Great Title for the article. Good article too. There's a blurb in the paper article written by a mother that I think is insightful (kind of a "yeah they're more involved, but men and women still seem to have different roles and definitions of 'involvement'"). I liked that blurb (which doesn't seem to be posted online) as much as the main article. I'd guess the whole article is all old news for every dad in his 20's and 30's right now, but it's important to explain our lives to past and future generations.
Can I make one observation? Why do older generations place the blame for every parenting mistake they'll own up to, to a family on TV? I'm speaking of Leave It To Beaver. Perhaps it's because they had as many episodes as Friends did (one less, actually) and aired 4 nights a week on a TV that MAYBE had 2 other channels if you lived in a metropolis? Then again, aside from reruns, it only ran for 5 years. Surely the show isn't bad enough to be guilty of all the parenting ills of the past generation. If so then can I blame all the mistakes I'm making now on The Simpsons? Can I be a brain-dead dad just because the funny man on TV all the time is that way? Most Gen-X'ers have never seen a Leave It To Beaver episode including myself. We only know about it because those who lived in the days of modernity constantly use it as a punchline. Or worse: An excuse.
amrwillgofar: Let me encourage you as you continue to get these Mr Mom "compliments". We've all gotten them before and thanks to stereotypes handed down to us from past generations we will continue to get them for now. They just don't understand that while they mean well they are equivilently saying, "You are doing so well! You've almost reached the state or womanhood!". It's a two-way street, of course, as I'm reminded of the flipside to that 2-faced "compliment" that Secret deoderant used for their old ad slogan which read, "Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman." (Now it's rightfully been changed to simply, "Strong enough for a woman"; as to whether it, in fact, is I cannot comment).
I can only encourage you to smile back very kindly and sincerely and say, "I appreciate your kindness but if it's okay I would much prefer to just be called 'Mr Dad'. That would make my day".
Just Don’t Call Me Mr. Mom
This generation of fathers is more involved in child care than ever. NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker spent a year at home with his daughter. His report from the front.
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One afternoon, when my daughter, Freya, was 6 months old, she was sitting in my lap at my parents' kitchen table. I was chatting with my folks when I caught a familiar odor. I did something that my pre-fatherhood self could never have envisioned: an olfactory diaper check—I hoisted her up and sniffed her bottom.
My father flinched. "Did you just stick your nose in her butt?" Well, yeah, I replied—I thought she might need a change. "In 30 years of parenting I don't think I ever sniffed a single butt—yours or your brother's." My mom raised an eyebrow and shot back: "No, I don't believe you ever did."
There, wrapped in Huggies, is the difference between my dad's generation and my own. I am not foolish enough to claim to speak for every father of my cohort (which, according to most calculations, would be the lamentably labeled Generation X—I am 32), but along with many of the guys I know embarking on their first years of parenting, I am part of a broad generational shift: I took nine months off from work and am still home every Monday feeding, changing, teaching and exploring with Freya, now nearly 2i, while my wife works. I want to be clear: I am not asking for a medal; it is undoubtedly true that mothers still bear the vast burden of child rearing. But it is also true that many of the decisions I am making now as a parent are very different from the choices my folks made three decades ago.
Not—let's get this straight from the beginning—that they did anything wrong. My dad is a surgeon and worked hard to provide for my brother and me. Even now, he is out of the house most days by 7 or 8 a.m. and at work for the next 12 hours. My brother and I never wanted for anything materially. But the corollary to all those hours: we didn't see a whole lot of Dad during the week. Even on weekends, he'd go on rounds. (Shoot me if this is starting to sound like a Harry Chapin song.)
In 1960, American men married at an average age of 22.8 years old; in 2003, it was 27.1 years. My dad's was the first generation in which half of all men and women attended one or more years of college. The women of his generation were the first to choose to pursue a career in large numbers—my mom never once considered trading her real-estate job for diaper duty. I was in day care at an early age. Still, although we were a dual-income family, traditional gender roles still applied: my father was the primary breadwinner—and it was Mom who drove carpool and made sure the fridge was full.
So what's changed? When Freya was 3 months old, my wife (who out-earns me by several glorious miles) went back to work, and my own extended paternity leave began. The very words "paternity leave" set my dad's teeth on edge. This is a man whose first question to me in every conversation is "How's work?" I initially took six months' unpaid leave. As I might have predicted, this drove my dad nuts. "What do you do all day?" was his new conversation-starter. "When are you going back to work? You are going back to work, aren't you?" But Freya and I were getting along so well that I asked for—and was granted—three more months off. If my career was going to slow down for a spell—and I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford it—so be it.
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