One of the pleasures of being a parent of teens is the long history you can reflect on. From time’s perch, you can finally start assessing what went right as a parent. (You can also assess what went wrong, but that’s for another post.) During my younger parenting years, I had always heard that if a parent models a behavior at home, a child is very likely to adopt that behavior, eventually. As a writer and former professor, I’ve always tried to model my love of reading history as a way to counteract our increasingly context-free culture of media soundbites and tweet-size attention … [Read more...]
‘Raising Empowered Daughters’ Starts with Dads at Home
Best-selling author and OG dad blogger Mike Adamick tells The Modern Dads Podcast he thinks fathers changing the conversation about boys and parenting is a good start to raising girls to be strong and independent. Raising Empowered Daughters: A Dad-to-Dad Guide, to be released in June 2019, is "a fists-up handbook for helping dads dismantle the patriarchy," Adamick's website. On the show, he and host Whit Honea talk about Adamick's efforts to meet dads where they are to discuss equality, representation and feminism. One way, he says, is to start by changing the way we talk about boys and … [Read more...]
Why My Daughter Has Her Mother’s Last Name Instead of Mine
My daughter is Isabella Gutierrez Marcelino. My last name is Gutierrez – but that’s actually my daughter’s middle name. We gave her my wife’s last name – Marcelino. I’m not ashamed of my family's name. I’m proud to be a Gutierrez. The name is always a reminder of my dad, my hero, who still works day and night to ensure the people he loves are always taken care of. As Stef and I started family planning, I was at a crossroads. Why is it that we value one last name over the other? When I knew we were having a girl, I began to think about why my daughter should automatically just come … [Read more...]
Sexual Misconduct: Dads, It’s Time to Finally Fix This
Men — especially dads — have to change what we frown upon. We have to accept that sexual misconduct hurts us all, much like secondhand smoke affects the air we all breathe. It has been said that when women discuss a problem with men, they are often looking for emotional support, not help with a solution. But when it comes to the sexual misconduct issue ricocheting through our culture, that notion is mistaken. Women are doing their share to fix the issue by courageously raising more awareness, reporting more abuses, and demanding more consequences. It is time for more men to join the fight and … [Read more...]
Women’s March Divides by Gender, Still Unites Family
Our mother-daughter and father-son split Saturday morning was one of necessity. We had to solve for multiple events happening at the same time. Mama and daughter were up early that day of the Women’s March, packing snacks and deciding what to wear. Mama had furiously knit three of the famous “pussyhats” out of pink yarn — for friends and for my daughter. She’s now making three more for friends as far away as England while my daughter continues proudly wearing hers to school all week. As they left the house for the train station that morning, my son was putting on his Cub Scout uniform … [Read more...]