While about 10% of new moms get depression, a 2005 study showed that 4% of dads had significant symptoms as well. Richard Friedman writes in the New York Times that a drop in testosterone associated with a partner's pregnancy may cause depression. But life changes may be a factor as well. Friedman writes of a male patient who lamented, "We go out a lot with friends to dinner and theater. Now I guess that's all going to end." And the biggest risk factor for male postpartum depression is having a depressed partner — dads whose partners are depressed are two and a half times more likely to suffer themselves. Friedman points out,

Unlike women, men are not generally brought up to express their emotions or ask for help. This can be especially problematic for new fathers, since the prospect of parenthood carries all kinds of insecurities: What kind of father will I be? Can I support my family? Is this the end of my freedom?

Not only are men not encouraged to share their emotions — they're widely considered not to have as many emotions where children are concerned. Commenter Zorba on the Times' Well blog writes,

I am so relieved to see this. This connects with my long-held suspicion (that no one will validate) that MOST MEN DO NOT WANT CHILDREN. As a woman, I hear women complain all the time about how men don't get how difficult it is to be pregnant, have a baby, be a mother but these are the same women who were giving their husbands ultimatums when the men didn't want to get pregnant and even (more often than you'd think) lying and leaving off birth control to have a baby regardless of their husband's feelings. This makes me sad because I would like to think that fatherhood is something men really want but most of the men I hear about are bamboozled into it. Do men even want kinds? Is that why they get depressed?

But Zorba could just as easily say that women don't want kids, because they suffer from postpartum depression more often than men. Unfortunately, several male commenters chime in to reinforce the old stereotype that men who have kids are just giving in to their wives. Says Calmd,

Based on the comments of the women, why do women want kids anyway? After our first, my wife wanted more. I said no way. Our child is 12 but my wife still resents wish not to have more kids.

Sounds awesome. But not as awesome as this, by Penumbranian:

Children change everything irreversibly. They cost time, energy, money and space. The spatial and temporal boundaries shift, your spouse pays less attention to you, even totally ignores you. Does she still love you? Did she choose you to have children only? My wife was yelling at me: "My biological clock is ticking! With you or without you I'm going to have children!" Perhaps I had children with her only to please her, to be kept by her, not to be dumped by her.
Yes, your freedom will be lost. I know a couple who did not go to see a movie for five years after they had a child. This is widely considered normal.
If a father should talk about these and related concerns, like I did, he may be labelled as "immature" or worse, like I was.

What both of these comments underscore is the need to talk about children before you get married. When one partner wants them much more than the other, resentment and depression can easily result. Despite the words of Calmd and Penumbranian, it's not always the woman who wants kids more. However, women do bear a greater physical, and often a greater social burden in pregnancy and child-rearing. Writes D.J.,

Hmm, the men don't give birth, don't carry a child for nine months, don't have hormonal or weight fluctuations, swollen ankles, stretch marks, sleepless nights when there is no comfortable position in bed, heartburn, morning sickness, but they want to suffer from post-partum depression. Then, they usually aren't the ones nursing, or have a body trying to return to it's pre-pregnancy status. They typically aren't the ones getting up in the middle of the night to feed or calm the baby, run the rest of the household if there are other children and still have a smidgen of time for themselves. My husband was a helpful as the next one, but given everything that a man doesn't go through, it sounds like whining to me.

It's true that men don't have to go through the physical changes of pregnancy. And it's true that expectations of moms are still higher than expectations of dads. But that doesn't mean men aren't emotionally invested. A commenter who identifies himself as "a medical student and father" writes,

Fathers don't want to suffer from postpartum depression- No one wants to suffer from depression! Depression is not a ‘badge of honor' for all the hardships they have been through- depression is a terrible and crippling (sometimes fatal) disease. Its true that there is likely a different hormonal aspect to the depression but the fact of the matter is we, the scientific community, do not know what causes depression or what combination of hundreds or thousands of bio-psycho-social factors lead to a depressive episode. Whether you label it postpartum depression for women or after pregnancy depression for men, its depression.

The important point is that doctors, like everyone else should be aware of who is at risk and try to understand, treat and hopefully relieve suffering.

Doctors do need to be aware of male postpartum depression — and perhaps we all need to be more inclusive when it comes to a father's role. Many men are still trained to view involved parenting as somehow feminine, and they need to resist this training. At the same time, though, if we as a society want men to share equally in the mundane parts of parenting, the "getting up in the middle of the night to feed or calm the baby," we need to acknowledge that they share in the emotional parts as well. Male postpartum depression may feel like "whining" when women still bear the brunt of child-rearing responsibility, but treating this depression can also be a step towards accepting men's emotional investment in the family and channeling this investment into actual time spent with kids. Children may affect men more than they're currently encouraged to admit — and recognizing this would be good for everyone.

