Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Monica Potts of TAPPED nails the right policy solutions for an otherwise typically, sullen, stupid MRA policy initiative — “financial abortions” for men who don’t want to be responsible parents if their partners become pregnant.

This seems like the wrong solution to a very real problem for low-income fathers. It assumes men should be able to decide not to be fathers but that they can’t do anything to prevent it, i.e., using birth control regularly. That’s an argument for male contraception — a male pill, but also an argument for making condoms increasingly pervasive and expanding access to sex education. It’s also an argument for helping low-income fathers provide the financial support they’re required to by assisting them with services that would help move them out of poverty, or make poverty less devastating.

She said it here.

The problem for men is real enough. Aside from condoms, vasectomies, and not having fluid-exchanging sex there really isn’t much heterosexual men can do to avoid unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. And one result of that seems to be a sort of passive-aggressive resentment that meshes all too well with the traditional view that everything related to pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting is womens’ responsibility. Which is why I like Potts’ take so much.

Aside: This isn’t the main point but she mentioned it first: Potts is right that men really do need more contraception options. For all the whining about men’s irresponsibility for fertility I remain seriously confident that if men had additional options that fell between the permanence and convenience curves of condoms and surgery they’d stop being so passive-aggressive about it and stop being so blazé at other men’s learned-helplessness about it. But that’s not what this post is about. But I digress…

What’s even more important, and even less broadly recognized than the limits on male contraception, is Potts’s point that low-income fathers, as well as pending and potential ones, need financial assistance as well!

I don’t know how many of you have studied the history of welfare or financial assistance but one of the reasons it’s been historically so draconian for women has been a social construction that mandates men as providers. In the 19th Century aid societies initiated the practice of surprise and midnight “bed checks” of women with dependent children to insure they really were widowed or abandoned. The idea that an able-bodied man, no matter how destitute and no matter how unemployed, might benefit directly from charity was anathema. As was the perhaps even more shameful and/or “immoral” prospect of his wife and children receiving food or shelter that he “should” have been able to provide.

And who knows, maybe you could make a case that it made sense back when women could only earn 7 cents for every dollar of equal work men could earn rather than 77 cents today. But income parity really is converging especially in the low-wage/low-income environments we’re talking about, it makes less and less sense to do so now that the “breadwinner”/“homemaker” dichotomy is even more mythical than it once was.

Anyway the whole notion of a “financial divorce” from child-rearing is such a psychotically gendered notion in the first place! Current biases against preparing low-income men for possible single and/or unmarried-to-the-mother parenthood are also similarly gender biased. And in both types of bias not only do men remain alienated from their own progeny, and not only do they maintain assumptions about mothers as “nurturing” and fathers as either supporters or abandoners, they also rather perpetuate policies that are intentionally (“financial abortion”) or unintentionally punitive against women and children.

Quick followup on re-thinking “unwed” pregnancy in an earlier post.

You know…

Perhaps because we’re such psychos about pregnancy and child-rearing as the “wages of sin” for single women we tend to frame our narratives almost entirely on the consequences on the mothers.

I mean, yeah, sure, in a patriarchal society that’s where all the emphasis would go — all the “who’s your daddy” business, all the “already chewed gum” abstinence analogies, all the “women and dependent infants and children” programs, all the “man around the house” idealizing, all that crap and more are going to be of natural concern if what really matters is determining paternity and avoiding “cuckoldry” and scorning “that kind” of woman and all that.

And I know, I know, in patriarchal society pregnancy and child-rearing and staying home with the kids and all that domestic stuff is “women’s work” about which men should be some combination of aloof, clueless, indifferent to, vaguely “pride and joy” motivated about, and largely absent from.

I know all that and I get that when you factor all that in it makes sense that the focus would be almost entirely on the role of women and children in single parent families.

And I even get… in fact I especially get… that in patriarchy men are considered the default, neutral, standard norm against which women and your uterus thingies and other lady parts are “the other.” And that “the other” is always going to get way more scrutiny and be taken way, way less for granted than the by-definition normal, well, normal men-like people.

But…

But…

Y’know? If you start looking at men not as the standard species type for human beings but just one more of a very wide variety of types you start to stop making assumptions and start asking questions. You stop looking at men as “that which in a just society all others will finally be equal to” and start wondering what their tradeoffs, obstacles, and unexamined oppressions are.

And when you do that you have to start asking yourself…

What is the social and psychic cost to the very considerable number not just of single men who’s absence helps define “single-female head of household” but on those men?

Because, seriously, not being part of a family, of having children but not being connected to posterity, of being defined as independent and free of households while in reality being only secondary to them?

Dudes, they’re missing out on some serious quality of life!

That would be one of the problems of defining one’s self by one’s gender roles instead of by, say, what you could create for yourself.

Because if your a man and your “role” is to be “head” of the house…

But you being on average only an average human being you only having a 50% chance of being the “head” in relationship to any other human being…

And then you multiply that sense of defined entitlement/obligation not only by one’s partner but by another 5O% chance for each additional member who comes into the family. Then the statistical chance that you actually are qualified to be the “head of household” of social expectation to which everyone else naturally and justifiably defers goes down pretty quickly.

