Ryan A. Bell recognizes that expectations for dads have changed, and he takes a look at why.
Our grandfathers fought in wars that they mostly agreed upon and had beers that were just that… beers. They went to work in suits, dungarees, coveralls and uniforms and returned home to enjoy a readied meal and some damned peace and quiet. Wives scurried in blue floral dresses and tended to our fathers as they closely surveilled walls, carpets, outlets and the occasional popping bug. They were, as I would imagine, very similar to their own fathers.
Within that was a basic understanding that “it” was not their job.
My father, George, donned a brown Coca-Cola uniform in the mornings when I was two and the label above his heart was my first understanding of the color red. He was more affectionate than other fathers. I recognized that at a very young age. I loved him more at two than I’ve loved another human until I had a child of my own. I still have a picture of him lifting me up in some yellow pajamas wearing that brown uniform. We are smiling in unison during this short timeframe in which I looked like him.
My mother delivered newspapers in the mornings with me in the truck. She went home to do the housework and be the good housewife. She’s always told me that she had wanted to be a mom but I’ve never known her to have wanted to be much more than that. Maybe it’s misogynistic that I’ve never asked…
Fast forward to me now.
Two weeks prior to taking paternity leave I began an off and on pattern of panicking. I’d taken care of the baby for many hours on end but there were variables that concerned me. For instance; Ms. Poppy Evelyn Bell despised bottles and I didn’t have boobs. Was she going to starve to death? We used cloth diapers that my wife loved and if I somehow ruined them would she actually kill me? My wife and I shared a car so if there was an emergency what would I do? I kept hearing about “playdates”… was there an uncreepy way to ask?
How did men accomplish these tasks before our generation?
The flat real hardwood-with-a-rusty-nail-in-it truth is that they didn’t. There may be some outliers and extenuating circumstances but for the most part fathers worked and brought home the bacon and mothers stayed home to “tend to the children”. My saying “it was a different time” attempts to encapsulate all of these reasons into this little “you understand, right?” little ball but there are more factors than the big ones.
Our Dads Then
There is no denying that the Baby Boomers have had the most affect on the world as we know it. They lived through the longest economic boom and the most cultural change that what we would consider “modern man” to have ever witnessed. This environment made self discovery more important than it ever had been before. Hierarchical order was still in place but beginning to be questioned. Divorce rates climbed beginning in the early 70’s and led to what birthed…
Us Now
What I would consider The New Dad Movement truly began during the Women’s Movement of the 1960s for the most obvious of reasons: equality. Getting granular and going into changing gender roles is unnecessary because basically if you get equal pay AND equal voice then the conversations tend to change. There has been a long struggle but we, as a society and culture, moved from a hierarchical order into a partnership based marriage.
On this same timeline the economy became more treacherous and we relied on each other more. The norm changed and more families relied on both parents to bring in the proverbial bacon. Our parents and/or our friends parents divorces affected us as children and we were therefor a bit more cautious. We married later and more carefully and divorce rates went down.
Changes have also occurred in how we communicate with our spouses, our children and other fathers. The internet was my pacifier when my wife left for work and I was with our crying five month old. I was privy to conversations on BabyCenter, I Googled to find out if my baby’s poop was a healthy color and, later in the evening, I looked up ways to communicate with my wife about my… ahem… my physical needs.
In 2002 California became the first state to offer paternity leave. In 2004 paternity leave started getting pay through the Family Medical Leave Act. Washington, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Oregon, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and some other states have laws in place for maternity leave. I listed them from best to least and left out the ones that were negligible. It began to make fiscal sense for the father to take off while the wife worked instead of during her maternity leave.
The Contrast
My mother gave birth to me in 1977 when my father was 30. They’d married at the very end of the golden age of economic growth that had spanned from the end of WWII (1945) to the beginning of the 70’s. This means that from his birth until the time he planned for a child he only knew the most thriving economy and welcome job market. I can’t imagine the head-upturned into the sunlight poster posing invincibility that he must have felt. If I try to imagine it I’d have to put myself as an app developer living in San Francisco and it’s somehow Groundhog Day is stuck on March 10, 2000 for—eh—ver.
The divorce rates were negligible, a mere 5.7%, when my parents met. It was still a taboo thing. By the time they married divorce had made it comfortably into the double digits at an amazing speed and by the time they divorced… well, it was just an uncomfortable thing that about half of everyone did.
Now I’m no historian and I’m no psychiatrist but I’m also no dumbass… the main thing that couples fight about is money, right? Well, if you add changing roles in gender, a new lack of faith in the system and add it all to an economy as shaky as chihuahua after a coffee enema, Whoa, Mama! you’ve got big ol’ problems.
I married my wife, Lynette on a beautiful Sunday in August of 2012 when I was 36. The divorce rates were down and the economy bobbed up and down as promising as a turd in the toilet. People were unemployed for record amounts of time and an ounce of gasoline costed more than two pounds of gold. Okay, so it wasn’t that bad.
The thing that truly set us apart is that we knew that it would be hard as SuperMan’s poop and that there were going to be economic difficulties. Not once did I think of my wife as anything but a partner. If anything, I have to keep in mind that every year we have been together she’s made more money than I have (honey, if you’re reading this I do want to point out that you spend exponentially more). We still wanted the house and the family but I think that we knew these two things:
1. We gotta do this together.
2. It’s gonna be hard.
I was more petrified than I can ever imagine my father being about being a good husband and father. Now, my first child is over a year old, the new one has arrived, and I recognize the multitude of skills that she brings to the table. She’s much better at some of these things than I am but I have my tricks too.
I’m dad… and I’m damn good at it.