Postpartum Depression Strikes Fathers, Too [NYT]
When New Fathers Get Depressed [NYT Well Blog]

The backlash against overinvolved "helicopter" parents has been going on long time, and Nancy Gibbs's description of such people in Time will surprise no one who reads trend pieces. They buy Baby Kneepads! They monitor their kids at college, and even in their jobs! When their precious daughter forgets a necklace she needs for her "coordinated outfit," they race to school to drop it off!

More surprising than these stock Generation-Y anecdotes is the news that some parents are pushing back, not just with rebellious mommy-blogging, but with actual classes designed to curb their overparenting impulses. Gibbs describes one such class:

Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

Truly committed de-overparenters can get Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, to "go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul." Payne recommends that parents get rid of children's broken and outgrown toys, "pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys." Paring down its possessions seems smart, but "toy library?" "Build breaks into their schedule?" These make fun sound like school, childhood sound like work, and de-overparenting sound a lot like, well, overparenting. In the same vein, "pulling the plug" on unrealistic ideals of motherhood is a worthy goal, but do parents really need a special class — complete with nondairy ice cream — in order to achieve it?

One dad, Matt, tells Gibbs that de-overparenting can be a tough transition. He says, "it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better." But should the process of being a more relaxed parent really involve "hard questions?" Can't you just do it by, you know, relaxing? Can't parents just lighten up without making lightening up into yet another rulebound parenting project? When did parenting become a gerund anyway?

One point kind of gets lost in all the hysteria over helicopter parents: Gibbs writes, "It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones." And while she also says "helicopter parents can be found across all income levels," it's certainly easier to hover over your kid if you have the money for things like violin lessons, college admissions coaches, and de-overparenting classes. This is not to say that poorer families never have overparenting problems, but it might be wise to redirect some of the hysteria over helicopter parents towards making it easier for all parents to get an appropriate level of involvement in their children's education. Moms and dads who don't speak English or who work three jobs might not be able to harass teachers or overschedule their kids with extracurriculars, but they also have a harder time helping with homework and addressing kids' difficulties at school — and this might be a bigger problem than a few jerks with Baby Kneepads.

Can These Parents Be Saved? [Time]

The Times's Laurie Tarkan describes a new study showing that low-income families benefited when fathers took parenting classes. She writes that "fathers not only spent more time with their children than the controls did but were also more active in the daily tasks of child-rearing. They became more emotionally involved with their children, and the children were much less aggressive, hyperactive, depressed or socially withdrawn than children of fathers in the control group." However, the effect was greatest when moms attended classes alongside dads, implying (unsurprisingly) that parents who communicate and support each other are best for kids. But dads may have trouble getting the support they need.

Tarkan writes that, "as much as mothers want their partners to be involved with their children, experts say they often unintentionally discourage men from doing so. Because mothering is their realm, some women micromanage fathers and expect them to do things their way." The assertion is a little annoying, reminiscent as it is of a similar narrative about chores: women just don't let men do the laundry, the thinking goes, because it has to be done their way. Similarly stereotypical are the words of Dr. Kyle Pruett, co-author of the book Partnership Parenting. He says, "dads tend to discipline differently, use humor more and use play differently. Fathers want to show kids what's going on outside their mother's arms, to get their kids ready for the outside world." Pruett adds that dads "tend to encourage risk-taking and problem-solving" — but these are pretty sweeping generalizations. I know my dad didn't "encourage risk-taking," unless you call not driving on the freeway until you're eighteen years old a risk. And slotting parents into sitcom-ready roles (Mom the protector, Dad the one who lets you get dirty) only multiplies the obstacles they have to face in working together.

But there are some ways that larger social expectations harm both moms and dads. Tarkan quotes psych professor Philip A. Cowan, who says,

The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women's magazines in the waiting room, the mother's name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door. It's like fathers are not there.

