We went for our second early ultrasound on Friday, and as the title suggests, all was well. We saw the heartbeat again, which amazingly took up 1/3 of the embryo's complete size. The baby measured in at a whopping .93 cm, and still resembled a tiny grey blob on the ultrasound screen. You want to be able to tell people that your kid is a good looking kid, but I'm afraid to say my kid looks more like a small cumulonimbus at the moment. Next ultrasound's at 12 weeks, and apparently the cloud will have a face by then. Can't wait!
It was also father's day this weekend, as you know, so there was major dad buzz in the air. The city newspaper ran half a dozen stories on the modern father, and I was interested to see them make a fairly progressive acknowledgement of categories like stay-at-home dads and work-at-home dads (which they unfortunately went on to refer to as SAHDs and WAHDs). I remember when masculinity studies were all the rage in academia, back around 2003, and it's good to see some of those insights and debates finally making their way into the mainstream.
Notably, one of the complaints about masculinity studies when they were a big focus in academia was that they were basically a creative way of turning attention onto men, which is basically what had been happening since the beginning of history anyway. I don't think the attention to modern dads needs to be thought of in such negative terms, as long as it doesn't start to eclipse the hard work that their partners (male or female) are doing outside the home. I think the ideal would just be to see value placed on the hard work that everyone does, not just one gender or the other (or the other!).
A focus too heavily on hetero male parenthood would basically be an annoying switcheroo of the situation feminists of the 70s and 80s worked so hard to remedy. Back then, the work of mostly women homemakers was disdained, and hard battles were fought to get childcare thought of as extremely valuable hard work. I hope that the increased attention on home fatherhood doesn't just indicate that men have noticed that moms have been getting too much of the attention, and so they want to move in on it. That's certainly not how I feel, but it remains a possibility.
In all honesty, I think that the modern world still has a way to go on gender issues, so it's good to have any discussion of men and women inhabiting non-traditional roles with regard to work, parenting, and relationships, this super awesome blog included. When I saw a large banner at the mall this weekend reading "The Greatest Sale Known to Man", I felt like I'd been zapped back in time forty years. I suppose the battle rages on, and it's one worth fighting, because the stakes are a less alienating, more welcoming world for everyone.
It was also father's day this weekend, as you know, so there was major dad buzz in the air. The city newspaper ran half a dozen stories on the modern father, and I was interested to see them make a fairly progressive acknowledgement of categories like stay-at-home dads and work-at-home dads (which they unfortunately went on to refer to as SAHDs and WAHDs). I remember when masculinity studies were all the rage in academia, back around 2003, and it's good to see some of those insights and debates finally making their way into the mainstream.
Notably, one of the complaints about masculinity studies when they were a big focus in academia was that they were basically a creative way of turning attention onto men, which is basically what had been happening since the beginning of history anyway. I don't think the attention to modern dads needs to be thought of in such negative terms, as long as it doesn't start to eclipse the hard work that their partners (male or female) are doing outside the home. I think the ideal would just be to see value placed on the hard work that everyone does, not just one gender or the other (or the other!).
A focus too heavily on hetero male parenthood would basically be an annoying switcheroo of the situation feminists of the 70s and 80s worked so hard to remedy. Back then, the work of mostly women homemakers was disdained, and hard battles were fought to get childcare thought of as extremely valuable hard work. I hope that the increased attention on home fatherhood doesn't just indicate that men have noticed that moms have been getting too much of the attention, and so they want to move in on it. That's certainly not how I feel, but it remains a possibility.
In all honesty, I think that the modern world still has a way to go on gender issues, so it's good to have any discussion of men and women inhabiting non-traditional roles with regard to work, parenting, and relationships, this super awesome blog included. When I saw a large banner at the mall this weekend reading "The Greatest Sale Known to Man", I felt like I'd been zapped back in time forty years. I suppose the battle rages on, and it's one worth fighting, because the stakes are a less alienating, more welcoming world for everyone.
RSS Feed