Which would be fine, of course, except for that Garrison Keilor-like social expectation that all men must be “above average.” Which turns the statistical necessity that all men must be, well, average into its own no-win cycle of shame, withdrawal, undeserved entitlement, anxiety, anger, and isolation.

The alternative for men to being the Ozzie and Harriet “head” of one’s family, of course, is to just be a plain, old, regular, incredibly, incredibly valuable part of one’s family.

The problem with all the common narratives for men in families is it’s all either/or — either you’re the head of the family or… you can’t even be there at all. (And clue #72 would be: even if you are able to merit the capacity to be “head” of the household it’s… still a really, really good idea, even for meritocrats, to distribute tasks and other primary decisions to those who are most immediate to various situations. Just saying.)

Anyway, this often-unwarranted pressure to be the titular-male “head” of the household is largely not, by the way, mitigated by the expectations of everybody else besides the man — beginning with his partner and extending to her parents, his parents, his and her siblings and other family members, often his friends, his employers, his neighbors, and, for that matter, random people walking down the street.

And if “because I say so” is a really dumb reason to try to be in charge “because everyone else says so” is even worse.

It’s a lot of pressure when you think about it — even if you’re committed to being a part of the household and not just roleplaying the head it’s hard to buck everyone else’s expectations.

Which is just one more place where feminism comes in and “traditional” expectations don’t. Which is kind of ironic when you think of the stereotypical/theoretical antagonism between feminists and unattached single men. But here’s the trick: you relay the last four or five paragraphs to your average feminist and she or he’s going to come to your side very quickly. You try to explain it to your average anti-feminist and he or she will just say you need to grow a pair, or to get off his lawn.

Breathtakingly apt and highly-fed-up non-mommy-blogger rant from Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist directed at individuals who imagine that stay-at-home parenting must be the most fulfillingest thing ever.

[A]ll you people who say you’d love to stay home all day with your kids if you could, you are completely full of shit.

I know because I was living at the poverty line in NYC while I stayed home with my kids. That’s how important it was to me to stay home. I wanted to be with them for every moment, be a great mom, all that. So I did it no matter what – no financial situation could have stopped me.

...

For all you guys who Twittered back to me that I’m a bad mom and that I should love being home with my kids, here’s a link for you: CEOs who are on Twitter. Because let me tell you something: None of these people needs to earn the money they are earning. They have enough money. They can stay home with their kids. But instead, they are at work.

She said it here.

Lemme tell ya something. Being a stay at home parent actually really is rewarding, cool, and fun. And also really, really stultifyingly, oppressively, mind-numbingly fucking boring.

Not one.

Not the other.

Both.

And yeah, if you wanted to do it?

You would.

But you’d have to want to do it enough.

But like most people with a choice if you haven’t you probably wouldn’t.

Trunk puts the issue very bluntly

How about approaching all those guys with Blackberries at soccer games? Let me ask you something. Do those guys check their email when they’re getting a blow job? Of course not. Do you know why? Because it’s INTERESTING. They are checking their blackberries during soccer because soccer is boring. The kids can’t figure out where the goal is. The kids (and their parents) lose interest. They want snacks more than they want to learn soccer. They are cute, yes. But even cute gets boring.

Now multiply preschool soccer by 23 hours a day, 6.5 days a week, 312 days a year, for four to sixteen years. That’s your window for boredom. The rest of the time is adorable, heartwarming, and totally fulfilling, sure. And on balance a lot of people find that worth it…

But in the grand scheme of things, people, it’s not a lot of time. Which, again, is why most people who say how much they’d love to do it but have a choice? Don’t.

I probably wouldn’t have become a blogger if I hadn’t been a stay-at-home dad. Because blogging you can do in 15 minute increments. Between loads of laundry. Between cranks of the “neglect-o-matic.” While the oven pre-heats or the Annie’s mac-n-cheese noodles simmer. While they’re playing with the most fascinating thing in the house you can safely let them play with — the tupperware containers in the kitchen drawer. While they trash their room playing dress-up with their playdate. (If you ever want to know why there seem to be so many “mommy” bloggers that should be your first clue. If you ever wonder why they seem so starved for contact that should be your second clue. That they so often have such narrow focuses should be your third. And in retrospect, that the majority sex is a primarily domestic activity, even though that doesn’t fit our romantic and/or socioeconomic notions of it, might be one clue about the narrow focus of my blog.)

But here’s where Trunk nails that one too — however boring, or bored, or distracted you think you can get the consequences for actually letting something slip can be anything from embarrassing to dire

as soon as your mind wanders too far, something bad happens. For example, I took the kids on a hike yesterday, taking a coat for myself but not for them. Because I checked out. Because I wanted to think about things that are more interesting than coats. This is normal behavior.