By treating moms like the primary parent, research centers and other social services just make it more difficult for dads to get involved — and maybe even perpetuate the notion that only Mom knows the right way to do things. Rather than accusing individual mothers of considering motherhood their "realm," we should be tackling the widespread cultural perception that women naturally know about child-rearing and men are just bumbling babysitters who show up every now and then to teach baseball skills. Cowan says parents need to stop criticizing each other so much — "Instead, they should be saying, ‘How can each of us be the kind of parent that we are?'"— but parenting experts have some large-scale recommendations that may be even more effective. Tarkan writes,

[P]ictures of families on the walls of clinics and public agencies should have fathers in them. All correspondence should be addressed to both mother and father. Staff members should be welcoming to men. Steps like these promote early and lasting involvement by fathers.

These may seem like small changes, but they would start sending the message that parenting is a cooperative process, not Mom's job and Dad's hobby. It's a message that moms, dads, and kids all desperately need.

Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers) [NYT]
Paying More Attention To Fathers [NYT Well Blog]

Janzen's publicizing her book Mennonite in a Little Black Dress with interviews in both Time and Marie Claire, and in both places she emphasizes the conservatism of her Fresno upbringing. In Marie Claire (interview not online), she says,

My mom wouldn't let me wear jeans. She sewed me polyester pants with the crease down the front and an elastic band. Oh, my lord, were they modest. She would lengthen them with different-colored panels, like burgundy. We had a TV but couldn't turn it on unless Mom and Dad were in the room; if anyone on a show or a commercial ever kissed — even in a marital context — my dad would change the channel and say, "Smut!"

In college, Janzen "began to read about other religions and read philosophy and literature," and she ended up leaving the faith. But after her husband left her for another man and she got in a car accident, she went back to live with her parents and discovered that she respected their way of life. She writes that her mother forced her to be active instead of "hol[ing] up out of self-pity," and that "trailing one's seventy-year-old parents around town is an excellent and under-discussed cure for heartbreak." She also says,

I had remembered the Mennonites of my youth as congenial folks, so it wasn't a surprise that I loved them as an adult. What was a surprise was that I loved what they stood for - I loved the faith itself, and the way they consistently demonstrated what they believed. For instance, when my mom learned that an elderly woman from her church was recuperating from a surgery, it wasn't a question of if she would visit. It was a question of whether to bring homemade zwiebach or a tray of platz. It was the genuine human warmth of this community that set me thinking about faith in new ways.

I lived with my parents for about a month and a half this summer, after some shitty life events of my own, and although my parents are professors and not Mennonites, my experience was in some ways pretty similar. The media has been buzzing for at least five years now with stories of helicopter parents who coddle their children through an "extended adolescence" that lasts long past college, and maybe it just shows that I'm getting old, but this wasn't my experience. Going to college for me involved a pretty big break with my parents, an instant transition from living with them to talking to them once a week (on Sundays), unless I was in some kind of major crisis. It was a time when I did things even when my dad asked me not to (he had, very graciously I later realized, decided he could no longer tell me what to do), and a time when I decided I could never spend more than two weeks at home because we were too different and there was too much fighting.

And then I grew up for real — or at least, a little more. I realized not only that home is where they have to take you in — a motivating factor for Janzen also — but that my parents aren't actually all that different from me. They do the things I couldn't do in front of them as a teenager — like say "fuck" and drink beer — and they disapprove much less of my personal life than I'd always assumed. In fact, I probably had to assume that they disapproved in order to feel like I was forming my own identity, but the one I've formed turns out to look like theirs in a lot of ways, and I'm not freaked out about it — too much.

I recognize that I'm very lucky to have parents who've given me both freedom and support, and that some people's relationships with their progenitors can be painful and disastrous. I also know that I come from a generation and a class that's said to have a lot in common with its parents, and that some people think this indicates insufficient progress. But my mom is the one who showed me how to donate to micro-lending organizations when I got my first job, who makes sure I recycle, and who calls me on my shit when I start blaming men for all the problems in the world (although my brother has gotten pretty good at this too).

There are still things my parents and I don't agree on, and there's a reason I moved out again — no matter how well we got along, living with them still made me feel like an overgrown kid, especially after I realized I no longer had any keys. And Janzen doesn't seem to have actually rejoined the Mennonite faith. It goes without saying that people need to separate from their parents to a certain extent in order to lead independent lives. But the idea that my generation represents some kind of unprecedented crazy closeness may be based on little more than the break many baby boomers made with their parents in the 60s and 70s. If Janzen's experience teaches us anything, it's that defining what's normal when it comes to family relationships is pretty fruitless, and that going back home can be an eye-opener, not just an ordeal.

Rhoda Janzen: From Modern To Mennonite [Time]

Today, the New York Times has an insightful article exploring the lives of single women who choose to become parents in the face of overwhelming disapproval.

