Obama to Dads: Man-Up to Your Responsibilities

During a Father's Day speech in Chicago, Barack Obama -- whose own dad left his family when he was 2 years old -- admonished fathers to be there for their own children and to actively raise them.

Boiling the speech down to its very essence: Dads matter.

An excerpt:

"We need families to raise our children. We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn't just end at conception. That doesn't make you a father. What makes you a man is not the ability to have a child. Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father. It's the courage to raise a child, that makes you a father."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Two Studies in (Un)Happiness

I read an article in the New York Times business section today with great sadness. The subject: Happiness.

Columnist David Leonhardt examined a couple of recent studies which attempted to gauge the level of happiness among American adults and wrote, “. . . [T]here appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.”

The reasons the various researchers offered for this were intriguing.

Saying that since the 1960s women have piled their paid work responsibilities on top of housework and handling many items on the domestic front, Leonhardt wrote, “Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.” He added, “But researchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift [women with two jobs, one at home, one at work] theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.”

Apparently, according to the researchers, the reason women are unhappy is because they want too much. “What has changed – and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends – is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents),” Leonhardt wrote. “They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.”

(Am I the only one nodding?)

Leonhardt paraphrased Betsey Stevenson, an economist from the University of Pennsylvania and author of one of the studies as saying, “A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago – despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions.” (Like simply desiring to keep their kids alive and putting dinner on the table?)

Sara Schaefer Munoz, who blogs for the Wall Street Journal read the same bleak Times article and asked: “So if women are indeed unhappier than men, what’s the answer? Would narrowing our ambitions, and our lives, really make us happier? Would more support, like universal childcare, paid leave for new parents, and husbands who do more at home bump up women’s happiness quotient?”

Are Parents Discriminated Against in the Workplace?

The answer, according to a recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, is yes. If you are an employee – particularly a woman — who also happens to be a parent of young children, and you want to have any semblance of work-life balance, you’re going to wind up getting passed over for jobs, promotions and salary increases by people who either do not have children or those who don’t spend time with their children because they’re working a bazillion hours a week, the article suggests.

Citing the increasing number of lawsuits being filed “claiming workplace discrimination because of family care-giving obligations,” writer Eyal Press wrote:

“The rise of lawsuits in recent years has coincided with a new body of
research, much of it produced by a scholarly project called the Cognitive Bias
working Group. One member of the group is Shelley Correll, a sociologist at
Cornell. A few years ago, Correll was poring over labor-market data and noticed
that while the gap between the wages of men and women had narrowed, the gap
between mothers and everyone else remained wide. . . As an experiment, Correll
and other researchers asked volunteers to evaluate a pool of equally qualified
male and female job applicants. On some resumes, a clue signaled that the
applicant was a parent. Correll also sent 1,276 resumes for entry-level and
midlevel marketing jobs to 638 real employers.”

Can you guess what the results of Correll’s experiment? Press wrote:

“Mothers were consistently viewed as less competent and less committed
and were held to higher performance and punctuality standards. They were 79
percent less likely to be hired and, if hired, would be offered a starting
salary $11,000 lower than non-mothers. Fathers, by contrast, were offered
the highest salaries of all.”

Joan Williams, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law, told the Times that it shouldn’t have to come down to choosing between work or family. This tension between careers and care-giving obligations (to children and to elderly parents), Williams said, is created by a “marketplace structured around an increasingly outdated masculine norm: the ‘ideal worker’ who can work full-time for an entire career while enjoying ‘immunity from family work.’”

I think Williams is onto something, and that the results of Correll’s experiment is depressing beyond words.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from the New York Times.)

Three for Thursday: Chopsticks, Junie B. and Flex-Time

Item #1: Chopsticks. Everywhere.

If you asked any one of my three children why nearly all of the chopsticks in our house are scattered all over the place – on the garage floor, under the picnic table on the back deck, and underfoot in the family room – you would get a very simple response: “They’re not CHOPSTICKS! (*eyes rolling*) They’re magic WANDS!” (As in Harry Potter magic wands.)

To which my fruitless response has been: “Then make them MAGICALLY disappear!”

Item #2: Defending Junie B. Jones

Its parents like this, complaining in the New York Times, that just don’t get that the Junie B. Jones books is not s’posed to be grammaticly right. They are meant to be funny. And to make kids wanna read books ‘bout some real kid, like them.

Jeez.

Lie-ten up.

