Category: the Rant Board
So this topic came up in a chat yesterday, but it is one which all too often does, and finally after a couple decades of it, it's finally taken me to the point of writing about it.
This perspective that "most men" in quotes leave all the childcare up to the women, and that "most men" aren't caring at all as fathers.
I understand, if you're 95 years young, you definitely have the right to think this. After all, if you're 95 years young, in your day men weren't involved.
I've heard from men from the 50s and 60s who were made fun of for being involved with their kids, for doing so-called women (domestic) tasks, etc.
However, neither my father's generation nor mine have embraced any of that. In fact, when I was a new father, it was so commonplace to be an involved father that it did not turn heads. This I always took to be a good thing. Nobody says "There's an involved dad," any more than they would say "There goes a squirrel." Both are more common than not.
Any time I went places with my baby in a backpack, or stuck inside my jacket, nobody paid any mind. The birthing staff were so accustomed to dads being around that they had a system down where after the baby was born I was able to be shown everything I needed to learn very quickly.
To many of you, this seems obvious. I understand to those 95 years young and up, this would seem rare. But why young people, on this site or Fakebook, would talk as though the year was 1955 and men weren't involved? All I can say is, you watch way too many movies, cling to your fantasy of an ideology about uninvolved dads, and are completely unrealistic, out of place and time.
After all, the one uninvolved dad I knew at a workplace once, was ostracized. Not just by women, but by the rest of us dads who didn't know what to do with him. Us dads who are involved? This is the norm, which is why there's neither notice nor applause, nor making fun of towards us, as happened to the guys in the 50s and 60s. The dads who aren't involved, they're the minority. If you will, they're the ones that're weird.
Sure, every man-bites-dog scenario is now about to come out of the woodwork and defend the fantasy.
So defend the fantasy then, let's hear an answer to the following:
If us dads who are involved are such an exception, why aren't we poked fun at, the way minority groups are? Or if not poked fun at, why aren't people making strange claims about how extraordinary it is?
You've got no answer, do you? Not with men's rooms now equipped with larger counter spaces to ease changing of babies (we used to do that on the floor so this may be a improvement). Not with fathers being able to take family leave (we used to make other arrangements anyway).
Not with the phenomenon of stay-at-home dads, dads at parks with the kids, and any number of other things.
If we who are present dads were some sort of exception, then we would turn heads. We don't, though, because to us and to everybody else, it is just normal, because, guess what, everybody's doing it.
Credit where credit is due: when an older feminist said me and some friends were "blazing the trail" for father involvment, we were honest. That's no trail for us, it's a freeway. Somebody already did that, decades ago (and this was 1995, kidlets.) Someone else got that done, took the heat, got made fun of, even by women, for their involvement as fathers in domestic duties and looking after the kids.
There was only one person who ever made comment about that to my wife, and she was well past retirement. She at that time said she could never let a man change a diaper or any of that. But in 1994 she was in her 70s.
So, what are you, in your 20s (if you actually are in your 20s and not really 95) doing making comments about men not being involved as dads? You either watch way too many movies, or are simply married to the woman's equivalent of the poor blind mentality, aka career victimhood.
If and where there is a guy who's not doing like he should, that's fair to criticize. But that's because it's socially accepted, and the norm, for men to engage this way as parents.
Maybe after you get angry about having your ideology / religion / victimhood bubble popped, I dare any to answer the real questions:
If we're such a minority, we being men who are involved fathers, then why is it so unnoticeable that we exist? Why aren't we made fun of like other minority groups? Or like the men who did this in the 50s and 60s? Why does it not even turn a head when people see a dad with his kids?
I posit, you have no answers, because we aren't a minority. Speaking as one of them, I'll go so far as to say we're a majority. There's so much information out there specifically for dads, not just the fantasy religion feminist stuff bashing dads, I mean real information. People actually grounded in reality writing info targeted at parents in general and dads in particular, even stay-at-home dads as a group. And it's not in the dark corners of the undernet somewhere, where you would expect, from this supposed minority, where EVERYBODY doesn't do it right.