Societal pressures play a large role in why South Korean women give up so many children for adoption. Interestingly, while abortion is technically illegal, it is estimated that 96 percent of unwed women opted for the procedure. Of those who carried the pregnancy to term, nearly 70 percent relinquished their children for adoption. The nation's government has tried to retain more of the nation's children, but as taken a hardline when it comes to the single mothers that bear them. According to reporter Choe Sang-Hun,

The government pays a monthly allowance of $85 per child to those who adopt children. It offers half that for single mothers of dependent children.

While the government says it is trying to increase the amount of support provided, look at the host of benefits the government provides to increase the declining birthrate:

To increase adoptions at home, it provides subsidies and extra health care benefits for families that adopt, and it designated May 11 as Adoption Day.

It also spends billions of dollars a year to try to reverse the declining birthrate, subsidizing fertility treatments for married couples, for example.

Throughout the piece, various women discuss how being an unwed mother has impacted their dating, family, and professional lives:

Families whose unmarried daughters become pregnant sometimes move to conceal the pregnancy. Unwed mothers often lie about their marital status for fear they will be evicted by landlords and their children ostracized at school. Only about a quarter of South Koreans are willing to have a close relationship with an unwed mother as a coworker or neighbor, according to a recent survey by the government-financed Korean Women's Development Institute.

"I was turned down eight times in job applications," Ms. Lee said. "Each time a company learned that I was an unwed mom, it accused me of dishonesty."

Ms. Choi, the hairdresser, said her family changed its phone number to avoid contact with her. When her father was hospitalized and she went to see him with her baby, she said, her sister blocked them from entering his room. When she wrote to him, she said, her father burned the letters. Last year, about three years after the birth, he finally accepted Ms. Choi back into his home.

In the face of all this, a group has formed to advocate for women being allowed to raise their children on their own. The Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network was founded to fight for the rights of women and has found international allies. The network was founded by an American adoptive father, who renounced his "rescue and savior mentality" after visiting S. Korea in 2006 and wondering why so many of these women were giving up their children. He decided to channel his energy into improving the lives of young women in Korea instead of helping other couples adopt children from the country.

As quoted from the site's mission statement:

The Network's primary focus is on raising awareness in Korea and amongst Korean groups in the US to effect positive change. The Network works to educate, inform and promote discussion about the difficulties facing unwed mothers and their children in Korea in order to elevate their economic, political and social potential in society.

(Image from the New York Times slideshow)

Group Resists Korean Stigma For Unwed Mothers [NY Times]
Illegal Abortion, South Korea's Open Secret [Reuters]
Official Site [Korean Unwed Mothers Support Network]

Belkin acknowledges that, while a mother can pass away at any time, women who give birth at older ages are "increasing the odds" that they won't see their kids grow up. She also says, however, that as technology makes it possible for women to give birth at older ages, "there's a feeling that [...] we need to control this." And that feeling, she believes, is misplaced. Karen Day, who gave birth via IVF at the age of 53, has a similar take. She asks why older moms are criticized so heavily, while "a 90-year-old man who just fathered his 21st child" gets less attention. Belkin points out that the 90-year-old man needs a younger woman to father his kid, and thus has a younger co-parent who will be around if he dies. But if the real issue is having someone to take care of the child, surely this could be resolved by encouraging older moms to involve younger people in their kids' lives — much as gay couples sometimes like to involve role models of the opposite gender.

Giving birth at 67, as the recently deceased Maria del Carmen Bousada did, has its problems, but the reason people are so up in arms may not have to do with an altruistic concern for the children. Belkin posted the NPR interview on her New York Times blog, and a commenter responded thus:

I think that if women gain the ability to bear children in their later years (thus truly retaining youth and vitality), society in general will find it much harder to brush older women off as irrelevant and unneeded. Older males will have fewer excuses for sniffing around skirts of women half their age, and will no longer be seen as logical opportunities, but rather selfish perverts. If women can still have babies in their 50s and 60s as men do, we'll have taken a giant step toward closing one of the most significant gender gaps that exists. True equality is the real fear.

In conversations about gender inequality, especially regarding relationships and age, people frequently throw up their hands and cite "biological realities." These realities are why women are supposed to consider their "market value" and settle down young, while men can do whatever they want. But if technology allows us to change biology, extending women's fertility, it will become less tenable to assert that a woman's "value" is tied up with her youth. The paradigm that women lose worth just as they become wiser, more experienced, and better able to speak up for themselves, may be subverted. And that, for many people, may be a scary thought.

