Prelude to Father’s Day: When is a Dad…a Mom?

A Guest Post by Alexandra Macqueen

Father’s Day is approaching, and so I’ve been thinking lately about how to acknowledge the role my spouse has played in parenting our kids. My partner is a very, very involved dad: everything I’ve ever done with my kids, with the exception of actually giving birth to them and breastfeeding them, he’s also done; from diapering to babywearing to playing with them (this takes more than you might think) to helping me wade through the many challenges of parenthood, from food choices to school choices.

And even those few things he couldn’t do, he made possible for me, because he organized his life around those choices. Partly because I’ve been dealing with (and now recovering from) a serious illness for the past few years, and partly because that’s just the kind of guy he is, Warren has been, in many ways, the primary parent to our two children.

I was thinking idly about these issues when I came across an article in this past Sunday’s New York Times Sports section. No one in our house reads the sports section, usually; but my attention was drawn by a lovely picture of Tiger Woods and his wife and two children. “All eyes are on Tiger Woods, the Father,” the article was titled. The article describes Wood’s devotion to his children: as a “diaper-changing, peek-a-boo-playing homebody” who cuts short his practices to be with his kids and says he misses them terribly when he’s on the road. Wood’s public embrace of fatherhood, the article goes on to say, “has given the 21st century male a new paradigm: the alpha athlete as ardent second-string mom.”

Wait, what? A second-string mom? A second-string mom? What is the Times saying?

Well, first, the article is suggesting that when this particular father misses his kids, and spends time with them, and takes care of the things they need taking care of, he’s acting like a mom. But not to worry, he’s only a second-string mom.

I looked that up, the phrase, “second-string” (I told you nobody in this house reads the Sports section). Here are the definitions I found:

• a squad of players that are available either individually or as a team to relieve or replace the players who started the game;
• being a replacement or substitute for a regular member of a team; “a second-string pitcher;”
• not as good; of a lower quality or condition.

Here’s what I think: what the Times described – the ordinary moments of parenthood that Tiger Woods is carrying out and participating in – these are not activities which are exclusive to moms. There’s nothing that prevents dads from taking on those activities as their own.

But the article not only defines these activities as the purview of moms, it intimates that when dads take them on, they only do so as “second-string” (substitute, not as good) moms.  In the metaphor of the second-stringer, we moms started the game – dads are called on to participate only as required, when the moms run out of energy, and need replacing.  Dads are benched for most of the parenting game. They are just alternates, usually unnecessary.

Somehow, with that broad-brush analogy, the Times manages to demean both mothers and fathers: mothers, because the scope of their lives is defined and narrowed by suggesting there is a range of activities which we are both expert at and limited to; and fathers, because there is the suggestion that no matter how hard they try or how much they love parenting, they can only become – at best – a “second stringer” to mom: her stand-in or replacement, not fully occupying the precious role of involved parent as their own.

But we do fathers a terrible, terrible disservice when we suggest that their contributions to parenting their own children are unusual, outside the terrain they can be expected to cover and master – and that parenting children is not completely a masculine, fatherly activity. There is no reason to suggest that by wholly participating in the raising of their children, men are substitute moms. They are not: they are dads, with all the wonder and glory being a dad brings.

And why does this matter? (Who cares what one article said about one, albeit prominent, dad?) Because the children we are raising now are making decisions about how they will parent their own children in future. Because with our words, we create a river of conversations about how life is and what our places are in it.

And it can be very difficult to step in a fast-moving river and try to go against the flow. All of our children need to know that while there are boxes that others will try to put them in, they do not have to remain constrained. The job of raising kids – the wonderful, terrifying joy and responsibility of it all – belongs equally to the mothers and the fathers of the world. As we approach Fathers Day, and think about the roles fathers play in the world – let’s not sell dads short by suggesting otherwise. A dad’s place in the lives of his children is as big as he makes it, and there’s nothing motherly about that, not at all.

