3. What makes your fathering profeminist? How does your approach differ from an antifeminist father’s?
At the start, I saw participating in infant care as being the most important thing I could do to make my fathering profeminist, and maybe that was correct—it had the merit of being a pretty straightforward mission. I did my best.
And that’s a fundamentally different framework than the one an antifeminist or nonfeminist father brings to fatherhood—for the best of them, fatherhood involves an uncomplicated commitment to breadwinning above all else, which, whatever its shortcomings, is definitely an important role to fulfill; for the worst of them, fatherhood becomes another opportunity to dominate women and expand their egos. On this front, I don’t sell myself, or other profeminist fathers, short: A commitment to care is crucial, and makes a real difference for mothers and children.
I also think a commitment to profeminist fathering leads in a very direct way to supporting profeminist public policies: antidiscrimination policies, subsidized daycare and preschool, universal health care, paid parental leave, and so on. Enacting these policies will provide a nurturing context for our personal decisions and make profeminist fathering more likely to flourish. That’s another difference between a consciously profeminist and a nonfeminist father: There’s a political dimension to your fathering that, I think, must be expressed through voting, activism, writing, and, ultimately, public policy.
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4. When have you felt compromised as a profeminist father? Do you ever feel you’ve failed as a profeminist father?
At this point, I’m compromised every freaking day; I fail every single day. This is not false modesty. The commitment to infant care was straightforward, though in retrospect I see those halcyon days as a simpler time. As the years have gone by, I’ve fallen further and further short of my ideals, and profeminist fathering has started to look increasingly complicated to me.
I confess that I feel really quite lost when it comes to applying profeminist values to my relationships with my wife and my son as they are right now. From that perspective, this is an awkward time for me to tackle these questions—I’m struggling toward the answers but don’t yet have good ones, and it’s possible that I never will.
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5. Do you feel feminism has failed fathers and, if so, how? Personally, what do you think feminism has given fathers?
“Feminism” is, of course, not monolithic.
I would say that individual feminist thinkers and leaders have certainly failed fathers, in the sense that they have behaved as though fathers don’t matter or don’t exist or can only serve a purely oppressive role within the family. Another group of feminists has actually attacked the emergence of caregiving dads—I submit the philosopher Linda Hirshman as an example.
But I would describe those two groups as a minority; I think a majority of feminists can foresee a positive role for fathers and, indeed, desperately want to see fatherhood redefined in a positive and progressive way. I don’t think feminism has offered a well-articulated vision of fatherhood, but that’s OK: It really falls to fathers to redefine fatherhood.
This is the great thing that feminism has given fathers: Its success has triggered culture-wide dialogues among men about what a good father should be and do. Feminists themselves are not always comfortable with these arguments, and certainly there has been much to criticize.
But, as an old New Leftist once said, revolutions don’t happen in velvet boxes. They’re messy, contradictory, sometimes downright revolting—but usually also thrilling and necessary. Women have been rising for over a century, and only recently have men started to really change in response. From that perspective, it’s an exciting time.
This leads me to another thing that has surprised me about fatherhood and feminism: In a perverse way, fatherhood has strengthened my commitment to feminism. By revealing the limits of my good intentions and scope of action, fatherhood has pushed me to seek new answers to feminist questions I thought I had answered in my early twenties, on both personal and political levels.
Fatherhood has also reminded me, in a visceral way, of the inequalities that persist between men and women, and, in particular, the burdens carried by mothers. Those burdens and inequalities shape and poison our most intimate relationships whether we want them to or not.
Here again, feminism is useful for fathers and mothers: It gives us perspective, or it should.
It’s easy to be overcome by day-to-day difficulties and despair of the possibility of changing the balance of power between men and women. But if we lift our eyes and look at the sweep of the past through feminism’s eyes, we can see that the balance of power has changed, on this and many other fronts. History doesn’t stop just because we personally feel stuck. If we look at the lives of the people who came before us, we see that our actions in the present do matter, both our individual choices and the act of speaking out in public.
Finally, returning to question two, fatherhood has changed my relationship with feminism in one other way: If I speak out now, it is with a lot more sadness and less righteousness than I did when I was a college student. At this point, I’ve failed so many times that I can hardly denounce others for their imperfections.
But I still feel like we as fathers need to speak out, even if it’s just to friends or through blogs or zines with a few hundred readers. The alternative is silence—but worse than that, meaninglessness. If I’m going to fail, the failure has to mean something. It has to be recorded (if only for myself), examined, put to use, leveraged, transmuted. Feminism gives us a way to do that, to transform our private pains into social change.
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—Photo Spigoo/Flickr
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Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of “The Daddy Shift,” co-editor of the new anthology “Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood” and founder of the blog Daddy Dialectic.
