Blogger and stay-at-home dad Adam Hall knows he fills a non-traditional role. He would like you to understand exactly what that role is — once he figures it out himself.
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I am not a mother, in case that post title was somewhat misleading. I am a father. But I may not be one in the traditional sense of the word. As a stay-at-home Dad, and blogger about such things, I am at the forefront of the online men’s movement to become more like women. Wait, that was misleading too. We don’t want to become more like women; we want to become more like people. We want recognition that man are not aggressive bundles of testosterone and that women are not beautiful objects that produce food and children. Or not just those things. We want to be able to explore all of the parts of ourselves. We want the cultural freedom to be whole.
So here I am, trying to be all progressive, but even in my own mind I have a long way to go. I have not fully replaced the words “mother” and “father” with the word “parent” when it comes to tasks and roles. And while it has become much more acceptable for women to assume “manly” chores, like working at jobs, wearing pants, or sportsing, it has not become as permissible for men to do lady things, like interior decorating, wearing dresses, or using Pinterest. We are just not there yet. And I have to continually remind myself that I can do “mother” things, even though I am, clinically, male.
This past week I have been really craving some homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now, let me lay a few facts out for you. I am the baker in the family. I make the Christmas cookies. I make the pies. I make everything except the banana bread, because my wife does that. It is delicious. I am not messing with that formula. But overall, I do the baking. I have loved baking ever since I was a kid and would spend hours in the kitchen with my mother, making cookies, pies, cinnamon rolls, donuts, and all sorts of other goodies. We would always have some sort of baked good for dessert that we had made. And now I am an adult, and time has progressed to January, 2015, and I am sitting in my house wishing that we had some of those treats around. And I did not make any. I bought some at Costco instead.
I did not make any, not because I did not have the time or the ingredients, but because my vision of who was supposed to make those cookies included a woman in an apron, face covered with flour and smiles and love. Despite all of them facts I just listed, mothers make the chocolate chip cookies, and I am not a mother. But I am a mother. Words are changing. Times are changing. Mother really has two definitions, one literal and one cultural. I am not literally a mother, which is to say a female parent, but I am closer to our traditional cultural definition of mother than I am to a father. I have taken on the homemaking role. I do most of the chores. I am home when the kids get back from school and I give them snacks and send them to play outside so I can vacuum. I do these things because my wife has to go to the office for an important meeting with the executive vice-president about budgets. We are a 1950s couple in reverse. But not really.
In reality, we share both roles. I have a job too. In fact, I have at least three of them at any given time. I play video games and laser tag and watch the Super Bowl. I roughhouse. I am a father. My wife bakes banana bread. She takes the children to doctor’s appointments and reads them stories and tucks them in and shares her love of movie musicals with them. She nurtures them. She is a mother. So it’s really time for these definitions to go away. We are both parents. She is the female mother and I am the male father, but everything else is just parenting. I can make the cookies. She can make the money. And we can both love our kids and do everything we can to provide for them and raise them right. The details and task breakdown of this mighty endeavor ought to be the last thing we separate out by gender. Now I just have to finish convincing my brain.
Originally appeared on Tenor Dad.
Photo: Flickr/Alex & Rachel Johnson
Hey Mark..It’s manly men like your grandad, those “old fashion”, “unsophisticated”, “cavemen” you consider yourself so superior to, in your modern metrosexual / gynocentric / effeminate, progressive delusion, that created this modern world we now live in. Gender differences ( including gender roles..) aren’t a cultural phenomena, it’s rather biological, physiological. If you’re unable to recognize that, then may “Jesus, Buddah and Hare Krishnas chanting and handing out pamphlets and flowers at the airport”, help you, because you’re absolutely naive and suffer from some sort of mental / hormonal deficiency. Here is a Swedish documentary on YouTube with English subtitles,… Read more »
Right on, brother!!!!!!
You have to ask yourself, why has this study not gotten greater media attention?
As a working mom, separated from my husband, who didn’t work much when we were together, I can say that there has to be balance. I think that both parent should work, or resentment builds up. Both ways. I don’t think it is fair for either parent to be solely responsible for paying bills… Working parents miss out on time with kids which can be nice, having somewhere else to go… But stay at home parents miss out on being part of the workforce, supporting themselves… And can feel like they sacrificed their own careers for their kids. The pressure… Read more »
I give my wife the option to work if she wants to, and she can go to school, have a career, whatever..I’m the one responsible for the mortgage and basic necessities of the family. I’m the designated protector and provider, that’s just the way it is. Biology, mother nature, hormones..etc I don’t buy the new “gender role dynamic”. Sure, I don’t like the idea of men ( or women for that matter..), having to pay alimony to their exes,, losing half of their assets and salaries, to their exes. The person that stays at home with the children, maintaining the… Read more »
Jesus. I hope the andro here is expressing his satire in all its glory or dear god we are all sunk. If he, or she for that matter, because i hear this same kind of “satire” from the lips of ladies yet too today truly believes this then i certainly hope they have found a perfect mate that resonates to that, because then that means two other educated and innocent people have been saved from a life of misery.
The one who pay the bills wears the pants in the relationship, unless you’re handicapped, injured..etc You’re not going to reverse 2+ million years of natural selection in one generation. It’s not healthy for you to adopt such a feminine role, while your wife goes out to “hunt caribou”. Staying in the cave basket weaving and picking berries, with the children is all very sweet, warm and fuzzy, but you need to realize, the precarious position you’re in as compared to the men your wife is encountering at the office everyday. You’re essentially her beta-male sperm bank, her feminized hubby… Read more »