Attack of the Sanctidaddy

A couple days before Father’s Day, I read the CNN article A father’s day wish: Dads, wake the hell up, which at some point on Saturday had been shared on Facebook over 55,ooo times. It’s basically a rallying cry for fathers to spend more time with their kids, and to appreciate their stay-at-home wives more. The piece has humor and oomph because it’s written by a stay-at-home dad who isn’t afraid to call out the deadbeat dads. Deadbeat as in, wants to play golf on a Saturday morning instead of getting up with the kids at dawn.

I confess, it made me cheer a little inside, especially the parts about changing diapers, washing dishes (repeatedly), and giving Mom free time. I tweeted that my husband is fantastic, but I’d be willing to try out polygamy for the writer of that piece. (Not really. Okay, almost.)

Tom finally read it during our special dinner at my parent’s house Sunday night. He didn’t laugh at any of the funny parts, and the first thing he said afterwards was, hadn’t I told him about some research that shows parents are spending more time with their kids nowadays rather than less? I said, “You feel kinda defensive, huh?” He agreed.

“How that article made you feel, that’s how Mother’s Day is for mothers every year. Even if it’s superficially an inspirational piece about how self-sacrificing and wonderful some mother is, that only makes you feel guilty for whatever that mother does that you aren’t doing.”

Tom said he’d never felt guilty on Father’s Day before.

And let me be clear: he has nothing to feel guilty over. Tonight he showed Callie how to sew a button back on her shirt, read bedtime stories, and is even now (at 10:07 pm), still talking with the girls about how to handle hurt feelings and how to know if an impression is from God.

Earlier today I read a guest post at Feminist Mormon Housewives by another stay-at-home father. It’s another funny piece, funny in the gender-role-reversal, he-knows-what-it’s-like, preach-it-brother, sort of way. He takes some light (easy, and reasonable) shots at past hardline patriarchal nonsense and turns some prophetical parental advice to his purposes, and then, oh then, at the end is an emotional zinger I did not see coming. About how, when one parent is the money-earner, the other parent’s life (and self) unconsciously comes second in priority and importance.

The comments I’ve seen on both of these expose-type pieces have been over-the-top adulation and gratitude for highlighting the common plight of stay-at-home mothers and unsung parenting in general.

The only thing is, these posts work on the trope of traditional-gender-role-reversal, but if either of them had been written by women for women, by mothers for other mothers, the writers would’ve been tarred and feathered as mongers of the mommy wars, fanners of the flame killing feminism and, worst of all, sanctimommies.

Which means that a) men really are just as good at being stay-at-home parents as women, even up to and including trying to shame and guilt their co-genderists, b) sancti-fyification of one’s own experience is inevitable and is either 1) a valuable cognitive-processing tool or 2) will be the end of civilization as we know it, or c)”staying at home” is a a really, really odd role: awkward, isolating, un-externally-rewarding/validating, and impossible to inhabit joyfully without telling oneself one is serving a (much) higher good than wiping the baby’s bum one more time.

I have no idea what the solution is, and it’s also easy for me to see that these men had fine (not malicious) intent. Much easier, in fact, than when I come across a sanctimommy post. (Of which, of course, I have been guilty in the past. It’s just so tempting, after all.)