In the last month, the Daily Mail has run five particularly good pieces on modern fatherhood – well informed, sympathetic, challenging of stereotypes. Taken together, they represent a remarkable portrait of fatherhood today. I take my hat off to the Daily Mail!
Greg Williams (Exhausted, guilt-ridden, torn between career and children. No, not YOU, girls. Having it all is even harder for us men) heralds the arrival of equality for women and men – they are now both impossibly pulled in both directions by the demands of home and work. For men, work expectations are impossible – men are judged, he writes, by their career performance, not whether they attend their daughter’s ballet performance.
Vince Cable (Why, amid our quest for personal fulfilment and happiness, fatherhood matters more than ever) challenges the stereotypes of fathers and calls for some carrots – to balance the many sticks – to promote responsible fatherhood. He calls for more paternity leave as a start.
Lucy Bulmer (How FATHERS can get post-natal depression: One man’s harrowing testimony) writes about fathers’ experiencing postnatal depression and quotes a proposal that mental health round the birth should be seen as a family issue, not just one for women.
Kate Hilpern (Teenage fathers: ‘I love my child as much as any older dad’) ran a long series of case studies on young fathers, the most positive thing ever run in the media on the subject. She opens: “Young dads are often maligned by society. But, as these four prove, many turn their lives around, face up to grown-up responsibilities and swap socialising for night feeds. And they wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The old ideas remain – the genetic incompetence of fathers to do a good job of parenting. But when Emily Andrews (The fatherhood taboo: Men finally break their silence on the ‘potential misery’ of becoming a dad) reported the comment by an American author, Steve Doocy, based on a sample of one (himself), “New mums are better at parenting than new dads…they are programmed to mother”, it resulted in a chorus of dissent – 176 comments in just two days. I blogged about this discussion thread two weeks ago, regarding it as the most interesting and well-informed on-line discussion on fatherhood I have ever seen.
I believe the uncomplicated and positive tone of these articles heralds a new step forward – we are now able to talk about fatherhood like we talk about motherhood.
