Getting Back to Work
Posted on 20. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
Between the economy, the WSJ blog post and the Washington Post Magazine story earlier this month, there is a lot of chatter on the subject of re-entering the workforce. As I’ve said before, this is an issue of importance to almost all at-home dads, since nearly all SAHDs expect to go back into the paid workforce at some point in time or another.
I’ve pointed out that the dad-specific resources are pretty thin in this area, and while there’s plenty of good, gender-neutral information out there, it never hurts to have more fathers have more of a voice in telling their story. Which leads to my request.
Carol Fishman Cohen is one of the founders of iRelaunch, an effort to make it easier for parents to find that on-ramp back to paid work. Her group was featured in the Post story I mentioned, and Carol reached out to me to try to get more father stories integrated into the program. So I turn to you: if you’re a dad who has re-entered the workforce after some time away (regardless of the reason), I’d really love if you could tell your story to Carol. Drop me a line at rebeldad@gmail.com, and I’ll pass along your info.
Thanks.
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Odds and Ends (and Twitter)
Posted on 16. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
This has been a most interesting week in dadland, but there are some smaller items that slipped through the cracks. Some of these were posted on Twitter***, so if you think they look familiar, they are.
So — if you need a break from playoff hockey — here are some nuggets:
- Via Nick Senzee: This item is nearly 6 months later, but I totally missed Joy Behar and George Lopez calling Todd Palin a “bum” for being an at-home dad. Political commentary aside, that’s a pretty low blow. And a partisan one. Because I don’t see anyone calling Daniel Mulhern a bum, even though his wife might end up becoming way, way more powerful than Sarah Palin.
- Last week, the Wall Street Journal looked at how tough it is for at-home dads to re-enter the workforce. Further evidence that the Daddy Wars may be heating up.
- I have a hard enough time keeping up with the images of dads on TV, let alone how they are being portrayed in literature. Fortunately, there is BookDads.com.
- This anecdote made me more optimistic about the future of work-life balance than anything I saw from the White House forum on flexibility. When big German banks see the wisdom of flexibility, the future is obviously bright.
*** I’m slowly ramping back up on Twitter, but I have to admit that I’m not keeping up with the people I probably should be watching. Please let me know — here or via @rebeldad — insightful dads I should start following, and I’ll start adding folks.
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Forget ‘Attachment.’ It’s All About ‘Activation’
Posted on 15. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid.
I’ve never been an huge believer in the whole “attachment parenting” thing, where ensuring your kid’s security (and making sure your kid knows it) is the central point in parenting. It seemed suffocating, the exact opposite of the kind of freedom that kids needed to taste to be engaged in the world. But I didn’t have any evidence that my viewpoint was at all valid.
Enter validation: last week, Daniel Paquette, a professor at the Université de Montréal School of Psychoeducation, published a study that suggested that “activation theory” might be as important as “attachment theory.” Activation theory is the idea that encouraging kids to do out and explore is vital developmentally. (There is a yin and a yang here: ideally, kids should feel secure *and* able to engage in the world.)
The paper focuses on kids 12 to 18 months, and the test of activation includes, among other things, watching what happens when unsteady toddlers head for the stairs. In a nutshell, if you want activated kids, being just about an arm’s length away seems to be best. (Closer, and your kids won’t explore enough. Too far, and they learn recklessness.)
The press release is here, and it makes for interesting reading. And — naturally — there is a dad twist: dads are more likely to give the kids the space they need to explore, since dads, in general, are less protective and that is linked to “activation.” I also pulled the paper, which noted that while there was a difference favoring dads over mom, that number wasn’t significant (though the authors had plenty of suggestion for why it was still probably true). What *was* significant was that boys get activated — by moms and by dads — more than girls. So that’s disappointing but probably not surprising.
As with all early studies, it’s hard (and unwise) to shape a parenting strategy around a single piece of academic research. But it does make me happy to see this avenue of research, and I’m curious to see what happens next with activation theory.