I noticed something today that I consider interesting. When I glance around at the profiles of mothers I know in various social networking sites almost all of the mothers with young children have pictures of themselves with their children as their primary picture and sometimes their partner/husband is in the picture. It is very rare for a father to have a picture of himself and his child as his primary picture. Once parents have teenagers it is fairly uncommon to have pictures of the kids in a primary profile picture at all. In fact, for most fathers of young children you have to spend some time hunting to find mention of their kids/pictures of them. And once you find pictures you notice that the father has 1-5 pictures of his kids (out of dozens or hundreds of photos) whereas the mother in the same relationship has the kid(s) in almost all pictures up.
I hear a lot about how women give up too much of their identity to their children. I wonder if this attitude comes about because men don’t give up enough of their identity to having children and in our society the default ‘personhood’ is being a man and women are wrong for where and how they deviate from that norm. If you think about it, that is very much how (at least American) society works. Women are shafted in the work place because they need maternity leave/sick leave to care for children/time off during the day to take care of appointments for children. This is all left to the sole providence of women in the vast majority of cases. Yes, there are some exceptions but they are exceedingly rare. I believe that companies get away with their nasty anti-woman policies because the default is that everyone should behave like a man therefore women are bad/wrong for when they need something different.
Back to my original point about parents. I’ve been thinking about this kind of stuff a lot. Women are told not to give themselves up to being a mother. I hear it. I’m told to go out and have a separate identity. The thing is, there are only so many hours in the day. Having a toddler is a shitload of work and I really don’t see how I could do much more than I am doing lately and still be as present as I am with my daughter. I’m not willing to put my daughter in daycare for a wide variety of reasons, not least of which is I’d have to get a job to pay for it and then I would be gone all the time working and I would have even less time for myself than I get now. 😛 My job was brutal on me for having a separate identity anyway.
My point being that I think that it is crap that women are told they should be less invested in their identity as a parent when men are not told they should be more invested in their identity as a parent. Yes, there needs to be a balance but I don’t think men are doing better than women they are just fucking up in the opposite direction. There has to be some meeting in the middle and I’m not exactly sure where it is.
Part of it is that work tends to tell everyone they should be less invested in their identity as a parent, and generally less invested in anything that takes attention or labor away from, y’know, your job. Work is going to be like that, pretty much always.
If the default in our society was for everyone to act about their families the way women do jobs wouldn’t have that expectation. It is only because ‘man’ is the default worker that it works this way.
I agree with this statement but I would like to point out as you did above there are exceptions. I think a lot of it has to do with the parenting theories and philosophies of the new parents. Erikson theories and the Attachment Parenting Communities are big on both parents taking on the role of primary care giver. My husband is one of those dad’s with a photo of him and our son as his profile photo on Facebook. He was the one who did 90% of the baby wearing and diaper changes. Although he’ll never be as in tune with Bishep’s needs and wants as I am because he didn’t carry him for 9 months and doesn’t have the nursing connection, he has from time to time surprised me when he was more in tune with our son’s needs than I was during a specific moment.
Would he still have been this type of parent if we hadn’t involved ourselves in the attachment parenting community and have a support group of other dads who are the same? I would answer no. I think a lot of it is society’s standards on the role of the father in a family, this is basic psychology. But I am thankful to see that there are communities that are breaking from “typical” and that we have a community where he can see other dad’s taking on these new roles for them. There are even a few of the dad’s within our community who are the Stay-at-home dad’s while the mom works.
If these type of parenting philosophies were taught in birthing classes, parenting classes, I think we would see a shift in the family dynamic. Unfortunately these parenting styles are viewed as “far left” and “crunchy” when they should really be more middle grounded as they have more balanced parenting roles that would take a lot of stress off of new mothers.