If you have a battery-operated Swingomatic instead of the kind you have to rewind every 15 minutes you really will neglect them for too long. If you “close your eyes for just a moment” you’ll find yourself wakened (in a panic) by the sound of little fingers working with awesome determination to figure out the babyproof/earthquake latch on the cleaning-supply cupboard door under the sink.

(Oh yeah, and while we’re on the subject of stay-at-homing it if every now and then you say what the heck and toss a couple of broccoli or carrot ends into the disposal your otherwise perfectly lovely partner or spouse, fresh home from an invigorating day at work and a commute full of NPR updates will happen to be passing through will brightly admonish you “please, hon, that goes in the compost bucket.” As if you weren’t the one who not only daily filled the compost bucket but regularly emptied into the yard-waste container, and took that out to the curb every Tuesday night for collection. But I digress…)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved being a stay-at-home dad, and still do. But I guarantee I haven’t loved every minute. And anyone who, like the twittering twit who prompted Trunk’s tirade, thinks you should, or thinks they would, or (worse!!!) should you complain says “sorry your kids are a burden, send them to OH, we’ll enjoy them for who they are” — where by “we” Trunk deduces they evidently mean “my wife” — is indeed an asshole.

Which is all a long, involved way of explaining my basis for so appreciating Trunk’s awe-inspiring flame.

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One quibble: I happen to think Trunk slightly misses the mark when she hauls out the studies showing that having children don’t make people happy — Jefferson seems to have been right that happiness is best found in pursuit rather than an objective in its own right.

A burden voluntarily shouldered is not as heavy as one imposed. Having chosen to shoulder it imposes constraints as real as a poison-hotline call or “together night” interrupted by night terrors (“night terribles” as my daughter called it.) And once chosen those burdens become background against which small moments shine. Sometimes brilliantly and unforgettably.

It is another thing entirely, though, when the burden is chosen for you rather than chosen by you — to have them allocated as your lot, or fate, or “natural instinct,” or “natural place,” or even “God says.” And when those who have themselves neither faced the imposition nor made the choice, and thus have no clue, say what they think you should enjoy? Well you can probably see how that would tend to make one seem… humorless. Angry, even. And inclined to lob flaming posts.

(Via Amber Rhea’s Tumblr feed.)

Photo “Figleaf and Son – 1997”
by Flickr user figleaf (hey, that’s me!)
Chrisj of At My Soiree, taking to task yet another rendition of the you can run but you can’t hide from the genetics of gendered behavior points anecdotal evidence produced by Kay Hymowitz to support her contention that women are just “naturally” driven to choose children over career. After addressing an anecdote about journalist Hanna Rosin Chrisj turns to a second anecdote.

The other story is by Katie Roiphe who describes an “‘addiction to her newborn baby that left her indifferent to work.”

Read the quote in context here.

Not to put too fine a point on it but by the end of my first (sleepless) night with my infant son (and, later, daughter) I was indifferent to work as well. I wanted to inhale him, to hold him when he slept, to carry him against my heart or on my back or shoulders. Work can be worlds of fun, and you can’t really do without the paychecks or invoices, and because I worked from home I found ways to fit it in. But for all the challenges and rewards of work there’s nothing like having a new human being in your hands, one who trusts you and needs you and squeaks and drools and blows out his or her diaper and wakes you up and wears you out and… eventually… lights up like sudden dawn when they catch your eye with theirs.

Maybe it runs in the family because when I mentioned it to my father he said he’d felt the same way with each of his children.

The difference, he said, is that whatever he felt he did what he was told and believed he was supposed to do: go back to work, be a breadwinner, and leave the child rearing to my mom.

He also told me, one day, when he was visiting and we were at a playground, that looking around at some of the other dads with their children he felt terribly sad that he hadn’t had more time… and that we couldn’t know how lucky we were in our generation to get to be a part of the family and not just the supply boat.

So here’s the deal on gender and evolutionary psychology: I don’t know, maybe they can prove that the incredible bonding I felt, and the bonding my father says he deeply missed, is a different bonding pathway than women have. Maybe so, though I’m more inclined to think any actual, innate difference might just be one of degree.

And who am I to imagine how Hannah Rosin or Katie Roiphie or Kay Hymowitz… or anyone else, woman or man, feels about their infants? All I can say, though, is that the connection and desire to be there that I felt for my children went right through me, to the point where early on I’d hear the sound of her breath in the wind in the trees and the rhythm of his sighs when I was sharpening a knife and then all I’d want to do was make a cradle for them in the crook of my arm and hold them.

If evolutionary psychology says no, that can’t be innate because of my Y chromosome then, well, fine, so much the harder for them. Because the other explanation for such a powerful, overwhelming bond would be… social or experiential conditioning. Which they’d then have to factor out in their further estimations of selected gender differences. When they can persuasively say their methods have grown subtle enough to account for that I’ll be ready to listen.

Till then? My children will be home from school soon, and I don’t have much patience to wait.

While I only talked about one sentence the rest of ChrisJ’s post is pretty cool too. Go check it out.