What a wonderful post! In our marriage (we have one child), I have chosen to stay home (and homeschool). Yes, I am a full-time published author and solopreneur. My husband and I are also collaborators on an artistic project, under contract with a publisher. I mention this because we don’t see our relationship as a “power dynamic”, nor our work collaborations. I don’t mean to sound Pollyannish, but we approach our relationship as friends…and look for what is good for the whole. Sometimes, it’s “good for the whole” for my husband and son to do the dishes while I finish… Read more »
Janet, thank you for your thoughtful response. I love your commitment to equality and what’s “good for the whole” in your household. I don’t think it’s “Pollyannish” at all to be best friends with your husband, and I agree that thinking in terms of hierarchies and power may be part of the problem rather than the solution. Makes sense to me. Thank you for sharing.
I’m of two minds when it comes to talking about power. One of those minds believes that you can never escape the dynamics of power, no matter how desperately you want to. Every decision we make has a consequence; everything we do can help or hurt someone. That’s power. And as guys, I insist that we have to own, have to take responsibility, for the fact that so many women feel threatened by sexual or domestic violence, are left homeless by abandonment or divorce, and so on. We have to own up to the fact that for a very, very… Read more »
I tend to agree with Jeremy that looking at power is important.
In fact, it may be those who most need to look at power relationships who deny their existence, and those include not only people in positions of power but also those who are powerless. Some of the domination that many people seem to need or at least to act out, often unconsciously (women often do this as parents, men in the public economy) is often an attempt to cover up or deny a feeling of powerlessness, which may or may not be accurate.
Forget about “power.” Focus on love, care, commitment, sacrifice (putting your mate and the rest of the family first), cooperation, and communication. Do that and all else will get worked out.
You’re proving my point. That those who most need to look at power deny its existence.
Being self-abnegating is just as abusive in relationship as being dominating. And self-abnegators tend to have a lot of self-pity and victim complexes.
Interdependence is more the adult way of doing things. To get to interdependence you need more awareness of self-in-relation, which requires looking at power issues (overempowerment, underempowerment).
Those who focus on gaining and keeping power never experience the power of love, joy, kindness and peace in their relationships.
I am a bit surprised by the apparently visceral objection to Jeremy’s use of the word “pro-feminist.” Is there some anxiety over the word “feminism” which sometimes does get used in a woman one-up way rather than as promoting egalitarianism? I would also say though that if you can’t tolerate the word “fem” you may by definition have difficulty being a good dad to a daughter, and probably can’t be a good dad to a son either? Or if this just an objection to the gendering of traits (competitiveness as masculine, for example, and nurturing as feminine), I would suggest… Read more »
No, there’s nothing wrong with being pro-feminist.
However, equating non-feminist and anti-feminist fathers as people who are, at best, in it to fulfil the breadwinner role or at worst looking to dominate women, is the issue. As if being pro-feminist is the only way to be a good father.
Pro-feminist, anti-feminist, non-feminist are nothing but labels. What makes a good father is what that father brings to the table in their relationship with their kids.
“What makes a good father is what that father brings to the table in their relationship with their kids.”
Yes, this is important, but just as important is how they relate to the mother and to women in general, and that requires at least a working knowledge of sex/gender equality issues.
Emily: “Yes, this is important, but just as important is how they relate to the mother and to women in general, and that requires at least a working knowledge of sex/gender equality issues.”
From BOTH perspectives. Sex/Gender equality issues, unfortunatly, are too easily slanted in the woman’s favor leaving men’s and father’s feelings to rot by the wayside.
No, don’t change the subject. You were talking about the definition of being a good father. The definition of being a good father is NOT whining about your mistreatment. By the time you are a father you should have dealt with these issues and be functioning as an adult. Yes, traditionally many men have overentitlement problems (which is a form of inequality) and have poor relational skills (often from these skills, including emotional self-awareness and self-validation, being neglected in boys and overemphasized in girls). This is a different subject, though, from what you brought up, which is what makes a… Read more »
Emily: “Learning to stay on the subject and not turn every conversation into self-pity is an important part of learning to be an adult – and a good father. Please do not have children until you get this fixed, with counseling or other support to fix whatever was wrong in your childhood – if you felt your father didn’t relate to you or your mother discriminated against you or whatever. And do not project these issues onto all women just because they happened in your family.” Emily, with all due respect, I suggest you retract this personal insult and apolagise.… Read more »
No, wait, hang on. No, I’m not going away. I’m sick and tired of it and I’m going to express this no matter what. Nobody is going to stop me from doing it no matter what tactics they employ. Which include yours, Emily. Go ahead, make assumptions about my life. Second guess my psychosis. Throw your worst at me because it’s not going to affect me in the end. Like I’ve said, there have been worser things people have done to me. You don’t hold a candle to them. So you’re not going to dictate how I should think or… Read more »
Wrong. It’s how they related to people in general, not elevating women above men or men above men, or daughters above sons or sons above daughters. That is what is missing from feminism – equal care and concern for all members of the family and society, not just the female ones.