I don’t know you, hi. 🙂
My husband is actually one of those ‘super involved’ Dads. But I feel more than a little resentment that people give him a pat on the back for being ‘super involved’ when in my view he is just fucking parenting. (I do give him mad props for being as awesome and caring as he is. It’s the overall societal expectation that he is doing something he doesn’t have to do that I object to. I want my pats on the head, goddamnit!!)
We aren’t active in an AP community because I really haven’t found one around here. Much erfing.
*pats you on head* That’s great you have a husband like that but I know what you mean. We are expected to be supermoms and do everything without any acknowledgment. From what I read, and I admit I’m one of the ones who follows that you don’t know :(, I think you are doing a great job! We all need to hear it!
Um, nice to see you here! LOL I’ve been stalking rightkindofme from MDC and LJ for over a year! Hugs. 🙂
Wait… and who are you? And how do you know her? Yay MDC stalkers! 😀
I am Jennie, aka medijupiter19 on mdc. In the tattooed & pierced tribe. I lurk more than I post, on both LJ & MDC. I found you on here via a kink link I believe. I have a 20-month-old daughter, I share a love of self-expression and well-formed sentences, and have similar lifestyle ideals. I enjoy reading your LJ because you’re not afraid to say things directly, even if it’s not a popular opinion.
Sierra and I know each other through shared lifestyles here in Michigan. (I would be less vague about that if I weren’t simultaneously also “outing” her.) She’s helping me plan my wedding, we’ve been part of the same groups for years and have struck up a friendship in the last year or so.
Yay! I’m thrilled that you have friends you know ‘like that’ who are also into AP. 😀 Man I wish I had folks who lived near me in the same boat. 🙂
Thanks for thinking I’m doing a good job. I try really hard at it.
Totally agreed on the “you’re just parenting” point. It has always irked me when a man refers to watching his child as “babysitting”. I think that demanding equal attention/effort can be difficult to quantify, but I think my (and Sierra’s!) partners are very much involved, and more than the societal average.
I think they deserve kudos for setting a new standard for our generation, wherein the fathers are just as involved, just as crucial, and just as dependable and emotionally involved as the mothers.
But an involved and engaged mama always deserves props too. 🙂
I think they deserve kudos in the way that every good parent deserves kudos because good parents are unfortunately not the norm. 🙂
It is entertaining to note just how often the money gained by the second job goes to other people doing the stuff the one with the second job did before. Like, the return on investment is lower than expected/hoped for.
But yeah, identity and parenthood and work and all that is hells of boondoggley.
Well, if I worked there would all of a sudden be a need for money to be spent in ways it currently doesn’t need to be spent. So of course it would feel like the new expenses were coming out of the ‘new’ money. 🙂
fascinating – I have been thinking about the issues of identity a lot, and definitely feeling like mothers overidentify with their children, not all, but many, and that men don’t as much. How about identity separate from work and separate from children? I sometimes think women use their kids to create meaning/purpose in their life – that they don’t want it or get it from work and it is a struggle to figure it out without having children, and since having children is accepted and encouraged, that is the path they take.
Well, I will point out that it has been the norm for females to gain most of their identity from their relationships to other people for pretty much all of recorded history. It is only recently that it has become a ‘problem’.
It’s a pretty well studied thing that people need a ‘reason’ to live. (My favorite is Man’s Search For Meaning.) What is wrong with having that meaning come from the people in their lives? I don’t think it is required that anyone pick other people to live for but I can tell you flat out that if I didn’t have people to live for I would cheerfully put a bullet in my brain because I really don’t see much point without the people I care about.
Both dh and I have him holding Lina as our phone wallpaper.
My fb profile has me and Lina because it’s one of the good pictures of me on my computer. I’d have the whole family but don’t have a picture like that that’d fit in thumbnail form.
it used to aggravate me
when people called my watching the kids
“babysitting.”
then, i figured “oh, fuck them.”
i’m not in very many pictures and videos
because i was always the one taking the pictures
(that’s being involved, right?).
spouse can’t run a camera worth a shit.
but *don’t* say i told you so.
she thinks she great at it!