You have no answers, because your television dramas and college textbooks are written to support the ideology, rather than the reality. I had no troubles being a dad in the 90s when the daughter was little, none like the way it was in the 50s and 60s from what men have said over the years. I mean, every parent has troubles. But no being made fun of for it, no being told "You're wife must have trained you well," no being told what an amazing giving man I must be just to look after my own baby aka follow nature's course, none of that. Someone else already dug that trail out and made it into a freeway before I ever got there, and before some of you who claim most men aren't doing it, were even thought of.
I'm not saying there aren't problems. Just, you will never solve problems by playing around with your religions and ideologies and fantasies.
After all, what would you think if someone wanted to address a acessibility problem for the blind on the Internet by starting out claiming all of the blind were only left to use a typewriter, a slate and a Brailler? Nobody could take you seriously. And even less once they learned just a little bit about what was really going on. You've got to be way out there unrealistic to actually believe any of that.
Otherwise, you would be able to answer the questions I posed earlier: why involved dads don't get made fun of as a minority, or why nobody even notices an involved dad. I still say, it's the same reason nobody notices a squirrel: they're everywhere.
Yes, and yet people are quick to bash the ones that don't stay involved with their kids. I haven't honestly heard of involved dads ever being made fun of. But having one that doesn't choose to participate always gets a rise out of my family, more so than it does with me. I've learned to accept it because I know it isn't going to change. My own mother, who has had some ugly custody battles with him over me in the past, even tried encouraging me to sit down with her and himself to try and see if we could come to a happy medium. However I know it won't do anything and I don't want to waste time with it.
Ryan, while I sympathize with your situation, I profoundly respect your response to it: you justly place the blame on the father in question, rather than buy into the religion / fantasy that it must be ALL fathers. You, as a victim of a bad situation, are to be commended and respected for how you've handled it. Even though that threatens the anti-male anti-father religion / ideology / straw-man argument, your way of handling it is best: not just for men, but for the women casualties who need our support but are thrown under the bus by that ideology, being told there is no good support out there, or at least that it is extremely rare.
I guess the squirrel is rare too.
I see how this struck a nerve and was part of that conversation.
Here is the problem.
Men mostly are not taught culturally to be fathers, and there are more not involved dads then there are involved dads.
The majority of men lay with women for the pleasure, but do not want or care about the responsibility.
I have even heard, and even here, men complain about the use of condoms, and such things. They want the female to take on the sole responsibility of birth control, because they don’t want to have to deal with it at all.
They complain about it cutting off the feeling, but they never say I’ve done some research and learned there are actually condoms that are natural skin, and are comfortable if not natural.
I am also an involved dad, but I was taught to be an involved person in children’s lives that came in to our family, not taught to be a dad.
It was expected of me, or I was not made feel odd, for wanting to take care of the babies.
At age 11 and up, I was allowed to change diapers, feed, bathe, and any other task a babies required just like the girls.
That is most likely why when I became a dad it was nothing and I didn’t have to learn anything.
I honestly can’t say why this was so in my family, because it is not usual. Boys, and men are just not taught that children require all hands.
For my daughter I was primary care giver, not because she didn’t have a mother, it just was I worked at night, so was home during the day, so it was just my turn, or job, or responsibility.
I know how you feel Leo, but it just doesn’t happen that men are as you are often.
The reason we aren’t looked on as odd, is because men don’t care, and women are happy to see it.
Sadly, there are way more stories of dads not being around then there are dads that were involved. This is likely the reason the girls said as they did.
Maybe it's a west coast thing, then, because out here you see as many dads as moms taking care of the kids. Maybe it's also a class thing? I don't know. So much of what you read about sounds to me like what would have been maybe my grandfather's generation, and some users on here sound like they're 95 years young. Perhaps there are parts of the country way behind on this stuff.
But if we were such a commodity, or so odd, we would take the same gaff that men took for it in the 1950s and 1960s. I've been told stories by men who were fathers then, of how it was. Hell even in Florida, I and several coworkers who are men stood in line like everyone else to hold the receptionist's new baby that she'd brought in. A guy who worked in New York in the 70s said a guy who did that back then would get made fun of, that he got made fun of. I still say, if this was so rare, people would be treating it the way people treat things that are rare. And they don't. I agree there are probably many who don't do as they should, and I would say it's so noticeable to us, because it's not normal to do that. It's not normal to abandon your kids to just the mother, who may or may not even be fit to care for them, certainly will have more troubles doing it by herself.