“That is what is missing from feminism – equal care and concern for all members of the family and society, not just the female ones.” Yes, some women may use feminism to reinforce narcissism, but the basic concept of sex/gender equality, which is created by feminism deconstructing patriarchy, is all about “care and concern” not being discriminatory on the basis of sex, particularly among children. By the time men and women are adults, they are expected to be able to function with some autonomy and interdependence, rather than needing to be taken care of like a baby. If you have… Read more »
“Yes, some women may use feminism to reinforce narcissism”
True. The attitude expressed in the below statement is an example of that.
“Yes, this is important, but just as important is how they relate to the mother and to women in general, and that requires at least a working knowledge of sex/gender equality issues.”
Huh? Requiring someone to be relational rather than narcissistic is narcissistic? Makes no sense. I think maybe you don’t know what relational skills are, what narcissism is, and don’t have a working knowledge of sex/gender equality issues? So, you need to dismiss it. It’s actually a type of inverse narcissism (sometimes called co-dependence) that some women have when they seek out narcissistic, non-relational men. Some women identify as “feminist” when they are like this. They often have an inner kind of rigidity and false entitlement that mirrors the outer rigidity and false entitlement of narcissistic men. But neither is healthy;… Read more »
“I think maybe you don’t know what relational skills are. . .” Not true. In fact, based on your comments I know them better. I realize that they don’t only require effort on the part of males, as your comment suggested (“just as important is how they relate to the mother and to women in general,”) “what narcissism is” Narcissists are self-centered. They believe that others should do for them, give to them, rather than focusing on having a mutual giving relationship (ocuses on getting rather than giving. Your comments reflect that view. Only what men should do for women,… Read more »
“But I would also say that the access men have to their children today has been in large part a product of feminism”
There is no truth to that statement. My father was a balanced involved father who always worked full time. Always; however, we always had a good, close, warm relationship – and I respected how hard he worked to care for us in all necessary ways. His fatherhood had nothing to do with anything related to feminism.
Glad you feel like you had a good father. I suspect he wasn’t as good as you think, though. For example, I think you’ve established in your comments here that you are pretty ignorant of what feminism is in the minds of many other people, including many of its proponents (one common definition is the deconstruction of patriarchy to get to sex/gender equality). Instead you seem to have your own definition of a global social movement that has been going on in earnest for 50 years and for 100-200 years before that as well, and you don’t even use any… Read more »
“Glad you feel like you had a good father. I suspect he wasn’t as good as you think, though.” You suspect wrong. Even though you’ve never met him, somehow you know more about my father and my 20 years of upbringing than I do? Speaking of arrogant and narcissistic. . . Not only do I know that I have wonderful parents but they are loved and respected by thousands of people in multiple states throughout the country, many of whom also consider them parents and credit them for growing up into caring and responsible adults, without feminism, masculism, MRA, white… Read more »
Nah, of course I don’t know your father.
I just think in these posts you’ve revealed your thinking and knowledge of these issues is petty, shallow and way off base in what “feminism” is about, at least for many people.
You also make false equalities, which is a type of corruption that is as bad as white supremacy, etc..
And people like that don’t come from good families; it’s pretty much a given.
“You also make false equalities. . .” I have done no such thing.
There is nothing in my comments or thinking that advocates for one race over another, like white supremecists or one sex over the other, like feminists.
At the start, I saw participating in infant care as being the most important thing I could do to make my fathering profeminist, and maybe that was correct—it had the merit of being a pretty straightforward mission. I did my best. And that’s a fundamentally different framework than the one an antifeminist or nonfeminist father brings to fatherhood—for the best of them, fatherhood involves an uncomplicated commitment to breadwinning above all else, which, whatever its shortcomings, is definitely an important role to fulfill; for the worst of them, fatherhood becomes another opportunity to dominate women and expand their egos. Both… Read more »
No, Jacob–that’s not what it says. And it doesn’t say anything about your foster fathers, who sound like great guys–you were lucky to have them. Instead it says that the worst men will exploit fatherhood and misuse it to dominate women and children. There are men like that, there’s no point in denying it — and I would argue that feminism has been an absolutely critical force in curbing the damage that they can do. We might disagree on that point. But we agree on another point: as the rest of the piece makes clear, being a feminist does not… Read more »
Jeremy: “No, Jacob–that’s not what it says. And it doesn’t say anything about your foster fathers, who sound like great guys–you were lucky to have them. Instead it says that the worst men will exploit fatherhood and misuse it to dominate women and children. There are men like that, there’s no point in denying it ” Let’s have a look at the paragraph again. This is what you wrote in the article: “And that’s a fundamentally different framework than the one an antifeminist or nonfeminist father brings to fatherhood—for the best of them, fatherhood involves an uncomplicated commitment to breadwinning… Read more »
Thank you for replying, Jeremy. I do not believe I misunderstood your comment. Of course there are bad fathers. Some of them are feminists. Yet that was not the point you made. You stated, “And that’s a fundamentally different framework than the one an antifeminist or nonfeminist father brings to fatherhood […]” You did not say anything about “the worst men”, just men who are not feminists or disagree with feminists. Most fathers are not feminists, yet most fathers do the best they can. They are not perfect and they do not have all the answers, but that does not… Read more »
Guys, honestly….thanks for participating in the discussion, but I just think you have an ax to grind and you’ll seize on anything that help you to do that. I’ll let your comments stand and let readers decide what I really meant.