Item #3: Part-Time Shouldn’t Mean Sub-Standard

Citing a recent Pew Research Center study which found that 60 percent of working mothers would prefer to work part-time, “Perfect Madness” author Judith Warner asked in a New York Times op/ed this week why the American workplace doesn’t afford parents the ability to work part-time or flexible schedules without penalizing them with substantial pay and benefit
reductions.
“Only 24 percent of working mothers now work part-time,” Warner wrote. “The reason so few do isn’t complicated: most women can’t afford to. Part-time work doesn’t pay.”

“Feminists have long been leery of part-time work policies, which tend to be disproportionately used by women, mommy-tracking them and placing them at an economic disadvantage within their marriages and in society,” she said, adding that women have tried to forge their own work-family balances, but that this individualistic approach is simply not working.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from the Barnes & Noble web site.)

Four for Friday: Summer of Potter, Anti-Princess Reading List, Part-Time Working Moms and Signed Books

Item #1: It’s the Summer of Potter (Continued)

The Harry Potter mania in my house continues unabated. Now that my nearly 9-year-old twins

have been sucked into the vortex that is Harry Potter, they are unstoppable reading machines.

Now, ordinarily, I’d be cheering this development. But, given that it’s summer and I want them playing outside – ACTIVELY PLAYING (so that they tire themselves out) – all of this reading is complicating things. Actually, it’s complicating one thing: Their nearly 6-year-old brother who can’t yet read. So while his siblings are engrossed in Harry, the little one gets frustrated and either picks fights with them or hounds me in my office. Thus, all-Potter-all-the-time doesn’t exactly bring a smile to my face. (I think I’m going to have to hide the books and extort their return in exchange for some whiffle ball games with their brother outside.)

Item #2: Anti-Princess Reading List

My editor Amy Keroes over at the Mommy Track’d web site – it features news, columns (including mine on TV, movies and media), tips, interviews and products aimed at working moms – has hit upon a genius idea. Tired of reading simply princess-oriented material to her young daughter, she decided to come up with a list of books with strong girl protagonists.
Currently the list contains 35 titles including: Harriet the Spy, Olive’s Pirate Party, Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa, Do Princesses Scrape Their Knees? and Winners Never Quit (by Mia Hamm).

Item #3: Part-Time Working Moms?

A new survey by the Pew Research Center of women’s attitudes toward work and parenthood has found that 60 percent of those polled would prefer to work part-time. This is a marked increase, according to news reports, from 10 years ago when only 48 percent of women found part-time work appealing.

Media coverage of the poll has varied in quality, with some highlighting the fact that 45 percent of men and 38 percent of women think that mothers are better off staying home and not working, while 35 percent of men and 46 percent of women think that moms working part-time is a better arrangement. “It turns out dads are more comfortable with those longer hours, with 72 percent saying full-time work for them is ideal,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

What did not get as much emphasis was the fact that many work-life analysts say that as work hours creep into what had previously been private, family time, the tension between home and work has grown so intense, that some mothers feel as though they have no choice but to either leave work or work part-time, in positions with little or no benefits, security and pay mere percentages of full-time employment. (Read some material from economist Heather Boushey for more on the media’s coverage of working moms and work.)

Item #4: Signed Copies of ‘Suburban Mom’ at Bellingham Barnes & Noble

Thanks to those who showed up at the book signing for The Book – A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum – including my editor Heather Kempskie, from Parents and Kids, and my longtime buddies Kerry and Tim and their crew. There are still copies for sale at the Bellingham (MA) Barnes & Noble.

E-mail Meredith

(USA Today graphic.)

Three for Thursday: Massachusetts Public Breastfeeding Bill, Hybrid Moms and Men’s Health Survey About Dads

Item #1: Get Over Yourselves and Pass the Breastfeeding Law Already

It seems as though in virtually every recent legislative session, for several consecutive sessions, a bill has been filed in the Massachusetts Legislature to confirm that women have the right to breastfeed in public, that wherever a mom has a right to be, the mom can feed her baby.

And during each legislative session, a breastfeeding bill falls by the wayside, a victim of out-of-touch legislators who — despite the fact that the federal government has told women if they don’t breastfeed they’re poisoning their babies and despite the fact that the state’s Department of Public Health actively promotes breastfeeding as a healthy practice in a pro-breastfeeding campaign — want to make life more difficult for new moms. Or they simply just don’t want to deal with a delicate “women’s” issue like breastfeeding.

I’m tired of hearing people complain that women should be forced to hide in public restroom stalls or stay locked in their homes, away from the easily-offended eyes of their fellow citizens, if these brazen (it’s always brazen) women intend to breastfeed, as though breastfeeding shameful and should be done in private.

