On this Mother’s Day, Lisa Duggan asks an
unusual question; where are all the Dads?
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(Excerpted from The Good Mother Myth, by Avital Norman Nathman.)
In my early days of motherhood, I would often go hours without uttering a single recognizable word, or hearing another adult’s voice—save that of my husband’s. I cooed. I shushed. I hummed. I rushed to the door when the mail hit the slot and cornered the mailman, eager for some human interaction that did not require me lifting my shirt. If it weren’t for my weekly “mother-infant circle” at the lactation center in Chatham, New Jersey, I might have lost the use of language altogether.
The compassion and good advice I found at the center gave me the courage to keep going on the worst of days. Here, women felt free to tearfully recount stories of greedy all-night nursers or insensitive husbands. Here, I felt safe enough to expose any fears or doubts about my daughter’s development, or my own ability to parent, knowing I would find sympathy in the circle around me. But we couldn’t remain members there forever. We evolved into a rotating playgroup, meeting at one another’s houses every Wednesday.
In my early days of motherhood, I would often go hours without uttering a single recognizable word, or hearing another adult’s voice—save that of my husband’s.
Somehow I found myself the member of a second playgroup as well, this one comprised of a small trio of moms I knew from my birthing classes. We met every other Friday. In both cases, I felt lucky to have been invited to join. When you’re a thirty-seven-year-old new mother, making new friends isn’t always easy, and not something I was told to expect when I was expecting—along with the hemorrhoids and stretch marks.
Both groups were made up of intelligent, funny, and educated women in their middle to late thirties, all of whom had left full-time careers to have kids. All owned beautiful homes in leafy, suburban New Jersey towns. Everyone served a nice spread when it was their turn to host. But they were different in a few ways. The moms in the bigger group had decided to remain stay-at-home moms and were devoted to increasing their family size, while the moms in the smaller Friday group all eventually went back to full-time careers, satisfied with having one child.
Regardless of what choice they made, these women all had one thing in common: their husbands had careers, and they played only a minor role in the domestic realm.
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Despite this, I considered the mothers in both groups to be feminists—even if they didn’t self-identify as such—because independent of their husbands, they were in charge of their lives and their choices, and each one seemed fiercely committed to her chosen path. It never occurred to them that their husbands could—or should—figure into this sphere on a greater scale than they already did. Our gender-socializing was just that entrenched. As a freelance graphic designer, doing project-based work, I straddled the fence of these two distinct worlds: the stay-at-homers and the full-time working moms, but the grass seemed perpetually greener on both sides of that fence.
When I was working, I was thinking about my daughter. I missed her sweet baby smell. I missed the languid rhythm of a day spent focused on meeting her needs. When I was at home, I was thinking of work; specifically, an air-conditioned office with other adults, the frenetic rhythm of meeting a deadline, and the luxury of meeting my own needs first. No matter which job I was doing, at the end of the day, the only thing I was certain about was my ambivalence.
Something was missing from these discussions, but I couldn’t articulate what it was at first. Eventually, I began to see that it was not a something that was missing, but a someone. Specifically, a man—and men in general.
It was easy to diagnose my dissatisfaction as the popular and virally enhanced Mommy Wars: Who does it better? The stay-at-homers or the working mommas. The media pitted us against each other and further confounded our choices. We were damned if we did, and damned if we didn’t. Either way, we were apparently screwing up our children.
Something was missing from these discussions, but I couldn’t articulate what it was at first. The problem seemed un-nameable, which added to my sense of isolation and transported me right back to Betty Friedan’s pre-Mystique days. Eventually, I began to see that it was not a something that was missing, but a someone. Specifically, a man—and men in general.
Where the hell had all the men gone?
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Yes, it’s true, more daddies are home taking care of the kids today than any generation before ours. But take a walk around my neighborhood and you’d never guess this to be the case. At the grocery store or at school, on the playground or in the doctor’s office, I’m usually surrounded by other women—and that includes the hired help. Our local librarian once described this phenomenon to me as “entering ‘mommy-world,’” where children are passed from one pair of female hands to another, all day long.
