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Tue Dec 1
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To Benefit Kids, Give Dads Their Due |
When Being Yourself Doesn't Get You A Man, Be Someone Else |
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Jezebel 
11/03/09
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11/03/09
The republican asshole who will probably be the next governor of Virginia, for example, thinks that working mothers take insufficient care of their children. Point being: while we all expect people to do what's right by their children, we will never all agree on what that is. So the reality of the situation is that, beyond the basics of protecting the health and well-being of our children, society has no right to demand anything about how they are raised. #dads
11/03/09
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I honestly didn't believe him about how bad it was until the kids verified the whole story.
11/03/09
It doesn't help that many mothers feel like they need to be on the "mommy track," in order to properly raise their kids. Fathers can't be on a "daddy track," because someone has to feed/educate the children. #dads
11/03/09
So it isn't just that the walls are pink, it's that when you act outside of your assigned gender role, as a male, you are presumed to be some sort of a criminal. #dads
11/03/09
The border patrol stopped us, and separated us into different rooms to ensure that my father wasn't kidnapping us (back into the country?). I don't remember any of it; I was too tired. Apparently, I shouted at one of them that he was my dad and all I wanted to do was go home, and that they were being stupid. Ah, 12-year-old rage sure is scary and not at all infurating, I'm sure.
It was disappointing, to say the least. #dads
11/03/09
11/03/09
On the other hand, that experience also taught me that in no way can one presume that physical/non-sexual child abuse happens mainly at the hands of men (unlike sexual abuse, which does seem to happen mostly, but not exclusively at the hands of men). In both of the situations I described, I was suspected because I was a male, bringing a child for medical care. The automatic presumption was that something must be wrong, because men don't take kids for medical care. In neither case did the doctor/dentist look for actual abuse, instead they were satisfied to just talk to my wife and hear the same story from her. #dads
11/03/09
And by the same token--what if that describes Mom? (It describes MY mom half the time, who rants, raves, threatens, makes a big deal of things my father doesn't, like whether or not my 21 year-old brother's friends could drink a few beers at our house, so long as they didn't get hammered. Never did.)
My parents have different parenting styles. To be fair, my father is more lenient when it comes to everything but school-related safe. None of us have dangerous friends or other dangerous habits, none of us are law-breaking tendencies. My mother makes unilateral decisions, and when my father questions them, she loses her shit. If one or both the parents don't know how to handle things, who gives a shit if they agree? That's the least of the family's problems.
Going back to the idea of at least ONE parent balancing understanding/authority with their kid--who will help the kids when the difference isn't simply one parent "micromanaging" a different-but-legitimate style, but micromanaging because one parent's way of doing things neglect the problem, worsen it, create conflict where there shouldn't be any, or effectively blow that kid off (i.e , when a kid has problems with bullies at school and brings it up to parents, the parent fails to sympathize and simply demands kids meet every challenge to fight that bully at school, shaming them if they seek adults out for help in the future or if they lose a fight?)
Different article, I guess.
Sometimes parental conflict (or even absence) isn't the only thing amiss here....
11/03/09
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11/04/09
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The real issue is (IMHO) that my husband did not get nearly the same amount of bonding time that I did because he got 1 week of paternity leave - during which, we were still in the hospital. Then my husband was back at work while I spent long days with a newborn. Of course I figured a lot of stuff out the hard way but I can't naturally hand off that experience to my husband. And, at the end of the day, if I know that the baby is hungry because I recognize the cry, then I think that feeding the baby is a higher priority than letting my husband work it out on his own.
All this study does is reinforce that we need equity in the workplace (PARENTAL LEAVE!) before we can get much farther anywhere else. #dads
11/03/09
11/03/09
It's not just "pink walls and women's magazines," it's a systemic presumption that really sucks. I see it as an unavoidable pain in the ass, but its easy to see how fathers in a different situations, where it is not absolutely necessary for them to step into an intensive parenting role, would be turned off. #dads
11/03/09
11/03/09
Even with that we (still) get in to all sorts of shenanigans together and its fun. #dads
11/03/09
My mom's a hard-core feminist, a high-powered lawyer, the whole shebang, but she was raised by a suburban housewife. And while she has a low opinion of housewifery (overly so, I feel), I think she has such powerful memories of her mother that she identifies with that role. You read/hear sometimes about women who get anxious or hurt if their children look to Dad when they're sick or sad or whatever, which I think is natural given societal expectations. So we DEFINITELY need to give dads more credit--and we also need to value women as anything other than mothers. #dads
11/03/09
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Of course, men should be involved in their kids' lives, pink waiting rooms or not, but it can be really tough to overcome societal conditioning. #dads
11/03/09
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11/03/09
If you're the Dad Who Shows Up, you can expect to be questioned at every turn. Maybe sometimes you're lauded, like at the train museum or whatever, but it's always. a. THING. that you're there. You'll never be part of these mom's clubs, nothing is marketed to you -- it's pretty much like being the kid who got picked on by the cool kids in middle school. I can see why some dads would get frustrated - I know mine did, and his response was to avoid engaging with the other moms.
SO, yes, of course a pink waiting room shouldn't be stopping anyone. But it's so much more than that, it's all the time, and it's exhausting. My dad did it, but someone more on the fence about the whole thing could easily just give up, feeling unwanted and shut out.
ETA -- Additionally, it's sometimes seemed like people think it's creepy for a man to be in charge of a kid (especially a little girl, such as myself). You get the stink eye going doing normal things with your kid if you're the dad, but never if you're the mom. It seems the people are conditioned to imagine men to be kidnappers and pedophiles, not caretakers.
11/04/09