We point it out because it's out there, not because it's the norm. Only the victim mentality wants to say that all of us don't, while in fact if more of us didn't, we wouldn't have what we've had as fathers, or like you say, even brothers, cousins, etc. I also grew up in a big family and so dealt with a lot more of the baby stuff than my wife had, mainly because of exposure like you said. I still did have to be taught of course, regarding the umbilical cord care and similar types of things.
I still say, if we were that rare, we would be getting the shaft like men did when they actually were rare as involved fathers. If not full on made fun of, at least noticed. And of course we aren't: we're part of the masses of humanity that does do it right. Humans of all persuasions are really good at pointing out (for better or worse) the odd one in the bunch.
I don't think it matters if you're 95, or 100 years young, it's the things people observe at their age, though things are changing. Some min are just not involved with their children, period. You raised your daughter, but guess what? Perhaps daddies like you are not picked at because that's what you men should be doing with your children. While this is not a fantacy, not every man is like you. So, I can understand how it touched a nerve, but you're a man, and you have the right to defend your kind
I agree with Wayne, here. it's sad to say, but unfortunately, there are many more dads who aren't involved, than those who are.
speaking as someone else whose mom's side bad mouthed my dad for not being there, thankfully, as I got older, I realized the truth.
he wasn't there, not cause he didn't wanna be involved, but cause he didn't wanna deal with a bunch of adults acting like children.
he wanted to see me, and tried like hell to do so, but eventually gave up the fight, upon realizing things wouldn't change. and, honestly, I don't blame him one bit.
now, he chooses not to be in my life, but I accept that, cause I don't want anyone around who doesn't wanna be.
Hmm, i've noticed what leo observes much more in middle/upper middle class families than low middle class, or the poor.
Seems the more educated the father is, and the more money he's making, as well as those same factors applied to both parents of the parents in the relationship have a lot more to do with it than anything else... I know a lot more young fathers (under 25) who didn't stick with the kids than those 26 and up, though again, many of those who stuck really were in a better financial/educational place than those who did not.
this being the case though, I've seen some exceptions to this rule, though in general the poorer the individuals, the less likely the child will grow up in a 2 parent household.
Certainly makes sense as more of a financial issue than a gender one. It's ironic, though, isn't it, when people strive for gender equality, which face it, we all want, but typecast / criminalize a whole 49% of the population based on biology alone.
Sounds like as ridiculous as those of the blind who reverse discriminate against sighted people. And both are ridiculous.
I would like to agree on the class point, but here is why I don’t.
You see the upper classes are good at hiding their mistakes due to having money. A dad that gets a girl pregnant He doesn’t want that has money, is more able and likely to get away with ignoring her and her “bastard”
I put that word in quotes, because when he has “children” with the girl he thinks, or his family thinks is worthy of his class, then he appears the proud poppa.
He is out holing his baby up for pictures, and the complete thing, and no one talks about his “bastards” He was just a young man sewing his wild oats.
It these cases the girl doesn’t have the means, or most times the education or information to make him pay attention. Even if she does get him to pay, she doesn’t get his love for his child.
In the lower class it is just plain.
Now as to a dad fighting like hell to see his child that is a beautiful thing, but why does he give up? Soon that child becomes a teen and at that time, unless that child has been hidden away from him he can approach them and explain and try to be in their lives. Sure, he might be rebuffed, due to their teachings, but if he shows them the truth and continues to be good to them he will win or he will not, but at that point he can’t be blamed.
Send the gifts, even if they are returned, write the letters, so you have a record of what you have done is always the advice I tell men that are getting screwed over by the childish adults that don’t want them in their babies lives.
If he gives up, and continues to give up, he is at blame especially when that child is an adult.
I am a man, and an involved dad, but I see us as not totally the case.
Some mothers also abandon the children, but in most cases it is them that are stuck with the raising, and care of the child no matter how well or poorly it is done.
Wain, and that is why I didn't mention the upper class. I suppose that happens in the upper middle class to an extent... But all those I know living in the truly upper class live in an almost different world of expectations, justice, morality etc. As much as people don't want to admit it, living the upperclass lifestyle is a completely different kind of living. something most of us will never really understand.