As a feminist, you’d think I would have enjoyed this long soak in estrogen, but this one-gendered world felt alien and lopsided to me. Before I became a mother I had been working in corporate America for seventeen years, alongside both women and men. I didn’t know that having a kid meant moving out of an integrated office to some oddly segregated suburb, or leaving half the population behind. I felt demoted. I felt unliberated. I felt like I had been sent back in time to sit at the kid’s table.
My uncertainty about choosing to stay home was influenced by the fact that none of my male colleagues had made the same choice when they became parents; that, and the gap that began to form between my husband’s daily life and mine. He was still living his old, pre-child life, with only minor adjustments. He could work late without giving a thought as to who would watch our daughter. He had time to read the paper, talk on the phone, drink coffee while it was still hot. He had at least a train-ride-home amount of time to just sit and think. And he continued to develop his professional skills—and be compensated for them—while my skills withered away and my Social Security earnings chart turned into an inverted pyramid.
The public conversations about parenthood reinforce this ancient separation between men and women, too. It’s still mothers who star in laundry detergent commercials, and reality shows swap moms, not dads.
The public conversations about parenthood reinforce this ancient separation between men and women, too. It’s still mothers who star in laundry detergent commercials, and reality shows swap moms, not dads. In the blogs I read, and in even the most progressive of newspapers, men and fathers are conspicuously absent from the dialogue—largely because no one thinks to ask them how they are combining parenthood and work. If I relied on these media images alone, I might conclude that taking care of babies and kids is still solely a woman’s job, no matter if she is permanently parked at home or out pulling down a breadwinning salary.
Missing my male colleagues, I actively sought out stay-at-home fathers in my community and in my work as a writer and publisher. In 2011, I even went so far as to attend the sixteenth National At-Home Dad convention in Washington, D.C. (Yes, the sixteenth year! I never knew there were enough stay-at-home dads to make a convention from, let alone for sixteen years in a row.)
I went not only as a journalist but also as a participant—the first woman to have ever paid to attend. I learned from these pioneering papas that despite their many years staying-at-home, no one was celebrating their presence, let alone throwing them a shower. Despite being proud to do the traditional job of homemaker, they are reluctant to announce themselves as such. In fact, among the at-home dad tribe, when a father chooses to declare himself the stay-at-home parent to all his friends and family, it’s called “coming out of the pantry.”
If men are ashamed to embrace the title and work I specifically stayed home to do what does that say about its value to the world? What is the point of fighting the mommy-wars when no one values the spoils? Why do we keep re-enlisting to battle only among ourselves?
I think we are a ways off from seeing playgrounds integrated as equally by gender as our work-spaces are becoming, but we are headed positively in that direction.
As my daughter grew up, I met more stay-at-home dads and it definitely eased my fear of being doomed by biological determinism. My world began to feel more in balance. Befriending fathers also forced me to face my own sexist thinking. I had to consciously reject what my unconscious mind had concluded about women’s dominant presence at home: that women were better suited to parenthood. Working side-by-side with these fathers also helped me to see and appreciate the emotional depth of men. I always knew women were capable of being ambitious, competitive and financially successful—qualities traditionally considered masculine. To me, it was a revelation that a dad could know his children as well, and care as deeply for them, as a woman could.
I think we are a ways off from seeing playgrounds integrated as equally by gender as our work-spaces are becoming, but we are headed positively in that direction. My hope is that the myth of the “Good Mother” will collapse under the weight of the mounting evidence that you no longer need to be either perfect — or even female — to properly nurture children.
My daughter recently turned nine. I asked her opinion on who was more suited for taking care of kids, men or women? “Well, mom,” she said, “it involves both science and who’s doing the work. If men start doing it more, eventually it will become part of their DNA.”
I think Alice is right. We could end the mommy wars by the next generation, if we would only call in the fathers for reinforcement.
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This essay is excerpted with permission from The Good Mother Myth: Redefining Motherhood to Fit Reality edited by Avital Norman Nathman. Available from Seal Press, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2013.
Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Hattwig HKD