When Is A Woman Too Old to Have Children? [The Takeaway]
Talking With A Mom Who Is "Too Old" [NYT]

First there's "I'm A Better Dad Part-Time," by Richard Seely , who claims that from the moment his daughter was born, she and her mother were forming a bond "and I was, to some degree, excluding myself." As she grew older, Seely's daughter would go into "theatrics" in the absence of her mother. Seely writes:

I lost patience with this behaviour, and ultimately with many of her imperfections.

I became more and more of an ogre. I would snap at her. Tell her "no" sometimes for no other reason than to distinguish myself from her mother. If she got an A on a report card, I'd ask why it wasn't an A-plus. Unconsciously, I would intimidate her. Once - I can't even remember what she had done - all I had to do was look at her and my expression sent her running to her room, afraid of me. I never hit her, and have never contemplated any form of physical response toward her or anyone else, but what mattered was that I made her afraid of me.

And so, when he and his wife got divorced, he was fine with the mother getting custody of the child. He says of his daughter:

Because I don't see her every day, I have much more tolerance for the behaviours that used to frustrate me. I offer comfort instead of scorn if she misses her mother when she's away on a business trip. I celebrate the time we spend together, be it an hour or two after school or a weeklong camping trip in the summer.

I'm happier and more secure in my role as a parent than I ever was before.

But: Does any of this seem like a cop-out? Of course it's easier to be "tolerant" and happy when you've only got to deal with a kid part time; instead of being awakened in the night by fevers or managing tantrums, you're only there for ice cream and games and camping. Fun! But is that parenting, or is that just "hanging out" with a child, like an Aunt, Uncle or family friend would do?

The guy referenced in Strollerderby's post A Dad's Point of View: Am I Selfish? Or Just a Jerk? at least seems self-concious enough to realize he's selfish. Bruce Sallan writes about a ski trip taken with his wife and 12-year-old son. Blogger Keri summarizes his story thusly:

Son got a bad nosebleed. Dad tended to him, called the hospital, found out what to do, and sat with the boy until the blood stopped, almost 30 minutes later. Dad wanted to take turns with Step-mom going skiing, so that one would be with the kid and one on the slopes at all times. Step-mom volunteered to stay with the boy the whole time. After 45 minutes on the mountain, nosebleed recommences, Step-mom calls Dad, and Dad returns to Son. Son wants to go home.

Did the dad take the kid home? No. Sallan explains: "I gave him a relatively stern talk on being a man, learning to deal with some pain, as there will be some pain in life... I explained that running away would only teach him how not to deal with life's crises… We give in to our children's whims and complaints too easily. Sometimes, we as parents need to take care of our needs... [Step-mom] chose to be over-the-board careful and I chose to be, what some might say, selfish..." Beyond the fact that teaching your kid to "toughen up" is soooo 1950s and reinforces some nasty stereotypes about what it means to be a man, don't both of these stories make you wonder why these dads feel no shame about being so selfish? And don't you wonder what the mothers think of such behavior?

I'm A Better Dad Part-Time [Globe And Mail]
A Dad's Point of View: Am I Selfish? Or Just a Jerk? [Strollerderby]
Related: A DAD'S POINT OF VIEW: Am I A Selfish Parent? [HuntingtonNews.net]

Jessica Handler tells Newsweek that she's decided not to have kids because she has a 67% chance of passing on a rare blood disorder — and because children remind her of the sister she lost to that disease. It's a heart-wrenching article not just because of Handler's loss — another sister died in childhood of leukemia — but because she feels stigmatized by a decision that was obviously very difficult to make. She writes, "Our culture presumes that a grown woman's true responsibility is motherhood. We're obsessed with babies, even as we expect career success, hot sex and designer style. [...] While few can pull off parenthood with the glamour of Hollywood stars, the underlying message is hard to ignore: if you're not having a baby and enjoying it, something's wrong with you." It's sad that motherhood has become so fetishized that having kids is about proving your completeness as a person — not about raising complete, happy people.

Writing in a similar vein, Anna Quindlen takes aim at the notion that parenting is "easy." She reports the results of several studies showing that parents who receive training in such skills as discipline and positive reinforcement have healthier, better-adjusted kids. Quindlen argues that good child-rearing is a learned skill, not an instinct, and that our ignorance of this as a culture has warped our ideas of parenthood. She writes,

The prevailing ethos about being a parent is that it's mostly intuitive and uniformly joyful, even though the news, and our own lives, are full of those who found it so conspicuously otherwise that they made an utter mess of actual human beings. This mythology has two effects. One is that parents who don't feel happy or competent are made to feel like freaks-and to just keep quiet about the fact. The other is that this makes everyone believe not only that anyone can be a parent, but also that everyone ought to do it, even those who seem by character or inclination to be ill equipped.

