Letters to the Editor
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Of course we would.
My home is a lot nicer than my office. At home I have two screaming babies, and at work I have twenty. Unfortunately, reality is what it is. My wife is a student with no income, and I can't breastfeed. Women will always be better at breastfeeding than men. Women also generally feel more caring and nurturing than men. You can artificially create a world where women work, and estrogen injected men breastfeed, but is that really a good idea?
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Interesting non-scientific study
What I do find interesting, though, is that 37 percent of the dads say they'd leave their jobs if their spouse or partner made enough to support the family...
Statistically speaking, not many of us want to marry such a man. To be "eligible," a man must earn more than we do... we're also allowed to complain about not being the primary breadwinner.
Cute little trick, isn't it?
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A new survey reports that 37 percent of dads say they'd quit their jobs to spend more time with the kids if their spouse made enough money to support them.
Duh.
As few of us do meaningful work, including me, I'd become a househusband in a heartbeat. I'm certainly not defined by my work. I am an Austrian rather than a German - I work to live rather than live to work.
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Hopeful
"Statistically speaking, not many of us want to marry such a man. To be "eligible," a man must earn more than we do... "
Who's "we?" Not me...
This is a hopeful survey, though not an extensive enough one that I put too much stock in it. Making things better for women can't just consist of letting women take less responsibility for their children. Men have to take more. Otherwise, where are children left?
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myths
I was a stay at home dad in 1970-74 and again in 1981-1985. The myth that either gender is specifically more suited to caring for young children is just that: a myth. And breast feeding? Ever hear of a breast pump? They even had those forty years ago.
While I had outside interests in the evening (I'm a musician, and thus perennially low income), I thoroughly enjoyed being home with my infant and toddler daughters during the day. The experience carried over to my girls' teenage years and on into adulthood.
All in all, being a dad was something I found to be both the most fulfilling and challenging task I took on in my life. It's not for everybody, but I'm glad that it is becoming more and more acceptable and commonplace. It certainly wasn't so thirty plus years ago.
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Women also generally feel more caring and nurturing than men.
And that's what making women unfit parents today. We're raising a generation of coddled, every-one-gets-a-trophy kids. If more fathers stayed home or were the "primary parent," we could stop the current tide of wussy kids.
I just wanted to join the fun.
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More fact than myth
Pumping is a good way for a woman to avoid the direct act of breast feeding, but I have never seen a study or read an opinion piece that says that it is better than natural breast feeding. You are putting a machine in between the mother and the child. I'm willing to bet that the baby will prefer a warm breast to a bottle.
We men may want to think that we can do as good a job as our wives, but at best we can only approximate the job they do.
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I'm lucky
My wife is one of the few women who would be perfectly fine with me quitting and staying at home to raise a child if we could afford it. (We can't yet, but once she finishes her degree, that's another story.)
Most women are not interested in getting into a relationship where they will wind up the breadwinner and the man the stay-at-home parent. I've noticed that in the professional world and I certainly noticed it when I was a grad student at Stanford.
This is a shame because to be blunt, I suspect a lot of men would love the chance to be at home and raise their kids, but know that's probably never going to be an option.
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Actually More Fathers
being part of their children's life would be a huge benefit. Fathers have always been boundary enforcers, and they don't need to be stay at home dads for that. The problem is the lack of fathers in their children's lives at all. Unfortunately that's not a priority of radical feminists.
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shift work
My nephew and his wife were both elementary school teachers when they had their daughter. They wanted her to be home with a parent and not in daycare in her early years. So Mom kept her better paying teaching job, while Dad quit his and got an evening retail job. He was home during the day with baby while Mom worked, and Mom was home in the evening while Dad worked.
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the fact that this many men would say this given that they know they would have absolutely no say about anything if their wife had control of all the pussy AND all the money
proves conclusively that desire of men to control women, or to resist women controlling them, is vastly overstated at least here and now.
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You assume wrongly
that men control the money even when they are the primary breadwinner.
women have it all over us.
this is why it is time to develop the systems and technologies to replace women. If women cannot play well in the sandbox and be fair to us men, time to create the replacement for them-- this is what God gave to us men, a superior intellect to make this happen.
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A few things:
Human females, when they are pregnant or breastfeeding, produce more of the hormones cortisol, prolactin and oxytocin than do men. Those hormones are responsible for parenting behavior in all mammals that have been studied. In short, if your body produces them, you act like a parent; if it doesn't, you don't. Male lions don't produce those hormones and they kill lion cubs. Male New World monkeys produce more than the female of the species and do the great majority of childrearing. In humans, a man who lives with a pregnant female will produce the same hormones, but not as much as she does. Thus, much of our parental behavior has a biological basis. Of course biology is far from the only determinant.
As to quitting their jobs, men and women both would be well-advised not to. Many things (divorce, death or incapacity of your spouse)can render a married person single overnight, and if you don't have marketable skills, you're in trouble. I'm all for parents taking as much part as possible in the lives of their children, but, except in the rarest of circumstances, abandoning your income is not a good idea.
As to time spent with children, the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that, among women and men who work full time, women spend about 170 minutes per day on domestic duties including childcare while men spend about 95 minutes per day. (Women in this category do about 60 minutes per day less paid work than the men.)
Finally, thanks again to Broadsheet for dealing sanely with an issue that is at least nominally about men. Is this getting to be a habit? Several times recently Broadsheet has proven itself capable of writing about men in a balanced, non-derogatory way. Keep it up.