Alexandra Macqueen lives in Toronto with her partner and two spunky daughters.  You can read more from her at her blog The Wealthy Baker.  You can also find her on twitter, she’s @MoneyGal.

Creating a World of Inclusion for Children. This is NOT what it looks like.

A Guest Post by Alexandra Macqueen

This is one of those things that strikes a very deep and disturbing chord in me, and I’m coming here just to muse aloud.

My kids have both been accepted to the alternative Whole Child School which is opening up in my neighbourhood, and I just got an invite to come and attend a “Town Hall Session” for the parents of kids who have been accepted to this school.  The school is expected to run with a lot of parent involvement and, in fact, there is a requirement for parent involvement (I think it is 20 hours per year).

Here’s part of the invite to the Town Hall meeting:

This [meeting] is where the parent community will start to take their role in shaping the school. The organizing committee will outline the work that needs to be done by September and early in the school year. And we want to hear from you about where your interests, skills, and passions lie as there will be many opportunities to get involved. This is also the first chance for the parents of registered students to meet each other, connect, and start developing a community around the school.

Sounds great, right? Except here’s what comes right afterwards:

We respectfully request that you make your own childcare arrangement for the event, as it will not be possible for us to provide child-minding for everyone’s children.

And that’s the sound of my heart breaking.  Look, I know logistically it would not be “easy” to provide childcare (“child-minding”) for all of the kids whose parents will be at this meeting.

But they didn’t even try.  There’s, I don’t know, a couple of hundred parents whose kids will be going to this school.  What about asking US to come up with some childcare solutions so that all the parents who want to come to this meeting can come?

But more to the point: does this not communicate that children are somehow secondary, or unwanted; and that taking care of children is “less important” than coming to this meeting?  ”The important work of building the school will start at this meeting!  To create a better future for all of our children!  Except your actual children are not welcome.  And you’re on your own in terms of child-care arrangements.  We’re not ‘child-minders’!”

It isn’t that I can’t find a way to have my children cared for during this two-hour meeting – I can.  And it isn’t that I think they “must” provide a space where children are included.  Except: I sort of DO think that.

And I also think they are (unwittingly) setting up a hierarchy where kids are at the bottom.  The “ideal” Whole Child School parent will not be encumbered by children, but will be able to roll up their sleeves and get to work on building the community for the children…but wait a minute.

Don’t they realize that every single person who is invited to that meeting has at least one child that must be provided for during that meeting?  How hard would it have been to get TWO occupancy permits at the school so that the kids could be in the gym, and the adults in the library?  And then a few volunteers from among the parent body to supervise the kids – just as one option?  (Given that I’ve organized several events at that school, I know it would NOT be hard.)

This is one of my hot-button issues.  Not that I am going to get hot under the collar and DO anything.  It’s just that…I’ve been a parent for seven years now, and I feel as though I have spent significant amounts of those seven years trying to insert my kids into spaces where they are not welcome.  (I’m not talking anything inappropriate or weird; just public places where I feel my kids should have the opportunity to participate.  Like church!)  And it’s exhausting.

I remember one time when I was at a meeting at the Beausoleil First Nation on Christian Island, long before I had my own kids.  The chiefs were meeting on some topic, and there were also kids playing right outside the doors. It was a hot summer day, and I went, independently, to close the windows so that (in my mind) the important meeting would not be disturbed by the sounds of busy, playing children.

The chief of the community called out to me, “what are you doing over there?” and I explained what I was up to.  ”No,” she said, “we don’t do that.  We are building a better community for those kids, and it is important that we be interrupted by them.  We need to always keep at the front of our minds who they are, and what they are doing is more important than what we are doing. They aren’t a disturbance – they are the whole reason we are having this meeting.”

I think about that exchange all the time, and wonder why I can’t find that kind of open and welcoming attitude other places.

Thoughts are welcome.

Alexandra Macqueen is a mother of two.  She is a financial planner with a passion for family finances.  She is a regular contributor to Spend on Life.  You can also find her on twitter, she’s @MoneyGal.