Of course, even the "ill equipped" can learn — but the idea that having kids is a necessary part of a fulfilled life may be persuading people to breed before they're ready. And some people — because of personal tragedy or genetics, like Handler, or because of their desire for independence or the fact that they just don't want kids all that much — may never be ready at all.

But we know what you're all thinking — how does this affect men? Nirpal Dhaliwal of the Times of London has the answer. Men want kids too, he says, but they're often ashamed to say so. So far, so good — the desire to be a dad is nothing to be ashamed of (though Dhaliwal's term "throbbing balls" might not be the best way to describe it), and it's certainly worthwhile to bust the stereotype that women all want babies while men just want to drink beer, slap high-fives, and look at women's butts. It's when Dhaliwal describes how he discovered his desire to procreate that things get a little annoying:

I realised how bereft I am of children while spending the second half of last year in India - a country that is teeming with them. I'd watch young Indian families sitting on railway platforms, the fathers beaming as they cradled their perfectly formed, serenely quiet babies. Seeing people who earn a pittance, whose daily lives are a grinding struggle, take such genuine, uncomplicated delight in their children made me appreciate what a real and uniquely powerful experience parenthood is. It made me want to be a father.

Obviously he didn't run into this guy. But seriously, if your idea of offspring is a bunch of "perfectly formed, serenely quiet babies," you may be in for a shock. Babies get sick — sometimes, as in Handler's family — they get very, very sick. And they are rarely "serenely quiet." Actually, this brings us to a quibble with Quindlen's piece. Most of us know motherhood isn't easy — we have all of pop culture's frazzled moms to tell us that, at the very least, it involves a lot of laundry and yelling. But fatherhood, to the non-father, can sometimes seem kind of simple.

Take a look at the ads for the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse — from these, it looks like "taking time to be a dad" means playing with your kid. And while getting out the Super Soaker is important, a lot of being a parent isn't strictly fun. But because many fathers are still absent from their kids' lives, the bar for dads is still set lower than for moms. Motherhood is frequently described as a full-time job, but you can "take time [presumably out of your busy life] to be a dad." We don't want to rag on dads too much, or to challenge Dhaliwal's basic point that men can have parenting urges too, but let's be honest about what parenting entails. Along with the fun comes a lot of worry, conflict, and heartache, and in a just world (with some exceptions) these would fall equally on the shoulders of moms and dads.

I Won't Roll the Biological Dice [Newsweek]
A Teachable Moment [Newsweek]
The men who are desperate for kids [TimesOnline]

Howard's surrogacy agent says military wives are becoming popular as surrogates because, "they don't cry, they don't complain at the drop of a hat. [...] They handle everything when their husbands are gone." But there's another, more practical reason — these women have military health insurance, which includes excellent prenatal care. Paid surrogates are supposed to pay for their own care, but most don't disclose that they're carrying a baby for someone else, and the military can't ask. Some disapprove, but Howard says, ""If our husbands are putting their necks on the line in Iraq or wherever they happen to be at that point in time, we should be able to do what we want with our insurance." However you feel about the practice, it's hard not to be touched by the story of Howard, her supportive but faraway husband Brian, and Esteban and Jean Michel, a gay French couple who hope to become parents. "They may not be carrying the child," Howard says, "but they're going through all the emotions with me."

Carrying Someone Else's Dream [LA Times]

Warburton polled 441 university students about their parents' bad behavior, such as ""making a child feel ashamed," being unloving or rejecting, and frequently telling the child they were stupid or would fail." Then he "asked questions designed to uncover destructive thinking patterns in the students, such as being "clingy" out of a fear of being abandoned." He identified twenty-two percent of mothers as "toxic" (a possible reason for the Britney Spears pic that accompanies the story in the Herald), along with fourteen percent of fathers.

One possible explanation for the results, admits Warburton, is that "kids spend more time with their mothers, especially in the crucial early years." But what if people also remember their mothers less fondly than their fathers for other reasons? Because they have higher expectations for female parents to be warm and nurturing? Or perhaps because they've been conditioned to think — a la the "refrigerator mother" theory — that their moms are to blame for their problems? Having subjects self-report on the "toxicity" of their mothers seems especially fraught with error. So, frankly, do the questions designed to uncover "unhelpful patterns of thinking." Who's to decide what's "unhelpful"? The whole study seems like specious mommy-bashing to us, but what do you think? In the long, complicated process of fucking you up, do moms do more than their fair share?

