I don’t understand the mom world. I want to, and over the last year, I have taken great strides to step into their shoes and comprehend what they are going through. Why? Because I don’t have enough opportunities to mansplain things to people and I really look forward to alienating myself.
This is a reminder that I deal with tough issues by hiding behind humor so please don’t send me hate mail.
Truthfully, I want to understand moms because it’s important to me as a father to hear their experiences so that I can be a better parent and partner. I want to see how they parent vs. how I do. What makes us alike? What makes us different? And more than anything, I need to see things from their perspective.
This is one of the reasons I read Amanda Montei’s book Touched Out: Misogyny, Consent, and Control. Every dad needs to read this, and I know this sounds like a sales pitch. It’s important because the book, a mix of memoir and essay that deconstructs current motherhood, is a simple statement that floored me.
Amanda wondered if staying home with the kids or being the primary caretaker was more enjoyable if she had a choice.
And it’s that statement that rocked me. That’s why dads need to read this book.
Limited choices for moms equal limited choices for dads.
I’ve been home with the kids for the last 15 years and haven’t regretted a minute of it. That’s not to say that there haven’t been hard times. I potty-trained all my kids with a tarp, so that should give you an idea of that fiasco. But the point is my wife and I were able to make a choice. It seemed simple at the time, but in reality, it wasn’t. We were going against expected societal rules. It was not our intention to rock the boat. It was what was right for our family. And I’ve loved it so much that I’ve kept doing it all this time later.
What Amanda does in her book is explain how many women don’t have a truly free choice when it comes to becoming the primary caregiver. Through expectations of spouses, society, and the patriarchy, it is always expected that she would be. It’s so subtle that many don’t even realize that the choice is taken away from them. This is the idea that shook me a bit when I read her book.
To put it simply as a father: If many moms don’t really have a free choice to be the primary caregivers, do men? And if men don’t have that choice, what are we being robbed of? I know this firsthand. The bond and relationship that I have with my children are worth more than any amount of money I could have made sitting in an office from 9 to 5. As my kids are teenagers now, I’m truly seeing that on a daily basis. That bond, that connection, has given my life worth in a way I don’t think I would have gotten pushing papers around a desk.
“The book is trying to find my own way through and my own narrative. To see the outside of these roles,” Amanda stated in my interview with her. But with that narrative, men’s narrative begins to change as well. What happens when we think outside the traditional roles? What opportunities as fathers are being taken away from us?
I’ve written a lot about men’s loneliness and our disconnect from society. One of the solutions to that is to establish ourselves within our family under a new role. But can we do that when the same world expects us to work until we die and provide a paycheck? What would it be like if we could put spending time with our families as caregivers first? That was the choice I made, and the only reason I was able to make that choice was because my own wife encouraged it. Often, this is not the case.
There has to be a balance here somewhere, and I’m desperately looking for it.
“Our choices are winnowed,” said Amanda and she makes a very good point. With no national leave policy, being penalized for taking paternity leave, and zero encouragement from any real parenting perspective, the choices for moms and dads are restricted. It’s here that both genders suffer.
No man ever sat on his deathbed and relived the glory days of the 8 o’clock meeting. We don’t visualize victory on the battlefield of the water cooler. Our value of men is not meant to be based on how many hours we spend away from our families. That is the narrative I would like to see coming out. We need to reevaluate our lives as fathers as people and not the morons that a lot of the media treats us. One of the more frustrating tropes is that dad can’t figure out how to get a kid to school. He’s made fun of, and mom has to rescue him. But at the same time, that dad character can be so competent to live in a million-dollar house and make money hand over fist. It just doesn’t make sense and reduces us to drones. What do we think of as we get older? The time we spend with our families, and there is no substitute for it.
Is staying home with the kids as the primary caregiver enjoyable if you have a choice? From my perspective, yes. What Touched Out points out is that choice is often denied to fathers, and taken away from mothers. This is why I read Amanda’s Book. This perspective, so different from my own, was able to break through antiquated rules and show that a simple question can open up new doors.
Touched Out is about many things, but for me, the most important one is about choice. Men need them, and the more we deny ourselves that choice, the more fathers will hurt.
—
A practical guide for modern-day parenting geared towards stay-at-home dads, offering advice on everything from learning to cook and clean with children, to dealing with mental health and relationships, with the easygoing perspective that dads can use their natural talents to parent any way that they choose.
The Ultimate Stay-at-Home Dad manual takes the best advice and wisdom from a dads’ group, and puts it into a format to help new stay-at-home fathers. Characterized by actionable and direct advice to fathers, the book takes on parenting from a father’s point of view and encourages dads to use their natural talents to become a better parent. That advice is further bolstered by an additional 57 other dads who also give advice. All this advice is framed by the author’s personal stories, which help the reader connect with the content and drives the advice home. This is a book that takes on day-to-day parenting, not just as a stay-at-home dad–working fathers could benefit from this book as much as at-home dads.
“Carpenter…offers practical insights and plenty of comic asides in his buoyant debut…The savvy mix of lighthearted quips and straightforward guidance will be a lifesaver for at-home fathers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A helpful and enjoyable read for the growing population of dads at home, in a market saturated with books for moms.”
—Library Journal
BUY SHANNON’S BOOK HERE
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock