Be The Example: Defeat the "Dumb Dad" Expectation

This was originally drafted in October of 2019. My oldest daughter was born the December beforehand, and I intentionally didn’t change the following as I think the topic is still incredibly relevant.

I’ve been a Dad for exactly 195 days. I’m not an expert. I provide support to my wife in any way I can because like it or not, mothers take on at least 51% of the child-raising. This is especially true during breastfeeding. Every family dynamic is different, and from day 1 of our marriage my wife and I have agreed to do what makes sense to us and our marriage and ignore the judgments from others. (This is why I was out golfing 4-6 days a week pre-child, for those who thought that was insane.)

Like any person going into an unknown stage in their lives, be it a career change, buying a house, or bringing a kid into this world, I did my research while my daughter was in utero. I read multiple books, attended multiple “daddy classes”, and watched people who I thought were “doing it right” to pick up any pointers and tips. I started to notice that a large proportion of men were “taking a back seat” in raising their children, and this was even obvious in the classes while just listening to these men speak of their assumed roles in labor & delivery and raising their child. Many of the men I know better were doing the same thing. These aren’t men I thought of as being traditionalists, misogynists, or any other phrase that would describe how the pre-women’s lib movement has been explained to me. The thing is: I don’t know many of my male peers who would argue that they do anywhere close to the majority of the child-rearing. Why is that?

A portion of this can be explained in the language people use when describing fatherhood. It’s built out of historical/traditional expectations and biases that the woman takes care of the kids and the men provide for the family. Almost all of the people in my life have dual-income households so that rationale shouldn’t be surviving through decades of time. My wife doesn’t travel much, but she went on a short 2-day trip recently to visit her sister and her sister’s new husband in Washington, D.C. I tell you this because EVERY conversation that ensued when I told someone I was “flying solo” that weekend with my daughter was, “are you okay??”, “isn’t it hard??”, and other frankly insulting questions. I know that this wouldn’t happen to my wife if the situation was reversed, and I know this because I travel more than she does and she’s yet to get that kind of questioning from her peer group. Why do we perpetuate that men can’t handle child-rearing? Shockingly, my daughter and I survived the weekend. In fact, I’d argue we flourished. Sure, I mainlined more coffee that weekend, but other than a lack of sleep there wasn’t a change in living our lives.

I then started to watch TV and movies more critically. I looked back at any of the shows I watched in my formative years. “Everybody Loves Raymond”. “King of Queens”. There was a theme, and it wasn’t too flattering for men. The woman was typically the jack-of-all-trades, so to speak… smart, attractive (typically way out of the league of the “funny guy” they’re married to), great parent, head on straight, needed no help. The man was this bumbling fool who somehow was able to tie his shoes in the morning and drive to work, even better yet able to hold down a job (shockingly) that could support a single-income household of typically 2-4 children on top of the husband and wife. I’d laugh at these stereotypes, not knowing how it’s impacting my subconscious. And if it were up to just the entertainment media to leave an impression on how fatherhood was, I’d slip into that mold.

Luckily, I had parents who co-parented. Sure, they had things that one of them would do that the other wouldn’t and vice versa, like dishes, laundry, outside chores, etc., but there wasn’t this belief that Dad would go work the sometimes 80-100 hours a week he put in when I was a pre-teen and then come home and crack a beer, kick up his feet, and balance said beer on his fat gut while he laughed at mindless TV. No, he worked these hours and made it a priority to come to nearly all of my sister’s and my sporting events, talk to us about school, and be an ACTIVE parent in my life. All of this, and my Mom is no slouch by any stretch of the imagination. My wife and I joke that she was bionic because she’d work 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., then come volunteer at my school for hours, then go sleep for like 3 hours and do it all over again. Of course I got my work ethic from watching both of my parents drive to provide for our family of 4 with our metaphoric white picket fence, but more importantly I saw what it was to be a working parent. None of this is to discount families that have an agreed-upon arrangement that one person works and the other takes care of the kids, but it is to say that it doesn’t always have to be this way and we need to show the other side of life.

In the book The Expectant Father, which was one of the books I read before my daughter was born, the author in Chapter 16 titled “Fathering Today” describes this imbalance in how fatherhood is portrayed. It was the last chapter which is poetic justice as it’s the parting shots of the book. The chapter takes aim at children’s books like Goodnight Moon, Babar, and The Cat in the Hat. Studies have shown that fathers are eight times as likely to be portrayed negatively as opposed to mothers. The book chapter argues that if we follow the proven logic that repeated exposure of media violence contributes to violent behavior, and being bombarded with images of stick-figure models leads eating disorders and body dysmorphia in young girls, then it’s only natural to conclude that the continued negative portrayal of fatherhood in media leads to children’s and adults’ attitudes and beliefs about fatherhood. Men in the workplace find that time taken to spend time with their families instead of keeping this noses to the proverbial grindstone face ridicule and judgment about their devotion to the company. (Note: I have never experienced this myself, but I will fight with EVERYTHING I have to be an example of the alternative in my workplace. “Attitude reflects leadership”, as “Remember The Titans” proclaimed, reminds us that feelings and actions are reflective of role models.) The gist of the chapter is simple… GET INVOLVED, guys. If you don’t show up, how is your wife going to know you are “all in”? The chapter does note that women are facing societal pressures as well, which will remain important to understand and appreciate until the societal landscape changes to be more “50/50”.

This isn’t an observation that I’ve come up with on my own apparently either, which is both alarming and comforting. In this article from 1992 (not for nothing, but I was six), the authors make the case that children’s books lacked strong male role models. The article makes reference to What to Expect When You’re Expecting and that the book nearly exclusively refers to “mother” or “mommy”. I share this as The Expectant Father framed itself as the male-oriented alternative and I think that makes sense. My wife and I were “expecting”, but when it boils down to it… she was expecting, and I was doing everything I could to help but I wasn’t “expecting”. The article continues to make the case that major steps have been taken to root out discrimination in the books we read to children (triggering for those who think we should be burning books??), and that we should finish the job.

I completely agree. We have to do better. We have to lift up examples of great dads for everyone to see, and we have to reinforce that partnerships are crucial in the raising of children.

We have to do better.