The Sins Of The Mothers [Sydney Morning Herald]

Single mothers by choice are often second-guessed by people who think they can't handle the job. Turns out men come in for such second-guessing too. Adam Pertman of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute says that men run into the stereotype that “Women are better nurturers. Why would a man want to raise a child?” So while single mothers get pegged as lonely or selfish, single fathers are chromosomally unprepared or possibly unmanly.

Single dad Gene Flanders says strangers are likely to assume he doesn't know how to raise his son. When he let his baby boy taste some butter from his finger at a restaurant, “one woman almost reached up to stop me — little slights like that.” Of course, women get plenty of criticism for how they raise their kids. But it's worth noting that the same annoying stereotypes that make men out to be Neanderthals who can't make their own dinner may also damage their ability to be fathers.

And we should be supporting this ability! Why? Well, because experts say that single parents "can still raise children successfully, if they enlist the support of family and friends to help provide a nurturing environment and structure." And because supporting single fatherhood means affirming men's capacity to raise kids without a woman in the house, which is good for gay couples.

But this is Jezebel, and since we are feminazis who only care about women, let's get to the point! Take a look at that picture above. It's lawyer Steve Harris wearing a business suit, sitting in a posh office — with his baby. If that were a woman, the article would probably be about how impossible it is to juggle personal and professional responsibilities, and how she's worried her child will grow up damaged because of their high-powered career. But the NYT offers the following description of Harris's lifestyle: "His office now looks different. He’s brought in a playpen; there are toys and books, all there in case the nanny calls in sick." So, uh, he adapted to his situation and somehow manages to balance family and career (albeit with a nanny)? Shocking!

Single parenthood is still associated with a disempowered group in society — women, and often poor women at that. But if a powerful group — professional men, often the only ones who can afford six-figure surrogacy fees — joins in, perhaps raising a child on one's own will receive much-needed legitimacy. If besuited dudes in Manhattan juggle story hour and billable hours, perhaps society will wake up to the fact that women have been doing this for years, and doing it without raising a generation of axe murderers. And more importantly, perhaps when more men become single parents, less fortunate single parents will get more of the resources they badly need — like child care, health care, and other services that can be difficult to afford when you're raising a kid on your own. So kudos to the Steve Harrises of the world, not only for doing a tough job all by themselves, but for potentially making that job a little easier for others.

The Bachelor Life Includes A Family [NY Times]

Jamie didn't want surgery, but when she heard about the less invasive Essure, a metal coil that creates scar tissue in the fallopian tubes, she was intrigued. She did a lot of research, especially on post-sterilization regret, which for young women seems to be greatest if you've already had children. Then she met with a doctor who she feared would turn her away because of her age. He did ask her a lot of questions (including the rather offensive, "What if you met a billionaire who wanted to have kids with you?"), but he eventually approved her for the procedure.

I drove her to the appointment and waited at the clinic while she had the device inserted. I won't say it wasn't a weird experience — the clinic also did cosmetic surgery, so it was kind of a palace, and I sat there reading Vogue while my friend got screws shoved up her reproductive organs. For her part, she says it didn't hurt at all. They did have to dilate her cervix and pump her uterus full of water, so she came out a little nauseous and tired, but in good spirits.

The real fallout came when she told her parents. Her mom cried, and asked why she couldn't "just let her life unfold" the way other people did. Up to that point I'd been totally on board with Jamie's decision, but her mom's tears gave me a twinge of doubt. I wondered if I'd helped her carry out a choice she'd later regret.

But Jamie tells me she doesn't even think of it as a choice. When a gay friend of hers found out about her parents' reaction, he told her it sounded a lot like coming out. She was revealing "an important fact about who she was, that couldn't be changed, and her parents didn't want to accept it." She believes the desire not to have children can be something innate, as basic as the urge to procreate. On the question of kids, she says, "sometimes the answer is just no."

Her parents aren't the only ones who disapprove. Even the nurse at the clinic assumed Jamie was "done having kids," and was taken aback when Jamie explained that zero was enough for her. Jamie says most people see not wanting kids as a function of youth, not a deeply held conviction. When I asked how she felt about explaining her sterilization to people, she told me this: "Does it need to be defended? No. But people will feel entitled to an explanation, and you can get mad about that, or you can think of something to say." Which seems pretty good way to think about any big decision in your life, especially if it sets you apart from what people think of as normal.