I’m tired of hearing people liken the natural act of breastfeeding to the natural acts of defecation or urination which would never be done in public. (A baby who’s breastfeeding is EATING folks, and if, in your mind, eating and defecation are equivalent acts, maybe you should take some cooking lessons.)

I’m tired of hearing people tell women that they should be decent and cover themselves when they’re nursing a baby because people are offended by their whipping (it’s always described as whipping) out their breasts (I’ve yet to see a breast that can whip). Yet no one bats an eye or complains about being offended by billboards, TV ads, magazine ads, shop window displays (ever walked by a Victoria’s Secret at a mall?) and actual people walking down the street who brazenly send the message that breasts are sexual parts of the body meant to be exploited.

Just pass the damned bill already and put your laws where your state health recommendations are. If the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the federal government think it’s so important for women’s and children’s health for women to breastfeed, then protect the women who actually try to do it. Geez.

(For a summation on breastfeeding laws in the 50 states, go here. According to the Associated Press, by the way, Massachusetts is only one of four states without a breastfeeding law.)

Item #2: Hybrid Moms

No, I’m not talking about moms who trade in gas guzzlers for vehicles that run on alternative fuel sources. I’m talking about a new magazine entitled Hybrid Mom that’s aimed at women who describe themselves as blends of working moms and at-home moms. We’re talkin’ moms who’ve adjusted their work lives for their kids, or simply have to find a way to balance work and home life. The magazine focuses on everything from entrepreneurial moms to women are the antithesis of perfect homemakers.

Item #3: Men Talk About Their Dads

Men’s Health commissioned a poll where they asked 2,322 men about their own fathers. Some interesting results:

• 75 percent of men think they’re funnier than their fathers, while only 36 percent of men think they are “handier” than their dads.


• 62 percent of men said their own fathers are more responsible than they are.


• 57 percent think they’re better fathers than their own dads.


• 45 percent said their father never said he loved them (as compared to 27 percent whose dads said they loved them “all the time”).
  

E-mail Meredith

(Image from the Boston Herald.)

Dads Find Humor in Parenthood

Sometimes, the things we experience as parents are so over-the-top ridiculous, so very far away from the visions we had of what adulthood would be like, that there’s nothing to do but laugh.

That’s what two fathers — Clay Nichols and Brad Powell — want us to do when viewers visit their web site, DadLabs, which features tongue-in-cheek videos about fatherhood, including a video of one of the two dads trying out a breast pump. Ouch. “Daddy Clay” from the DadLabs agreed to field some questions:

Meredith: There are quite a number of dad-related web sites out there, from snarky blogs like Offsprung, to how-to father education sites like Family Man Online. How does your site, DadLabs, fit into that world? And why did you two decide to start it?

Clay Nichols, Dad Labs: We would be more snarky, but we’re not that smart. We have lots of children, and they ate our brains. We do think that fatherhood is funny — poop is funny, breast pumps are funny, tub time is hilarious — so there are a lot of humor pieces on our site. We try to mix in the occasional bit of information or experience that might be useful. Most of the dads we know are funny and committed, totally goofy and gaga for their kids, with some good stories and maybe even a piece or two of advice to share. We try to be like that.

We started out (along with our third partner — director Troy Lanier) to make movies. We agreed to get together on Monday nights, after the kids went to bed, to pitch ideas and work on scripts. But we could never get past talking about our pregnant wives, sleep deprivation and blow-out diapers. So our “Due Dads DVD” series was born (the second in the series: “The Man’s Guide to Labor and Delivery” releases on Father’s Day). The DVDs spawned the website, and away we went.

Meredith: Why did you opt to use videos to make your points?

Clay: The new tech makes it relatively easy, we want to be famous filmmakers when we grow up, and guys seem to like video.

Meredith: How have readers responded to your videos, some of which show you guys in self-deprecating positions, like using a breast pump?

Clay: Most of the responses we have received are from parents (moms and dads alike) thanking us for a good laugh. Sometimes we get people worried about our safety (I suspect my mother). Some people encouraging us not to leave the day job (too late). And lots of folks sharing their similar experiences (our kids are evidently not the first and only in history to poop in the tub).

Meredith: What inspired your tongue-in-cheek, “What to Say to Bad Parents” video, in which you both offer advice to bad parents on a playground and then are subjected to assaults both verbal and physical?

