Why are men expected to participate in their own deprecation?
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I took the picture featured here one afternoon while walking in my neighborhood. It’s from a shirt that had been hanging in a display window of a clothing store. The shirt made a strong impression on me, helping me realize just how thoroughly our society enjoys the joke of the incompetent father. It’s offensive, asinine, and points to massive cultural immaturity.
Fatherhood is a strong part of my identity, and I take great pride in raising, not babysitting, my children—the favorite part of my day is when I get to spend time with them, and I miss them horribly when I am away. I’m intelligent enough to make two or three times the amount of money I’m making, but I chose a career in education so that I’d have more free time to be present, to play with and teach my kids, as I’m a very skilled teacher.
There’s a very simple solution to the incompetent father: assign him a task other than “babysitting”.
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Even so, I very often rethink this choice. I can see what a positive impact I’m having on my children simply by being around to read books or garden with them. But I wonder if we wouldn’t all be better off, my wife included, if I were “pushing pieces of paper around for no apparent social purpose” as Michael Lewis describes Wall Street traders doing in The Big Short.
I’ve experienced poverty, as a visitor to poor countries and as a young man who put himself through college. I’m not poor now. We live in Oak Park, Illinois, a relatively wealthy community, and we eat well. Our neighbors are college-educated people and I meet professionals of all stripes in the library, local cafes and parks, open spaces where both mothers and fathers spend time with their children. Seeing that shirt in my neighborhood, right there in a front window, is a massive indictment of where we stand as a culture, and where our self-consciousness lies, when crap like this is being purchased even among the educated class.
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I don’t believe this shirt is being marketed to men. Is a father expected to look at that, tell himself, “Oh, yeah, I’m a crappy babysitter,” and buy it for his own child? Should one of my best friends see it in the window and think, “This will make a great birthday present for Gint’s son.” Think of a man and a context that go together, that equal a man pulling out his wallet and buying that shirt.
I don’t understand what our society believes it wants. If we want men who are sensitive fathers, skilled and involved parents, why are we making fun of them, expecting them to take the joke, bury their emotions, deprecate themselves? If the mothers of our society feel their partners are incompetent, why are they leaving them alone with the kids? There’s a very simple solution to the incompetent father: assign him a task other than “babysitting”. Keep him away from the kids and you won’t need any jokes at all.
Of course, we don’t believe they are incompetent. We just want them to take a joke.
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My wife told me, long before we were married, that she accepted my proposal because she imagined me sitting on the floor with kids crawling all over me. I was beaming bright with happiness and throwing them around. She said it seemed like a vision, like she was seeing the future.
Now that we have kids and jobs, sometimes we’ll go two or three days without talking about anything besides daily logistics. At the end of long days, we’ll crash like planes run out of fuel. She’s a violinist, and there are times, especially on the weekends, when she’ll be away for 48 hours or more and all the child rearing falls on me. No, I’m not perfect. There are plenty of things I’m horrible at, including getting the temperature of my son’s bottle just right.
Interestingly, she never makes fun of me about any of it. With shirts like those hanging in the windows, I’m forced to wonder why. A good place to start should be the reasons people make fun of each other in the first place. When I think about those, I realize she must be pretty confident in her own capacity as a parent, or at least content enough to think she’s doing fine. When she feels that way, what reason would she have to make fun of anyone else, especially the man she agreed to start a family with? Of course, if she felt some incapacity, then she might make herself feel better by finding fault with her partner.
But she doesn’t.
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Photo credit: iStock
This makes a great point, and I’m sorry you haven’t gotten more positive feedback from women on it. As much as feminism needs to fight for women to be respected in the workplace, we need to fight to get men respected in caregiving roles. A teacher of mine in discussing sexism, once asked the college-level class, “Those of you who are married, who do people talk to first, you or your husband?” I said, “That depends, are we at the bank or my kids’ school?” I was at a meeting one night relating to the school district and said hi… Read more »
Well,it seems that Cass is more interested in revenge than she is progress.
The T-shirt brings a lot of issues to the surface. This is not just a pet peeve by an individual dad but a symptom of some larger systemic issues. Considering what we usually pay “babysitters” for their labor, calling someone a babysitter is clearly saying that the person is not really doing a very important job. No offense to teenagers, but paying an unskilled teenager minimum wage to do something suggests a job that’s not very difficult. (In that sense, fathers are underappreciated workers in an industry that’s already underappreciated.) This also quite handily reinforces the idea that in any… Read more »
I think the stereotype has gone on too long and people mean it as a joke. However, for some it may go to far. Like you, I don’t like the implication.
I think the stereotype has gone on too long and people mean it as a joke. However, for some it may go to far. Like you, I don’t like the implication.
I must admit I don’t like the tshirt. I’m a single dad these days and I believe I do a damn good job. It’s not babysitting, its being a parent which means I have two kids which need love, care, attention, food, driving, disapline, school or care, homework done, playtime, downtime, exercise, sleep, nappies changed, clothes washed, teeth brushed, hair done, cuts kissed and band aids applied, listening to the kids day at school, hugs and kisses, bed time stories, glasses of water at 2am … Babysitting is something I pay someone else to do when I need a few… Read more »
This is disgusting. A father caring for his children isn’t babysitting-he is parenting! This shirt is an insult to fathers everywhere. Someone needs to tell these shirt makers to cut the sexist bullshit- it’s not cute and it certainly isn’t funny.