*Not her real name.

Of bringing son Thurston to the office, Zoe Williams explains that she wasn't able to search online for something important up because "I am using my Google hand to prop up this baby." Rice cakes get smooshed into keyboards, babies start yodeling in meetings, and everything takes three times longer than it would normally.

It makes sense that in the U.S., where women on the whole do not get paid maternity leave, new parents would be looking for creative solutions to the working mother conundrum, though bringing mewling, puking newborns to the office doesn't really seem like much of a solution for anyone involved.

Bringing In Baby [Guardian]
Bringing Babies To Work

Earlier: Discrimination Complaints By Pregnant Women Are On The Rise

Somehow, someone, somewhere, forgot to give me the pill from the bottle whose label read: "You've just had a baby, from now on your aversion to all things cute, cuddly or smothered in teddy bear pattern will be forgotten. Go forth and spend a fortune on useless furnishings and ugly-coloured plastic items. Everything you thought you knew about how ' you wanted your home to look is wrong. Oh, and if it's a girl, prepare to like pink."

When Rattray's daughter was too big to be bathed in the sink? "I was tempted by the practical white number that sits on top of your bath. Unfortunately, in the flesh the object in question has all the elegance of a plastic garden pond. I'm not paying £20 to ruin one of my favourite rooms, so it's back to the sink and hope she doesn't grow any more." How realistic! And loving!

Ultimately, Rattray learns to tolerate her daughter. "Harper has discovered the art of bashing using a sweet little wooden [car] with red wheels. Trouble is, it's our Barber Osgerby Loop coffee table she's chosen to practice on. The plywood surface now has several deep dents on it..." (The car "mysteriously migrates" to another room.) But hey, Harper, when you get older, mommy might buy you a $33,000 Eames playhouse. Not that you'll be allowed to play with it.

My New Baby Is Destroying My Perfect Designer Home [Independent]
Nesting With A Vengeance (And a Deadline) [NY Times]
The £17,000 Wendy House: Why The Luxury Kids Market Is Booming [Times of London]

According to the Financial Times, there's a charity in the UK, Oxpip, devoted to helping parents in their relationship with their babies. Researchers believe that early relationships shape an infant's brain and nervous system; babies born to parents with attachment disorders often have emotional and mental health problems later in life. It's enough to make you wonder if you should just skip the mommy thing, especially if you're not naturally a "baby person."

I'm one of those people who doesn't just automatically like babies. I can recognize a cute baby when I see one (Zahara!), but I'm not "into" infants. (My sister, who is in veterinary school, is the same way, and has been known to declare: "I don't like baby humans.") I'm neither married nor at the point in my life where I'm seriously considering having kids, and the lukewarm (at best) feelings I have about babies make me wonder if I even want to have any. Ever. But saying so makes me feel vaguely guilty. Should a woman who is reluctant about motherhood have a baby anyway? And if you have a child and feel a sense of regret, are you a bad mother?

Women Who Aren't Cut Out For Motherhood [Times of London]
Welcome To The Nuthouse [Salon]
When The Magic Of Motherhood Is Missing [Financial Times]
Related: Oxford Parent Infant Project

As for those who've decided to take the plunge officially, another new study shows that married couples who suppress their anger towards one another are more likely to die. The research, done at the University of Michigan, says that 27% of couples who both suppressed their anger had one member die during the study and 23% of the couples died off in pairs.

The take-away? That couples don't even have to be married to make each other miserable for the rest of their days, and that laundry, dishwashing and domestic duties in general can not only extinguish the flame of passion but literally kill a couple. A suggestion for the Brits: why don't you take that extra £17,370 (the average cost of a UK nuptial these days) and blow it all on housekeepers?

Married Couples Are No Longer The Social Norm [Telegraph]
Goodbye Married Couples, Hello Alternative Family Arrangements [Guardian]
The Equality Hypocrites: It's OK For Women To Work - As Long As They Do The Ironing, Say MEN [Daily Mail]
A Good Fight May Keep You And Your Marriage Healthy [EurekAlert]

The reason for the connection between deep voices and daddy-making? Researchers theorize that It could either be because deep voices are indicative of high testosterone levels, or simply because dudes with deep voices start procreating earlier. So basically the study found that women are more likely to bone someone like Clive Owen than Woody Allen. But did we really need a bunch of scientists to tell us that?

Deep-voiced men 'have more kids' [BBC News]