd Facebook friends and found that only one (1) has regular contact with a father. The odds of this are pretty staggering (especially when you consider that she used to live near my old stomping grounds. I mean, I was a 6′ 3″ redheaded stroller-pusher. I was pretty hard to miss). But it says a lot about where she’s coming from: a world where dads and moms don’t ever meet. I don’t live in the world. And neither do more and more people. Which is good.
At the risk of repeating myself: any tension, sexual or otherwise, between moms and dads at the playground is purely an illusion. If you’re a mom who feels uncomfortable because the guy next to you at Music Together is smiling and laughing a lot, it’s in your head. If you’re a dad who feels like you’re getting frozen out by the moms at the park, it’s in your head. In pretty much every workplace in this country, men and women work together without hand-wringing about the consequences. And it should be no different when your office is the playground or the ice cream shop or the YMCA.
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The Public Weighs in on Delivery-Room Dads
Posted on 11. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
The folks at Jezebel were nice enough to re-publish my piece on dads in the delivery room last night. The discussion has been interesting, with a couple of different camps. First, you have the group that think I’m dead wrong to suggest that this is any sort of imperative:
How about you leave it up to the mother instead of telling her how it “should” be done? If I were delivering today, I would by no means want anyone in the delivery room with me except the doctor/nurses. I may well change my mind when the time comes (I’m not pregnant yet!) but if I don’t change my mind, I don’t want to be guilted about leaving my husband or parents out of the process. The father has the next 2 decades to parent the kid; not being present for the first moment is not going to get his dad card revoked.
The second group is just as confused as I that this is even a topic of debate:
My husband and I are not planning to reproduce. However, if we did, and he were not in it for the conception and the delivery, I would kill him. If I have to do all of it, he at least has to watch. That’s how you gain appreciation.
Anyway, good stuff … they’re at 332 comments and counting over there, so if you feel you need to weigh in, there are plenty of people ready to disagree with you.
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More Love for the NYC Dads
Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Check the video:
In the interest of full disclosure, this isn’t a particularly groundbreaking clip. (Seriously, can we retire the practice of showing snippets of ‘Mr. Mom’? It’s gone from being borderline offensive to just plain cliched.) But they do say nice things about Lance (if you’re a NYC at-home dad and don’t know Lance and the great NYC Dads Group … um … now would be the time to check ‘em out). They also link, their web page, to my at-home dad stat roundup. So I’ll give ‘em a pass. This time.