I would have to disagree with the belief that the sentiments expressed on the t-shirt reflect only one persons point of view.Why?Because over thirty years ago,as a SAHD, that sentiment was a clear and present obstacle I fought on a daily basis.Women,for some reason,like to believe that somehow they are not sexist and protective of social roles they believe belong to them.Women face obstacles when doing jobs that are considered male and men face obstacles when doing”female” jobs.This is plain as day.That isn’t so bad.The problem is the denial of and the ignorance of the existance of this sexist behavior… Read more »
Sorry, no, its not the same. Women have faced obstacles doing “men’s work” because men have actively tried to keep them out and deride them when they manage to get in anyway. Men face obstacles doing “women’s work” because MEN have actively tried to avoid doing it and deride each other when they manage to do it anyway. Something you need to remember; we didn’t set up the system or rules, we’ve been fighting it for a long time, not for us women but for all of us. Making fun of dad’s incompetence? The subtext is dad’s uninvolvement. And that… Read more »
Nope. Just as women were conditioned/socialized to believe that their place was in child care men were socialized/conditioned to believe that their place was outside the home away from child care.
Something you need to remember; we didn’t set up the system or rules, we’ve been fighting it for a long time, not for us women but for all of us.
And the small handful of men that did set up the rules and system weren’t doing it for the sake of men in general but were doing it for themselves.
Truth. And they need/ needed the rest of us to buy into so they could continue to do so… It’s too bad to say the least. I’m tired of reading about how men are the enemy. Some are. Just as some women are, but to place everyone in that group does service to no one (or the select few previously mentioned). Are there some men in my life I could do without? Yes, of course. But there’s more that I couldn’t do without. And there are definitely — most definitely women I could do without and vice versa. In this… Read more »
Well I will make a few observations..
Post Sandy I was involved with a cleanup that involved, on some shifts, 250 laborers. I observed that somehow women grabbed the spreading oil soaking rags on the stairs gigs while the men were jumping 50# buckets of wet trash up the stairs… I have no doubt that there were plenty of men who would rather have been toting 5# bags of absorbants for the same money…
And frankly I’m in the trades and see this all the time….
So, you would buy this shirt for the dad in your life?
” Sorry, no, its not the same. Women have faced obstacles doing “men’s work” because men have actively tried to keep them out and deride them when they manage to get in anyway. ” I really dont think you know what you are talking about. The idea that womens problem are created or perpetuated by men and only men, its just superstition, in the same league of a black cat crossing the street or going to the fortune teller. Pure nonsense The problems that men and women face are created by the SOCIETY. Its our culture based on the division… Read more »
“The subtext is dad’s uninvolvement. And that was dad’s choice. For a long time.”
I think this is an unfair assessment of men. Please consider this idea: there are men and women who enjoy doing work traditionally done by men, and vice versa. Previously both sexes were restricted regardless of their preferences. Now a men can and will do work traditionally done by women, if they choose. The same for women too. WHat is the problem?
@Cass: Please post a link to where ANY feminist has actively lobbied to assist MEN with the problem that are unique to men with the currrent system that “WE” set up. Here is an example of women working in the other direction, specifically “The tender years doctrine” “Historically the English Family Law gave custody of the children to the father, in case of divorce. Until the nineteenth century the women had few individual rights, most of their rights being derived through their fathers or husbands. In the early nineteenth century, Mrs. Caroline Norton, a prominent British society beauty, feminist, social… Read more »
Until you’ve been an adult male in a park who’s being stared down by a group of mothers as though you’re intending upon molesting or abducting their children SIMPLY BECAUSE you’re adult and male, I will consider your argument on the enforcement of masculine social roles invalid.
You don’t know a man’s pain, so you can’t possibly understand. Shoe’s on the other foot. How does it fit?
Damn straight. We will never get rid of sexism if we keep defining it as “something that only happens by men towards women”. I remember a while back I used to work with a guy who was married with children and with the way things worked out it was easier for him to take time off to tend to a sick child than it was for his wife. The men in my department always told him to take care of his kids (and in fact when he had to go I was the one that covered for him). On the… Read more »
The pic reeled me in, Gint. I had the same reaction. As I read through the article, I’m thinking, “Geez, Gint. Massive cultural immaturity? You DO realize this shirt is the result of ONE person thinking it was funny. She/he is the one with the issue. Why don’t we talk about what’s up with that one person?” And then you do. And your wife rocks. A lot of humor comes from fearful/insecure places and those who have the same issues laugh along. I think the best battle against it is to let shop owner’s know what we think of the… Read more »
“Our neighbors are college-educated people and I meet professionals of all stripes in the library, local cafes and parks, open spaces where both mothers and fathers spend time with their children. Seeing that shirt in my neighborhood, right there in a front window, is a massive indictment of where we stand as a culture, and where our self-consciousness lies, when crap like this is being purchased even among the *educated class*.” Emphasis added, Coach.