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.
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Dad Researchers: Looking for a Place to Publish?
Posted on 09. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Via the Sloan Work and Family folks. Can’t wait to see what research makes its way into the issue. If you’re a dad researcher, and you submit, I’d love to know more about what you’re up to.
Call for Papers: Special Issue
Fathering – A Journal of Research, Theory, and Practice
Topic: “Men, work and parenting II” – Deadline August 1, 2010Special Issue co-editors: Linda Haas, Indiana University, USA, lhaas@iupui.edu and Margaret O’Brien, University of East Anglia, UK, M.O-brien@uea.ac.uk
Papers that address linkages between men, work and family are invited for this special issue. Possible topics include: men’s constructions of caring; effects of public policy on men’s ability to combine paid work and family caregiving; impact of employment on men’s caregiving; men’s strategies for work-family harmonization; men’s breadwinner attitudes and behavior; men’s work and family tradeoffs; effects of overload and overwork on men’s relationships in families; impact of caregiving on men’s employment; men’s use of workplace or government policies designed to facilitate combining work and family; characteristics of father-friendly workplaces; the fatherhood “wage premium.” Papers that include diversity by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status and social class as well as those that cover more than one society are especially sought. Papers should be sent to both editors, copied to Fathering editor Andrea Doucet at fathering@carleton.ca.
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More on Keeping Dads Out of the Delivery Room
Posted on 08. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
I have been baffled by the recent backlash against dads in the delivery, which is one of those things that seems to make such perfect sense to me that I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the counter-argument.
First, the New York Times ran a piece suggesting that men are sufficiently grossed out by the miracle of birth that it actually kills passion. Then, some doc in France said that having dad around is bad because it stresses mom out. Now comes the idea that the pre-natal period — in which dad, no matter how many Lamaze classes he attends, is kind of on the outside looking in — conditions would-be dads to see themselves as useless when the kid actually emerges.
I love Strollerderby’s take on why this is dumb:
So, instead of keeping dad away, maybe the answer is as simple as acknowledging that the period of pregnancy and birth can be weird and awkward and alienating for him. We can talk more about the differences between men and women’s experiences. We can give mom permission to go though a distinctly female experience without feeling like she’s a sell-out to women’s rights. We should look harder at why dad is feeling so passive in the delivery room. And give him better tools to help his pregnant/birthing/lactating partner in a way that bolsters confidence.
And — once again, for the record — I am adamant that dads be present for childbirth for one simple reason: there are few times in life when we can make it crystal clear to dads how powerful and important the job of raising, teaching and protecting a child is. One of those time happens in the delivery room, and I shudder to think there are people interested in eliminating that moment.
(Hat Tip to Jason Sperber for pointing this out.)
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Hope for Magazines About Parenting
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
I have, for years, been despondent about the state of the parenting-magazine market, which has — like the majority of the baby-industrial complex — aggressively and intentionally marginalized dads.
This wasn’t the result of some mom cabal, either. There are plenty of guys editing at and writing for these magazines. If you look far back enough, you can even find my byline in some of the larger-circulation parenting books. My editors were primarily other men.
But neither I nor the guys I was writing for ever aired our daddy centricity on the page. So I was thrilled to see Shawn Bean, the executive editor of Babytalk, lay it all out there in a nifty piece titled “Meet the Modern Dad.” It’s full of pride and swagger and confidence in parenting:
That’s right: a dad editing a baby magazine. Let’s be honest. This is not a traditional role for a guy. I push tandem strollers through the halls of our building, inspiring all manner of rubbernecking. I receive emails that read, “Shawn, as a mom I’m sure you’ll love this new bouncy seat.” I am a pro football fanatic who knows the best brand of binkies. I can hook up a DVD player and swaddle a newborn.
I am a 21st-century pop.
The rest of the piece goes on to lay out the stats: dads are a rising parenting power, and we’re increasingly coming together for social support and hands-on advice. We are daddies, hear us roar.
Of course, a more cynical reader would still facepalm at the structure of the article, which stops every few hundred words to reference “What moms should know” about this new, strange type of male. (Because, you know, the article — while *about* dads — isn’t actually *for* dads.) But I’m not that kind of cynical. Not today.
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Hey Guilty Moms: Follow Our Lead
Posted on 02. Jun, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Working Mother knows their demographic, so it’s not surprising that they just published an in-depth piece on mommy guilt and what to do about it. That story really isn’t all that interesting. What *is* interesting is a brief sidebar in which they explore a much more important question: why is it that dads don’t seem to have the same problems?
The answers are worth a look. The piece posits that dads are better at naming their feelings (they can be angry or annoyed or whatever without lumping every negative feeling into the “guilt” bucket), which seems like it might be a bit of a stretch. But then it goes on to hit the sweet spot: expectations for dads are less (in part because the historical standard is so low). This is exactly right. What is missing — what I would love to see — is the conclusion to that argument. Not only are standards for dads *lower*, but those lower standards are *better* ones by which we should be judging all parents.
