First: an announcement! I've just started a fundraising campaign for an online multimedia project that I want to start working on called A Living City. Please have a quick look at the proposal by following this link. Now on with the show!
So I FINALLY got around to reading the dads' chapter in What to Expect When You're Expecting and I have to say: dads are a bunch of whiners. Not actually, perhaps, but they sure are depicted that way in this highly influential guide to parenting. Here's a sample section header: "My wife is breastfeeding my son. There's a closeness between them that I can't seem to share, and I feel left out." Now, I totally get that this may represent a legitimate feeling of recent fathers, but at the same time, I can't help but to think it harkens back to that idea that women are supposed to take over where men's mothers left off. The subtext of this quote seems to be "Now that the baby's the baby, who's going to treat me like a baby?"
I know that's probably not the intention, and I could be reacting a little defensively, but there does seem to be a lot of a highly specific tone of birth-condescension both here and more generally in North American culture. In trying to be understanding, such commentators as the writer of What to Expect come off as (irony of ironies) patronizing. When did it become okay to constantly put down men as these intellectually inferior beings whose supposedly "natural" emotional stunting turns them into objects of pity and tacit scorn? Helloooo? It's cultural, people! There's nothing natural about it. And more importantly, couldn't such condescension ironically lead to an abrogation of men's responsibilities? The assumption underlying it, I think, is that generally men are emotionally incapable, and when they do have a tired, hormonally charged emotional moment, they'll be encountering such crazy woman feelings it for the first time. Ugh. Can you tell I'm pissed off? Is there a chance that at least some of us -- maybe one or two -- developed our relationships based on mutual respect, emotional bonds, and genuine knowledge of our feelings? (A third of the chapter is on what men can expect sexually -- what am I, life support for a penis?)
And just to be clear: I am not advocating that men become macho jerks as a remedy to this condescension. The problem that I had with the chapter was not one of content, but of tone. Reactive machismo is the fundamental flaw in a lot of men's responses when it comes to push back over perceived gender slights: their reasoning proceeds along the lines of why do women get all the breaks -- what about my breaks? And then we're back to where we started, men acting like a bunch of emotional idiots.
Instead, I'm suggesting that we drop the pretense of emotional irresponsibility on both sides and start acting like adults, forming our opinions and perspectives on a highly contingent case-by-case basis. Perhaps it's time that we drop the dialogue on masculine and feminine traits altogether, and start approaching this crucial adult moment in terms of the birth-giver and non-birth-giver (awkward phrasing -- how about birthie and dearthy?). Yes, there are probably some pretty powerful instinctual things that happen based on one's relationship to the baby, body chemistry, etc., but to attribute this solely to bullshit along the lines of men being from Mars and women from Venus becomes restrictive and reductive. What the hell is someone supposed to expect if they don't fit into these rigidly defined stereotypes? Where are gay couples from, the moon? How about single parents, Pluto? And don't get me started on the interstellar divide inhabited by trans people, adoptive couples, shared parents, more communal cultures, grand-parenting, etc.
What to Expect pays lip service to diversity, but in truth its efforts seem pretty flimsy even for lip service, and it's not enough anyway just to uncritically cover your asses by listing off token alternatives. Multiple experiences need to be integrally accounted for when it comes to parenting. In my not humble opinion, it's important not only to understand our relationships to each other, but to the culture that produces the very conception of "us". It is important, for example, to warn men and women not just about what they'll be experiencing in terms of the birth, but what cultural and social pressures may be put on them to behave and be certain ways. What to Expect should have a chapter about What to Expect When You're Reading What to Expect When You're Expecting. I could write that.
So I FINALLY got around to reading the dads' chapter in What to Expect When You're Expecting and I have to say: dads are a bunch of whiners. Not actually, perhaps, but they sure are depicted that way in this highly influential guide to parenting. Here's a sample section header: "My wife is breastfeeding my son. There's a closeness between them that I can't seem to share, and I feel left out." Now, I totally get that this may represent a legitimate feeling of recent fathers, but at the same time, I can't help but to think it harkens back to that idea that women are supposed to take over where men's mothers left off. The subtext of this quote seems to be "Now that the baby's the baby, who's going to treat me like a baby?"
I know that's probably not the intention, and I could be reacting a little defensively, but there does seem to be a lot of a highly specific tone of birth-condescension both here and more generally in North American culture. In trying to be understanding, such commentators as the writer of What to Expect come off as (irony of ironies) patronizing. When did it become okay to constantly put down men as these intellectually inferior beings whose supposedly "natural" emotional stunting turns them into objects of pity and tacit scorn? Helloooo? It's cultural, people! There's nothing natural about it. And more importantly, couldn't such condescension ironically lead to an abrogation of men's responsibilities? The assumption underlying it, I think, is that generally men are emotionally incapable, and when they do have a tired, hormonally charged emotional moment, they'll be encountering such crazy woman feelings it for the first time. Ugh. Can you tell I'm pissed off? Is there a chance that at least some of us -- maybe one or two -- developed our relationships based on mutual respect, emotional bonds, and genuine knowledge of our feelings? (A third of the chapter is on what men can expect sexually -- what am I, life support for a penis?)
And just to be clear: I am not advocating that men become macho jerks as a remedy to this condescension. The problem that I had with the chapter was not one of content, but of tone. Reactive machismo is the fundamental flaw in a lot of men's responses when it comes to push back over perceived gender slights: their reasoning proceeds along the lines of why do women get all the breaks -- what about my breaks? And then we're back to where we started, men acting like a bunch of emotional idiots.
Instead, I'm suggesting that we drop the pretense of emotional irresponsibility on both sides and start acting like adults, forming our opinions and perspectives on a highly contingent case-by-case basis. Perhaps it's time that we drop the dialogue on masculine and feminine traits altogether, and start approaching this crucial adult moment in terms of the birth-giver and non-birth-giver (awkward phrasing -- how about birthie and dearthy?). Yes, there are probably some pretty powerful instinctual things that happen based on one's relationship to the baby, body chemistry, etc., but to attribute this solely to bullshit along the lines of men being from Mars and women from Venus becomes restrictive and reductive. What the hell is someone supposed to expect if they don't fit into these rigidly defined stereotypes? Where are gay couples from, the moon? How about single parents, Pluto? And don't get me started on the interstellar divide inhabited by trans people, adoptive couples, shared parents, more communal cultures, grand-parenting, etc.
What to Expect pays lip service to diversity, but in truth its efforts seem pretty flimsy even for lip service, and it's not enough anyway just to uncritically cover your asses by listing off token alternatives. Multiple experiences need to be integrally accounted for when it comes to parenting. In my not humble opinion, it's important not only to understand our relationships to each other, but to the culture that produces the very conception of "us". It is important, for example, to warn men and women not just about what they'll be experiencing in terms of the birth, but what cultural and social pressures may be put on them to behave and be certain ways. What to Expect should have a chapter about What to Expect When You're Reading What to Expect When You're Expecting. I could write that.
RSS Feed
