Friday, June 1, 2012

Membership

I've harped on men about their misconceptions and emasculating notions about at-home dads. I have noticed that I seem to side with moms in much of my writing. Apparently, moms are without blemish. Well, I have a bone to pick with some of you. Many of you live under the delusion that not being able gestate a child inside your body precludes men from being competent caretakers. Others just assume that just because their husbands are absent fathers, all husbands tend to be unskilled and uninterested parents. Now I hope that the number of those who that feel that way are few. Unfortunately, I have encountered enough of you with these misconceptions to want to write about it.

I am going to use a recent vacation my family went on to illustrate these points. We were staying at a bungalow by the beach in Costa Rica. This lovely little spot shared a pool with the neighboring bungalows. We often gathered around the pool in the mornings or evenings and would have a generally pleasant time. We were neighbored by two families. Each of these families had a toddler and a baby. We were relieved by this because, even though our kids were older (5 and 8) we didn't want to be the only ones there with kids. The fathers of these two families had come from separate countries to Costa Rica in order to surf. I can't fault them for that, but I did find it somewhat insensitive that they would leave their wives in a foreign country alone all day tending to 2 very young children.

One morning by the pool as the kids were busy splashing about, I could tell that one of the moms was feeling a bit dejected as her husband was already gone. We started talking about our kids, as you tend to do when you have them. At one point in the conversation she loosed a tirade of feelings about the inadequacies of fathers as parents and how they leave all the work for the mothers. She directed these comments at me. I was a little embarrassed and laughed it off, saying (maybe a bit smugly) that all dads probably weren't like that. She assured me that they were.

Later she was talking to my wife while I was napping. She asked for advise regarding some parenting matter. My wife didn't feel comfortable answering the question and coolly said, "I don't know. You should ask Brett." She wondered why and my wife told her what my employment status was. This mom apologized to me later that day.

On this same vacation I encountered another mom. She had a small baby and was pregnant with her second child. My wife and I were sitting next to each other while she was playing in the pool with her baby. Again having older kids, she had some up-bringing questions that were directed at us. Normally when these kinds of questions arise my wife lets me field them, so I started answering her question as best as I could. About halfway through my sentence she started glaring at me. It became obvious that she had directed the question not at us, but at her (my wife). I felt as if I had interrupted some special sacred connection that she felt was shared only between mothers.

Child rearing isn't a club which requires a uterus as a membership card. Me writing this isn't going to keep people from feeling that way. Nor will it prevent people from being sanctimonious, or will it stop people from being insensitive. Nothing will change. There are terrible fathers out there. Some are great. There are husbands out there that, despite loving their kids, have no interest in raising them. Some dads are just okay... not great, just okay. I acknowledge this. For as many different kinds of fathers there are, however, there are as many kinds of mothers. I suppose the reason I write stuff like this is, not only is it cathartic, but its also my backwards way of praising those of you that are making the effort to be great. For those that are breaking molds and making my job, either directly or indirectly easier, I salute you!

-Brother Brett

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