Clay: I think the video speaks to the repressed desire most parents have felt to “help” or “fix” other parents and/or their kids, and also our somewhat conflicting secret wish to kick “perfect” or “expert” parents squarely in the groin. It’s the push/pull we feel on the playground — I’d love to tell that mom over there what a brat her kid is, but if that dude offers me another tissue for my kid’s nose I’m gonna go seriously postal.

Meredith: Do you think that people taking parenting too seriously?

Clay: We tend to think that sometimes parents let their anxieties and feelings of inadequacy get the better of them. These feelings are often exacerbated by the many, many parenting experts out there. So much of what is broadcast about parenting seems calculated to make us insecure.

At DadLabs, we’re not experts in any way other than by experience, but we think laughing works pretty well for keeping things balanced. We laugh at ourselves plenty. Kids are also hilarious — it’s one of the best parts of parenting, next to the upgrade in snacks. Parenting is way too important to take that seriously.

E-mail Meredith

Parental Power Struggles

New York Magazine ran a piece in its latest issue about one mom’s power struggles with her husband about how to raise their daughter and how they handle their disagreements. In fact, she depicts her husband as a controlling soul and nicknames him the “momblocker.” (I initially saw this link on ParentDish.)

When The Spouse and I have differences over raising our brood of three, there’s typically a lot of passive aggressive maneuvering (okay, at least from me) and doggedly persistent pressuring (that’s him) as we politely try to be respectful of one another’s viewpoints while attempting to convince the other person that he (or she, but usually he) simply needs to see the light.

And if I’ve been insufficiently caffeinated on any given day, I either fold or argue. So it’s a crapshoot.

E-mail Meredith

Three for Thursday

Item #1: ESPN’s “Outside the Lines”

ESPN ran an intriguing segment on Mother’s Day about how pregnant college athletes are sometimes forced to forgo their scholarships or feel pressure to have an abortion if they become pregnant in order to keep their sports scholarship. A University of Nevada athletic director interviewed in the piece likened pregnancy to an injury from which an athlete will recover.

Typically, when a college athlete gets hurt, his or her scholarships aren’t typically revoked, she said. Pregnancy, this director argued, should be considered as a temporary medical condition. A University of Pittsburgh law school professor added that revocation of scholarships based on pregnancy is “a blatant violation of Title IX,” referring to the landmark federal legislation prohibiting gender discrimination in high school and college sports.

Watch a snippet of the ESPN segment here.

UPDATE: As a result of the ESPN segment, the NCAA will review its policy for scholarship athletes who become pregnant, the New York Times reports.

Item #2: Snarky Parents Now Have Multiple Online Options

Not so long ago, I sang the praises of the snarky parenting web site Babble, which has all sorts of anti-sanctimommy features that just tickle me silly.

Now they’ve got competition in the form of Offsprung whose motto is, “Your life didn’t end when you became a parent.” Offsprung offers a number of blogs and includes a feature called “Ask Alternadad,” written by Neal Pollock, author of Alternadad where he fields parenting questions, like this one:

“Dear Alternadad, My son has recently graduated up to the next size car
seat, but alas I have trouble fitting it into my ‘hipster’ car, a
convertible Camaro. I can’t stand the idea of neutering myself and driving
a minivan. What words of wisdom do you have to avoid such a
terrible fate?

Jeff N

Jeff:

I could have a robot answer this one for me. In robot voice, say it with
me: DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR BELOVED CAR JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE A KID. If you were having your third kid, I’d say make some concessions, but if it’s just one, you’ve got to find some way to squeeze it into the car.”

Item #3: What Happens in Vegas . . .

. . . stays with my EIGHT-YEAR-OLD? My son Jonah received an invitation in the mail to “take advantage of great rates this summer” and to enjoy some Golden Nugget Las Vegas nights.

Apparently Vegas is targeting a new demographic.

E-mail Meredith

Dad tries to impress son. Gets Arrested. News at 11.

A Boston area TV station is reporting that a 37-year-old Connecticut dad, in an attempt to impress his 7-year-old, leapt onto the field at Fenway Park last night during the ninth inning.

And then — to thoroughly make the grade schooler proud of his old man and to provide great fodder for the family Christmas letter — got himself arrested.

What’s next in this dad’s repertoire of feats? Juggling chainsaws? Playing chicken with trucks on the Mass. Turnpike? Or maybe wearing a Yankee hat in full view of Red Sox Nation?

