Dad’s job changing with the times
What relationship role has shifted more in the recent past than being a dad? This Father’s Day might still be a bacchanal of silk ties, novelty golf balls and business-management hardcovers, but fathers, both the men and the job, have changed.
Dadhood finds itself, maybe uncomfortably, in the pit of exponential social progress: feminism merging into the mainstream; the wellness and wellbeing trend’s effect on how kids are raised, with more emphasis on emotional well-being; the economic precarity that limits the millennial generation’s fantasies of what family life might be like; the crises that boys and men experience, collectively navigating the expectation to be a dominant and domineering type of “masculine,” and also sensitive, aware, facile with feelings.
What a dad is, what he’s supposed to be, and do, and know, is different now than it was 10, 20 and 30 years ago. Maybe a year ago.
When I was a kid, bouncing through the ’80s and ’90s in the very-backs of my friends’ parents’ station wagons, dads were either grim shadows moving between the garage and the yard and the basement, when they were around at all, or dads like my dad, good-natured chauffeurs who knew our names and would spring for pizza. Maybe it wasn’t that binary, but it felt that way.
Now, dad life is different. Mostly, it’s variable. Now, there are men who absorbed fatherhood into their previous identities, instead of becoming a familiar and prefabricated archetype of a dad. (That dads are considered attractive and interesting and fully present outside of their parenthood, and moms are not, remains a neon-lit injustice.)
Many of them seem to handle at least some of the invisible, emotional labour of parenting, like playdate logistics, remembering the other kids’ allergies, emailing teachers, buying new shoes (in the right sizes), without a wife asking them to. Men are still being overrewarded for doing what women have always done, but, sure: accelerated social change always leaves a wake.
The difference in popular dad-ing is marked by a shift from a fatherhood culture driven by ego (assuming bills were paid and lawns were mowed, fatherhood was to be rewarded with compliant, successful children), to one driven by empathy (the idea that being a good dad is also about doing what’s best for the kids).
This moment is, I think, best demonstrated by the now-classic “As a father of daughters” gambit, wherein men claim — mostly on Facebook but also in realer life, where they should be more embarrassed about it — that as a father of a daughter, or daughters, they have a sudden understanding of the crises of girls and women, and have revealed themselves as not having considered their mother, sisters, friends, teachers to be “people,” really, oblivious to the warm water they’ve been swimming in. The inherent ego, and the clumsy empathy: it’s all there, as guys figure out some new model.
My dad parented from the future. His sense of empathy was, and is, uncommon to dads, and to anyone.
Other dads I grew up around, even the nice ones, still seemed to want to make sure they were slightly separate from their families; they had a special chair you weren’t supposed to sit in, or periodically blasted the atmosphere with rage, or just left all the time, for ball games or Vegas.
I don’t doubt the stress and pressure they were under, but I’m constantly grateful to have a dad who wasn’t like that, who didn’t think the endless indignities and tedium of parenthood were below him, or even necessarily un-fun. Our lives were where he seemed to want to be, and we wanted him there.
This is, I think, where empathy is directing nu-dads: to be more into and as “of” their families as women-asmoms typically have been, which is better for everyone, and especially necessary as more moms work, and earn, more.
The job description for dads has changed, but the job is getting better.
Kate Carraway posts at katecarraway.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @KateCarraway and “like” her Facebook fan page at facebook.com/KateCarrawayWriting. Her column appears Tuesday.
The difference in popular dad-ing is marked by a shift from fatherhood culture, driven by ego, to one driven by empathy