A buddy of mine, a stay at home dad in NYC, is currently reading a book that he says is “right up his alley” and agreed to share it with me when he is finished. The book, a work of nonfiction, The Daddy Shift, is about How Stay-at-Home Fathers, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting are Transforming the American Family. It turns out that the Daddy Shift author, Jeremy Adam Smith, did a Q&A session today with Lisa Belkin (Motherlode) of the NY Times. I truly enjoyed reading the Q&A session including his perspective on the role of dads in the past and for the future. I included one question/answer below from the online interview because I sat at my computer nodding my head when I was reading it.
May 27, 2009, 9:30 am — Updated: 11:19 am –>
The Daddy Identity Crisis
By Lisa Belkin (Motherlode)
By Lisa Belkin (Motherlode)
question: What keeps more men from being “stay-at-home dads”? Are the barriers economic? Cultural?
answer: Stay-at-home dads have emerged because women went to work and job markets have become increasingly unstable. Families can’t afford specialists anymore; moms and dads both need to be capable of care and working for pay. There’s no sign of those trends slowing down.
And yet men and women are living their lives according to scripts that are hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old, scripts that are not terribly relevant to our twenty-first-century reality. Women worry that they are being bad mothers when they go off to work; dads worry that they are bad fathers when they don’t. Some moms feel responsible — sometimes in overcompensating, overbearing ways — for kids and housework, and blame caregiving dads when something seems to go wrong at home.
But I discovered, in examining my own experience and in interviewing parents around the country, that these drawbacks can be overcome. The happiest couples I interviewed were the ones who prize time with kids and are able to articulate what they are gaining through a reverse-traditional arrangement. They value work and care equally, and are grateful to each other for the contributions each makes to the household, and so they value each other.
These couples also had a sense of community. They weren’t trying to do it all on their own. Dads joined playgroups and the couples formed friendships in their neighborhoods. Meeting other parents with similar arrangements, and being validated by the people around them, really helps couples to become more confident. And the more examples people see around them, the more open they’ll be to nontraditional arrangements.
This group of NYC STAHODA’s ( STay At HOme DAd’s)is of great importance and great fun for the infants as well as the Dad’s.
The Playgarden meetup in Tribeca was perfect. It was clean, fun, organized and nothing beats seeing the development of your and other children. Even the Dad’s “develop” I think. Everyone is cool, unpretensious and focused on the camradiery Dad/child and child/child.
The hosts at the playgarden in Tribeca were fun, complimentary of all the kid’s efforts and quick to execute all the planned events of more than 2 hours of NYC DADS GROUP.
I would highly recommend attending a future NYC Dad’s MeetUp. Thanks Lance, Patrick