What’s up with The New Fatherhood?

From the head of which goddess sprang the Involved Father? Who is this demi-god with his fancy jogging stroller, hanging out at Starbucks on Saturdays at 10am with the baby and the toddler so their mama can sleep the required two hours a day, leaving early on Tuesday afternoon because his wife has a meeting and the babysitter isn’t back from Hawaii yet, (awkwardly) braiding his daughter’s hair, working nights so his wife can work days, knowing where the immunization records are kept, insisting on a say in which school the child attends, arguing the finer points of parenting philosophy because he took Psych 100 and he is the daddy after all, changing diapers, cleaning up vomit, rubbing backs, taking the children to see Beverly Hills Chihauha and becoming irresistably attractive because of that, and warming baby bottles unprompted because he is in it to win it.

And they are EVERYWHERE.

I blame the feminists. What with all their/our/my incessant bitching about housework and child-rearing being undervalued; insisting that this work had value; and yet, at the same time, insisting on being able to work outside the home, even though most non-white, non-middle-class women were always there, anyways. I blame women like Madonna Kolbenschlag, who in the 70s wrote a letter from a newly feminist wife to her husband:

…I would like to free you of your compulsive workaholism, your “breadwinner” fixation. But I can’t share that load unless you relieve me of some of the burden of homemaking and child rearing. Can you learn to work less, earn less, spend more time with the kids — and be happy? If you can’t then I can’t be happy either. Can you stop measuring yourself by the size of your paycheck?

I also blame the dot com bubble/bust; overindulged, entitled knowledge workers; Tim Feriss and his four hour work week; and Gen X and Y who grew up in broken homes with broken hearts full of travel-lust, who backpacked and couch-surfed from country to country only to finally discover home in the eyes of their children. It’s all your fault, people. You raised hell and now you’re raising children and you’re spoiled enough to think the world, especially the world of work, ought to accomodate this fact of life.

This is a very good thing, because having children is what people do. Maybe not all – and I’m certainly not judging anyone who chooses to be childless, in fact, I salute you and know that you are deeply, deeply happy (there is actual research about this) and please know that if you ever need an afternoon fix of children, I’ve got two that I lend out enthusiastically – but I wish we would stop talking about having children as a choice or a privilege. Having babies is what animals do. We are animals. As a species, we reproduce. This is not a ‘choice’ made by the adequately financially and emotionally prepared; it is life.

[Side note: I am truly, truly worried about the child-as-privileged choice theme that is weaving through our culture: poor people don't deserve to have children? Really? Humans have been making baby humans since we've been human, but now poor humans ought not be able to participate in that human experience. Nice. Poor people used to have children to help the family survive. Now, children are a luxury like the next Louis Vuitton bag, and only the rich should be able to collect them, preferably from exotic, African locales. It is so Gattica meets Handmaid's Tale via Brangelina, and that is scary, frankly.]

I love the new fatherhood. I heart the Involved Father. My heart swells every time my boss’s boss sends an e-mail to the entire team telling us that he is working from home because his baby is sick. It swells because his baby is getting the care she needs; his wife is getting the partner she deserves; he is getting to be a real father, and maybe, just maybe he is part of the first generation of men in our culture who have truly claimed and embraced this honour.

It also means that no one says s-h-i-t when I miss work because my kids are sick, and this rocks because then I can stay home and rub their backs and feed them soup and watch their temperature and know that I still have a job the next day and so will be able to continue to feed and clothe them and keep them in a state of health and well-being that means they likely won’t ever be really, really sick. And this, people, is the way it ought to be.

So it is with a full heart and fist in the air that I wish a Happy Father’s Day to all of you amazing, involved fathers on the frontlines, and to all the feminists and slackers who put you there.

PS to Charles, my children’s father, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

PPS The revolution will be mothered. And fathered.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 21st, 2009 at 2:57 am and is filed under Family, Love, Meaning, Power, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.