Such That Father's Day Might Actually Mean Something
Photo by Flickr user ZR. Used under a Creative Commons license.
In a post titled "Better Fathers: Courtesy of the Sexual Revolution" Cristina Page of RHRealityCheck.org reinforces another excellent point the Souther Baptist Convention (scroll way down) get exactly backwards.
Little attention has been paid to the impact that women's liberation has had on men. The unacknowledged truth is that men have been transformed too. Today, men have more freedom, flexibility and choices — in the most meaningful ways. A University of Michigan study found that children's time with their fathers increased significantly only in families in which the mother worked out side the home. As researchers of the Families and Work Institute summed up, "There are many other indications that the workforce has become more family-friendly — especially the fact that American fathers are spending more time with their children than fathers did a generation ago."
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Today, as a result of not having to shoulder all the economic demands of the family, and by having smaller families, men have been allowed to become more involved fathers — better fathers — than ever before. And they seem to like being fathers. Eighty-five percent of dads say they get more joy out of fatherhood than their own fathers did.
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Dads today are more affectionate with their children: 60 percent hug their school age kids every day, and 79% tell their children they love them several times a week. "This is welcome news because it benefits the child," says Jaipaul L. Roopnarine, a professor of child studies at Syracuse University who has researched cross-cultural fathering for more than two decades. "Children whose fathers are involved with them show better education achievement, fewer problems in school, and they're better off socially."
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The [Spike TV pollsters] explain, "There's been a paradigm shift. Men want involvement with kids. Even with infants, they get up at night. It was NEVER like this before. They're taking parenting seriously. New responsibilities with kids and in homes are enriching men's lives. They're excited by it and proud."
So much for the break up of the family caused by women's emerging roles, the sexual revolution, and the birth control pill — family is more desired, and enjoyed, than ever before. With women sharing a larger stake in providing economically for the family, men have stepped up their investment in nurturing.
Is everything hunky-dory? Hell no. Just yesterday morning out for a Father's Day breakfast at a great dim sum restaurant on the generally culturally more conservative Eastside there was a mom rather frantically juggling three under-school-aged children while her extra-from-The-Office partner sat there looking uselessly bewildered and embarrassed. (There's a neat trick for coping with two restless children while, say, a partner manages the wailing three-month-old. It's not even remotely difficult. It *does* actually have to even remotely occur to you that you might try it.) But here's the other trick: in that large room full of Father's Day celebrants the sans-clue dood stood out.
[The odd thing? Judging from social cues there's an appreciably (but not certain) chance that the mom was a "mail order" bride, a form of human trafficking that, perhaps not coincidentally doesn't count to those pesky Southern Baptists and their cohorts. --fl]
Huh.
"There's been a paradigm shift. Men want involvement with kids. Even with infants, they get up at night. It was NEVER like this before." (from the article you quoted)
I was born 30 years ago, and my parents were already in their late 30s when they had me. Mom will fondly relate that when I cried at night, dad would get up, take me to their bed, help me nurse while mom was still mostly asleep, then clean me up and put me back to bed. Maybe it wasn't common, but it certainly did happen. Dad was also really good at getting me to eat and at calming me down when I cried. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they'd both already been through the baby thing before, just not with each other. I don't know. Maybe my dad is just awesome =)
[Remember that a paradigm is just the map, not the terrain. Your dad was awesome, just like a lot of others were. (In "Marriage, a History" Stephanie Coontz points out that men were probably the most involved in domesticity in the, believe it or not, 1950s. We just didn't *see* it that way because it was always pitched in terms of "helping" around the house and not, for instance, *participating.* Thanks, Monique. --fl]