I don’t know where the parental one-upsmanship started (I suspect it may have been a hyper-competitive holiday cookie exchange), but it is my fervent hope that dads will lead the charge toward a saner set of expectations for everyone.
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Odds and Ends (and Turnabout)
Posted on 21. May, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Another good week in dad-land. Among the stuff I didn’t have the chance to fully digest:
- The New York Times said nice things about the new Geek Dad book, including noting that was good stuff for “fathers (and mothers).” Putting moms in parens did not still well with the NYT readers, who proceeded to hijack the comments to complain about how in appropriate it was to assume that a book like this might only be applicable to the male half of the parenting universe. Fortunately, this never happens in reverse. I can’t think of a time when dads have been unintentionally left out of *any* parenting conversation. (Via Daddy Types.)
- The NYC Dads Group is now at 200 members. So if you’re an NYC AHD are aren’t hanging out with Lance and his crew, I have only to ask: why not?
- Need more a fix of Joel, from Parenthood. Check out the SFChron’s interview with Sam Jaeger, the guy who plays the role.
- The next great trend in travel marketing: targeting dads for man-cations.
- Nice inspirational story about a guy named Brian Price who became a stay-at-home dad when one of his twins was diagnosed with leukemia.
Have a great weekend …
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George Lopez on SAHDs: ‘Your Ass is Unemployed’
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by Brian Reid.
OK. We knew that George Lopez was a moron when it came to stay-at-home dads (back in November, he made fun of Todd Palin — who, for starters, is not an at-home dad — for being a SAHD and a “bum”). But it’s apparently become a standard part of his shtick. If you don’t need to hear him go after Sarah Palin, you can skip to the 2:15 mark:
I want to have a sense of humor about these things, but I really don’t see how mocking a guy who is raising his kid is all that funny. George seems to assume that childrearing is all about slicing apples, which suggests that he knows jack about what goes into being an at-home parent.
There is also the stench of sexism there, too. If Lopez were going around calling at-home moms “unemployed” and “bums,” you’d have a riot on your hands (and for good reason). But I don’t think that Lopez pulls his punches when it comes to parkgoing, apple-slicing moms because he’s afraid of the repercussions. I assume he doesn’t make at-home moms jokes because he doesn’t seem anything unusual about moms making that choice. Or, to put it bluntly, he seems to be implying that women belong in the kitchen and men belong “employed.”
Not funny, George. Not funny at all.
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ParentBlogging Conferences: Now With More Chest Hair
Posted on 20. May, 2010 by Brian Reid.
I wrote last month that the world of blogging confabs — where blogger talk to each other, and marketer try to talk to bloggers — was opening up to dads with the launch of the Modern Media Man event in Atlanta this autumn. This was a big deal because though there are bunches of mommyblogger conferences (I can’t keep them all straight), fathers are generally on the wrong side of the velvet rope. (And even when they *do* get it, it tends to be a fish-out-of-water kind of thing.)
So I’m curious about the news that the Type A Mom Conference now has a dad track at their autumn event (in Asheville, NC). While it is tempting to whine about being splintered off into our own little ghetto, I’m actually tickled that the effort has been made.
The big question, though, is whether the dadblogger community is large enough, connected enough or conference-mad enough to really have an impact at multiple events. The M3 conference and the Type A conference will be separated by 2 weeks and 200 miles. Can both thrive?
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Dads and Workforce Re-Entry (and New Stats!)
Posted on 19. May, 2010 by Brian Reid.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday tackled the thorny issue of dads re-entering the workforce. This is by no means a new topic (the WSJ did essentially the same piece as early as 2003), but I’m always interested in the anecdotes.
According to this week’s piece, by work-family guru Sue Shellenbarger, it really is tough out there for dads, who face some pretty severe stigmas when they drop out of the workforce to take care of the kids. How severe? Shellenbarger suggests in the story’s lede that finding on on-ramp when you’re a stay-at-home dad is more difficult than if you’re a mom in the same situation:
Much has been written about the challenges awaiting at-home mothers who decide to return to work. Few of them, though, have a tougher time of it than the stay-at-home dad.
I have no doubt that re-entry is hard for at-home dads, but Shellenbarger doesn’t give us much context. Given that the current recession is hitting guys especially hard, I have to wonder if the number of job-seeking dads has driven away part of the stigma. In the go-go ’90s, a man out of the workforce (especially the upper-class guys profiled) was automatically suspect. Today, it’s much more common. Does that work in favor of the AHD? I would think so, but I don’t have any proof of that.
Regardless, the piece is well worth the read, as is the accompanying Juggle blog post, which gives some tips for guys looking for re-entry.
ALSO: The real scoop was actually buried. Shellenbarger writes:
A record 7.4% of fathers in married-couple families with children under 18 were home in 2009 while their wives worked, based on unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics data set for release next week. That is up two percentage points from 2008 and the highest on record, says Sandra Hofferth, a University of Maryland family-science professor and researcher on family time use.
I’ll track down those numbers next week when they are released. This is likely to be a number that is far more reflective of the actual at-home dad numbers than the “official” SAHD stat estimate.