Jeremy: “Guys, honestly….thanks for participating in the discussion, but I just think you have an ax to grind and you’ll seize on anything that help you to do that. I’ll let your comments stand and let readers decide what I really meant.” Jeremy, I repeat again, this is what you wrote in the paragraph: “And that’s a fundamentally different framework than the one an antifeminist or nonfeminist father brings to fatherhood—for the best of them, fatherhood involves an uncomplicated commitment to breadwinning above all else, which, whatever its shortcomings, is definitely an important role to fulfill; for the worst of… Read more »
You would do well to retract your insulting statement about non-feminist fathers, which comprises the vast majority of fathers. Your statement about them is supercillious and grossly inaccurate.
This is a very good article. It is much better than what The Good Men Project usually dishes out. Thanks for writing it.
“I have simply not been as absorbed by the physical and emotional demands of caregiving, even when I was primary caregiver; and at this writing, I am the one who is making most of the money and feels most driven to advance in my so-called career. Mind you, I have been vastly more involved with care than many other fathers, and I have explicitly designed my work situation to be flexible. And yet it is still the case—this is the important thing, the most important thing that needs to be said—that parenthood has diminished my wife’s power. Or, to put… Read more »
That’s a good question. I’m not sure how to answer, partially because I think I’d need to check in with my wife before I could answer with complete honesty. But sufficed to say that interpersonal power never stops shifting.
You know, I think i’d need a lot more time and space than I have at this moment to parse some of the notions you’ve put forth here. I am not a feminist. At all. But: “I saw participating in infant care as being the most important thing I could do to make my fathering” healthy and responsible but most importantly, loving and significant. This doesn’t make me a feminist, it makes me a good dad. In fact, many of the ideals you espoused sound like what healthy, loving individuals should be doing. The problem is that, much like most… Read more »
Hi, I will start this off saying I am not a parent (yet), but a student at a university. In all of the classes I’ve taken on feminism, the point has not been women power, women over men, women taking control. It’s about equality for everyone- regardless of sex, gender, race, sexuality, anything, which is basically what you’re teaching your sons anyway. Perhaps that’s not what feminism was in the beginning, perhaps that’s not what lot of people view it as now (Can we please stop comparing feminists with a political party responsible for the deaths of 2.7 million people?).… Read more »
Chivalry is, by definition, unequal treatment and therefore anti-feminist. Extending the same basic, common courtesy that men get to women (and no more than that) would be equality. Helping a woman in need would be common courtesy, but only if you would help a man in the same situation. Doing more for a woman based on gender is chivalry and unequal treatment.
“I have an idea, instead of focusing on being feminists, why don’t we focus on being human beings who respect the rights of others to pursue lives of purpose and happiness no matter what plumbing the good Lord has given them.”
“I am however, raising my sons to go out of their way to respect ALL PEOPLE, regardless of ethnicity or gender.”
I don’t see why this comment was thumbs downed. Who could possibly disagree with respecting everyone’s rights?
I personally find it as difficult to relate feminism to fathering as I do Christianity to breathing. I find them both equally dogmatic. Particularly on the issue of parenting. I have two adult children and family bonds that are reduced to biological relativity. I have a 7 year old son suffering from the same conditions. I can trace much of the hostilities directly to feminist politics and it’s influence on law and family. I don’t identify as a profeminist father. As a father I am accountable an answerable to my children only, the dogma can get it’s own leash and… Read more »
Hi- Great article. One thing that I am wondering if it will help people on getting to parity on this issue is to think of these things from the child’s perspective. As children, I think we need two adult parents who are both functioning as adults in the political economy and who are capable of relating to us and taking care of us. We also need those parents to interact with each other and to show us an adult relationship. We also need them to give us the benefit of knowing both of them (in the case of a biological… Read more »
I was curious to see you reference your monogamous relationship in recounting your history with feminism. Did you/do you see monogamy as a feminist practice?
Hi Hunter. No, I don’t see monogamy as intrinsic to a feminist relationship. I just meant to indicate that my private life was placid and lacked the complications and contradictions that might come with being involved with multiple women.