E-mail Meredith

Daddy Needs a Drink: Q&A with Robert Wilder

Robert Wilder, author of Daddy Needs a Drink, is akin to David Sedaris for the parenting set. His collection of essays, subtitled, “An Irreverent Look at Parenting From a Dad Who Truly Loves His Kids – Even When They’re Driving Him Nuts,” is light, honest and entertaining. And Wilder was kind enough to field some questions from me about the book, writing and dads:

Boston Mommy Blog: What prompted you to start writing essays about your two children, Poppy and London?

Robert Wilder, author of Daddy Needs a Drink: I’d been a writer and teacher for fifteen years here in New Mexico but I mostly wrote fiction. As I watched my kids grow, I saw dramatic things happen to them and me both internally and externally so I started jotting them down in my notebook. I thought that the stories I wrote would be for them when they grew up or maybe my dad but as I shared them with friends, I saw that others enjoyed them as much as I did or they were just being nice or drunk (or both).

Boston Mommy: You’re really honest about your parenting here. You wrote about your truly awful – though hilarious — experiences dressing up in costumes to please your children (as well as using said costumes to exact comedic revenge against a former pain in the neck student of yours). You dedicated a whole chapter to your son’s use of a colorful word and another on how you used to subject friends and family to your daughter’s singing and dancing routines. Were you ever concerned that people would criticize you or your choice of topics?

Wilder: I think if you choose to write about anything — lost love in Lapland or bodily fluids in Boise — you open yourself up to criticism. Part of being a writer is taking that risk so I suppose I was ready in a sense. My goal in writing the book was to try to accurately represent all the emotions (good, bad, and ugly) that go into being a parent. I think being a parent of young kids and a teacher of teenagers prepared fairly well more since I’m used to some sort of criticism on a daily basis. Mostly it’s about my haircut or bad fashion sense but my skin is pretty thick (and smooth because I just shaved).

Boston Mommy: Your chapter on traveling solo on an airplane with your children prompted this question: Do you think that fathers get more or less slack than moms when it comes to this parenting business? Why?

Wilder: I think we are attracted to the exotic. There are far more moms than dads out there being roadies for their kids so people notice more. We don’t gasp when we see a hamburger on a menu but we would if we saw braised horsemeat. I’m not saying that dads don’t work hard at being decent parents (I’m also not equating dads with horsemeat), but sometimes moms don’t get the respect they deserve because we’re accustomed to them in that role. That being said, I also think dads don’t get respect for things they do well like providing, barbecuing, and purchasing large flat panel televisions.

Boston Mommy: You were brutally funny about a friend’s pair of boys Mark and Mikey, one of whom you likened to a mini Telly Savalas. You spun tales of these two terrorizing other children, pooping on a slide in the middle of a backyard birthday party, running down kids with a motorized kid car and ransacking a sacred burial ground during a family vacation. Are their parents now your former friends, or did they find your pieces entertaining? Or do they not know about those essays?

Wilder: The family in that story are still our friends, and they see those tales as comic representations of that time in all of our lives. Let’s face it: some kids are wild enough to eat glass but that doesn’t mean they’re bad kids. My brother and I sent each other to the hospital more than once, and we’re both fairly decent citizens. I think a lot of parents look at their life and parenting as a work-in-progress and that’s okay. We’re all trying to do our best.

Boston Mommy: There was a dust-up earlier this year over a pair of “Today Show” segments about “cocktail playdates,” the name the news producers gave to gatherings where parents have an adult beverage while their children play. Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of "Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay," and Suburban Bliss blogger Melissa Summers were criticized for going on national television and admitting to imbibing alcohol in front of their children and while taking care of their children. Aside from the title, your book features a cocktail with a teddy bear stirrer and refers to beer as “12 ounces of liquid Prozac.”

What’s your take on the “Today Show” flap over parents and drinking? Do you think this was a tempest in a teapot?

Wilder: Even though we’re not related, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor represented Wilders well by looking great on television and making a funny joke that cracked the studio up. I think the whole issue is to be an adult about any of those issues whether it’s drinking around kids or letting your toddlers watch The Wiggles until their eyes glaze over. If you’re at home and not driving, it’s fine to have a beer outside with your kids as they play “Bratz in da White House” and you watch the sunset with your friends. Parents are under enough pressure without someone saying they can’t have a glass of wine around children. Does anyone tell dads not to dress up like football players on Sundays or use power tools around the kiddies? Hell no!

Boston Mommy: Anything else you wanted to mention?

Wilder: People can check out the “news” section of www.robertwilder.com for more information on my “Daddy Needs Your Stories” Father’s Day contest or read the new ridiculous reading guide I wrote for the paperback version of Daddy Needs a Drink. Cheers!

E-mail Meredith