Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Low Bar of Fatherhood Part II

    I've been trying to write the follow-up to my first post. We had family in town, then Joey started doing more work stuff on campus, and Perrin has been weird lately...suffice to say, this will be short. The point I want to drive home is that both tropes- Super Dad and Blithering Idiot, are one and the same. They undermine both the value of men and women by creating a culture in which neither has any depth or breadth in personality or personal choice. As a final testament to how damaging these ideas are, I'll leave you with the following video:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/fox-female-breadwinners_n_3358926.html


   You see- aside from the fact that they are complete and utter asshats in general- what these, erm, gentlemen are failing to grasp is that even if their apocalytic rendition of the current state of affairs were accurate, they are missing the root of the issue completely. There is plenty of evidence that having a working mother has no independent effect on the well being of children or families. Because you see- the issue isn't who works or who stays home or who is caregiver or who is breadwinner. The important thing for healthy families is that there is some kind of caregiver. And of course, out of necessity (at least for the majority of us) someone must be making ends meet as well.

   The "issue" that the men above have stumbled upon is not that women are allowed in the workplace, it's that men are not allowed (or at least acknowledged) in the home. Families are a unit- a team. There are X amount of things that need to get done, and if the family is functioning well, everyone steps up and fills in where needed. The dysfunction comes when a gap occurs and the  available members of the family are precluded from filling it because of arbitrary and baseless cultural ideas about gender.

For a more sunny side of things, here is an excellent list for new dads that doesn't treat them like Neanderthals.

http://www.babble.com/dad/babys-first-week-at-home-invaluable-tips-for-brand-new-dads/

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