This kind of stuff really chaps my behind. Parenting magazine has remained on my [insert bodily function name] list for years because of their tendency (and the tendency of similar magazines) to write articles that either assume that dads don’t do squat or that when dads do anything (ZOMG! He changed a pee diaper! Call the Nobel Prize committee!) that it’s cause for sacrificing the fatted Barney doll to the fertility gods.
And now according to the article, when the dad does help, we have to shift to a new message. We really don’t want dads to help! Gah!
If you’re lucky, you might even get to read some lame, token piece written by an actual dad. I know a number of dads are simply in this world to carry around carbon and a couple of liters of testosterone, but these magazines need to get over themselves.
I’ve been a stay-at-home dad since J-Man was born. I do freelance work as I have time. It was difficult at first, but you know, it worked out just fine. No one died. The space-time continuum didn’t rupture. Starbuckses kept being built (probably thanks to me). And the sun still rises every morning.
One reason we’re possessive of the parental crown may be that, although society’s changed, we still get traditional messages about women’s roles. “A lot of our mothers, our workplaces, our TV shows still tell us that moms should do most of the childcare,” says Liz Park, Ph.D., a marriage and family therapist with three kids in Crownsville, Maryland. We moms can be good at taking such messages to heart.
Hey Parenting magazine! How about not devoting every issue to reinforcing this message! They’ve probably been doing it so long they don’t even notice anymore. We let our subscription lapse a long time ago. Somebody wake me up when “Parenting” to them and others starts actually meaning that rather than “Momming in the Midst of Useless Dads”.
To get stay-at-home dads’ views of the world, stop by Dad Stays Home. If you call anyone Mr. Mom, you’ll have to forfeit a couple of organs.
Thanks for enduring my opinion piece du jour.
[End of rant.]
Posts that hopefully are similar:
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- Out of the House and Temporarily Back to the ‘Real World’
- Trying to Get Perspective
- From Research Studies to Wanton Self-Reflection
- Starting to Sink In
- A Tale of Two Babies
- Looking Out Beyond Our Horizon
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Absolutely. No dads here, but we’re all about the 50/50 parenting. Parenting Magazine doesn’t often recognize 2-mom families either.
I think that’s an understatement. I don’t remember much of anything written about single parents either. I guess you have to be a mom with a husband (whose faults include working 60 hours/week and being too tired to interact with the kids and being incompetent with diaper changes or daily routines and not helpful with housework or marital relations among other things that can be griped about over strollers and lattes at the mall in the mornings) and 2.15 kids and some average pet and a mini-van or a Soccer-Mom Assault Vehicle to fit their demographic. Or something like that.
OK, maybe I’m being unfair. But as a former morning mall-stroller-walker shunned by the stroller moms, but still able to hear their conversations because of their numbers and volume, I sometimes felt like I was listening to the audiobook version of the magazine on some of those mornings. Perhaps I’m still bitter about being shunned.