Modern fatherhood
Daddy bloggers on peeing contests--
 |
oh’ sweet Daddy |
A state-of-the-institution article about fatherhood and got bogged down pretty quickly I was trying to write. There’s just too much to say.
This occurred to me last week when I asked for an interview with Andrea Doucet, the Carleton University sociology professor and author of Do Men Mother?
Of course men parent, and they do it magnificently. But they don’t mother. And it’s a good thing.
But some things are still the same. The pressure to be a breadwinner is still there for fathers. And just like mothers, they are struggling with work-life balance.
In a recent paper, for example, Doucet noted that many new mothers consider their parental leave to be sacrosanct. If some of that precious time off work is given to dad, it is only wrested away through negotiation.
Men and women are still viewed differently as parents. Caregiving fathers aren’t judged as harshly as mothers if the children aren’t dressed properly or housekeeping is lacking. And they shouldn’t be.
“We shouldn’t judge them as mothers. They shouldn’t feel that they should be feminine,” says Doucet. “What men do well is let children go. They get out of the way.”
Then she points me in a fascinating direction: the daddy bloggers of The Good Men Project, whose website has a section called DadsGood.
“This must have sparked Will’s competitive spirit because he immediately brightened up and rose to the challenge. I moved his stool to the right so I could fit next to him and we prepared for a phallic duel of epic proportions.”
The mommy wars are never-ending, but there are no daddy wars. If the Tiger Mother had been a Tiger Father, “perhaps the book would have been received as interesting observations on cross-generational challenges for immigrant families and how a parent had to change their parenting approach in response to one headstrong teenager,” says Doucet.
Remember Amy Chua, the Yale law professor who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother?
No comments:
Post a Comment