“How Come I Got to Ask Mommy First?”: Navigating Gender in Parenting
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
It has become our regular dance. My two daughters, aged eleven and seven, come up to ask me permission to do something—usually something they are pretty sure their mother won’t let them do—and my response never fails: “Go ask your mother.” My oldest will give that usual irritated tween sigh, followed by an under-the-breathe “whatever.” My youngest is the more brash and philosophical of the two as she quickly retorts, “How come we always have to ask mommy first, can’t you make a decision?” If she’s in the mood for a argument, which she often is, she’ll even throw in a “Is mommy the boss of you?” Damn. How did it come to this?
As fathers go, I consider myself pretty engaged, at least in comparison to my own father. Don’t misunderstand, my dad was in the house, so this isn’t an absentee dad tale, but it was clear that he ceded the funky, dirty aspects of parenting to my mom; his job was to financially support us and to provide occasional discipline. My father was what Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman suggest in their recent book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, call a traditional dad, who simply took parenting direction from my mother. Not unusual for a generation of men and women, who believed that some aspects of parenting were naturally endowed in women.
I had long decided to take a different course from my dad. I’m what Bronson and Merryman call a “progressive dad,” though being an engaged father brings its own challenges. For one, because I have been an active participant in the parenting process—something my wife of nineteen years has encouraged—it means that my wife and I will occasionally have different opinions about how to handle different situations. What the authors of NurtureShock also realized that fathers who saw themselves has highly involved co-parents created more conflict in the household than traditional dads. And guess what? Our kids are often perceptive enough to exploit those conflicts, hence my little four-footer standing in front of me with a frown on her face, essentially asking me, “Aren’t you the man of the house”?
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
It has become our regular dance. My two daughters, aged eleven and seven, come up to ask me permission to do something—usually something they are pretty sure their mother won’t let them do—and my response never fails: “Go ask your mother.” My oldest will give that usual irritated tween sigh, followed by an under-the-breathe “whatever.” My youngest is the more brash and philosophical of the two as she quickly retorts, “How come we always have to ask mommy first, can’t you make a decision?” If she’s in the mood for a argument, which she often is, she’ll even throw in a “Is mommy the boss of you?” Damn. How did it come to this?
As fathers go, I consider myself pretty engaged, at least in comparison to my own father. Don’t misunderstand, my dad was in the house, so this isn’t an absentee dad tale, but it was clear that he ceded the funky, dirty aspects of parenting to my mom; his job was to financially support us and to provide occasional discipline. My father was what Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman suggest in their recent book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, call a traditional dad, who simply took parenting direction from my mother. Not unusual for a generation of men and women, who believed that some aspects of parenting were naturally endowed in women.
I had long decided to take a different course from my dad. I’m what Bronson and Merryman call a “progressive dad,” though being an engaged father brings its own challenges. For one, because I have been an active participant in the parenting process—something my wife of nineteen years has encouraged—it means that my wife and I will occasionally have different opinions about how to handle different situations. What the authors of NurtureShock also realized that fathers who saw themselves has highly involved co-parents created more conflict in the household than traditional dads. And guess what? Our kids are often perceptive enough to exploit those conflicts, hence my little four-footer standing in front of me with a frown on her face, essentially asking me, “Aren’t you the man of the house”?
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com
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