...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Monday, July 28, 2003
      ( 10:43 AM )
 
Mama Talks Dads

As regular readers of this blog know, one of my favorite subjects is DADS. I have a particular interest because my husband is a stay at home dad to our 14-month old, and is thus part of an elite yet growing population of dads in a new career trend. If you haven't checked them out, I highly recommend stopping in to visit some of my favorite stay at home dad bloggers: Being Daddy, Rebel Dad ,Daddy Make a Picture and Fulltime Father.

I wanted to bring up this subject again today because the second hour of Talk of the Nation on NPR today is scheduled to be dedicated to the subject of stay at home dads. This "trend" seems to be gaining in mentionables lately, though I always check Rebel Dad for the most recent references that I may have missed, such as today's AP article about the fact that the recession has caused a growth in the number of stay at home dads. I will be interested to hear what kind of discussion takes place on Talk of the Nation today. The lead in is this:

He worries about runny noses and skinned knees.
She's the family bread winner and watches their
stock portfolio. What happens when dad stays
home and mom works an 80-hour week? Is this
simply a role reversal or the new shape of the
American family?

My personal opinion is that it's not so much a role reversal as it is a new ability to shuck "roles" altogether and make a partnership in marriage and family work the best way that the partners can. It's only a "reversal" if you think that the old, patriarchal rules of a woman staying in the home with the children all day is the norm or the most acceptable form of raising a child or providing for a family. I don't happen to think that way, and I daresay the couples that have gone forward with stay-at-home-dad choices don't think that way either. Thus, it's more of a lack of desire to accept "roles" at all, but rather to be practical about who and what is the best combo for providing for and taking care of your family. I think probably that a majority of stay at home dads right now are there because the mom can make more or get better benefits from her job, and a two-income household doesn't necessarily pay for child care anymore. Probably a lot of the dads home now are there because of the recession and loss of jobs in the workforce. But Dads who choose to be stay-at-home dads do it because they WANT to.

You're not a stay at home dad because you suck at something else or you can't find a job or you lack some sort of career ambition. This kind of labeling is the same stereotypical judgment placed on moms who stay home despite college educations or former thriving careers in the marketplace. It's lame and it has to go. While I don't know any particular statistics to quote, I'm guessing that the majority of working families have both parents working (a lot) just to make ends meet. I admit that in my household, we struggle terribly to get by on my meager salary as a legal secretary. Probably, if there were a job in the tech field for P that he could get that would provide extra income over and above child care, we would consider being a two-income household, just so that we wouldn't feel so burdened by the economic struggle. But finding a second job that provides that kind of extra income is hard enough anyway - and we are doing better than many, with our own little home and enough to provide for our son. So I don't complain and though I sometimes struggle on a personal level with being the parent who feels sort of "part time," I also am so thankful that my son is home with his dad, who loves him and dotes on him and does fun and cool things with him all day long.

It is a VERY hard job to be a parent home with a toddler. Any parent who does this knows that it takes far more energy, brain power, scheduling expertise and coordination than any job that is with adults (though the toddler is sometimes better behaved and easier to communicate with). If it is indeed a trend that Dads are staying home more, then I hope to see a change in ways that the main caretakers of children are addressed. Especially in so-called "parenting" magazines such as Parenting and Parents. Which currently in my book might as well be called Mothering and Mothers for all the attention they give to dads (and not even stay at home dads, but dads in general). The mainstream press and media will hopefully begin to lose their stereotypes on who their audience is and start addressing parents as a team, dads as full-time caretakers of their kids (no matter if they stay at home or not), and moms as equally valuable whether they work in an office or stay at home. Is it too much to ask?

P.S. I'll post my thoughts on the NPR program after I've had a chance to listen to it.

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