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.)

That is one fine man. All of my glands gush love hormones and let-me-squeeze-you bonding agents. Almost enough to make you want another baby, until this baby starts crying, or one of her sisters starts whining/fighting/changing her clothes yet again. Usually our division of labor on Saturdays is Tom: 3 kids, Shannon: baby. But whenever we are all together, daddy breaks out the baby bjorn (if only you could hear how Lucy says it) and everyone is happy.

Really, it’s amazing I ever get annoyed at this man . . .

I was feeling the evening-queasies, so I begged Tom to take her. They ran from the playground we’d just arrived at, in the far corner of the park, across two softball fields, to the other end where the bathrooms are. The bathrooms that were still locked for the winter. (Sunday evening walks in Florida were balmier on the beach in January.)

I watched from my perch on the cement wall at the playground as they ran kitty-corner across two more softball fields to the church that sits next to the park (welcome to Utah; this is the closest park to our house, but only the fourth-closest church). The church was locked. At six pm on a Sunday. (They weren’t really dressed to pee at the church on Sunday, but still.)

They crossed the street back towards us and then disappeared for several minutes. A convenient ditch runs on two sides of the park, and then they were loping back towards us, slower and less-urgent-like.

Susan ran off to play and I asked Tom how he managed to help her go without getting any on herself. (I am a girl, I have been camping: these things are complicated.) He said he held her arms and had her lean way back. (The Seagull Fountain version of the Trust Fall.) And he foraged some dry leaves for her to wipe.

I have seen those sorry leaves from last Fall. It is hard to weigh the danger of butt-leaf-mold against the value of a man so accomplished.

Perhaps I should have brought her a caffeine-free Mountain Dew, as that is as close as I can come to a beer. Maybe next time.

Notice how Dick horned in to be next to (and touching!) Dooce. Notice also how the short, chubby one was pushed to the front and therefore looks more short and chubby than strictly necessary.

I wanted to see Dooce, despite good advice to stop stalking her already. I didn’t want to have to buy her book, though. That’s what libraries are for. But we needed a Father’s Day gift for Dick’s dad anyway.

On Thursday evening I didn’t consider the book for my own dad because I worried that he wouldn’t appreciate the swearing. But the very next day I called someone a f—— a—— in my father’s presence. My brother was horrified, wanting it documented that that was the first defilement of the homestead by the f-bomb.

But Dad actually defended me, saying I was PROBABLY RIGHT. I’m sure he thought better of that later. No matter how much someone deserves to be called a f- a-, it’s just not good precedent to encourage Jane in thinking she’s right. She already knows she is, especially when it comes to derogatory nomenclature.

Speaking of dads, fatherhood — having a dad, being a dad, being married to a dad — is an unexpected, and possibly inspired, topic for a Mommy Blogger’s first book. Heather’s essays (2 of the 17) are good. A bit disappointing if you are a faithful reader of Dooce.com, as there is very little (no?) new material. A bit impressive too, as her skill in framing a narrative, creating immediacy and urgency then deftly mixing in backstory and exposition, is just breathtaking. BREATHTAKING.

Jon’s essay about his father is troubling. I enjoy Jon’s blog, though I confess I read it rarely, and always as an accompaniment to Dooce. His essay here is a bit strained, a bit contrived, a bit forced. A bit rambling. A bit incoherent. I feel uncomfortable for him.

Being married to Heather B. Armstrong seems like as thankless a task as your basic wind-beneath-my-wings, X-could-never-do-it-without-Y role. It’s nice that the supporting role is played so well by a nice guy in this case (rather than the stereotypical nurturer-woman), but I don’t envy the pressure he must feel to produce writing as clever as hers.

things i learned about my dad (in therapy) and several initial reactions were covered well by Lauriewrites, and if you’re the type who compulsively reads the reviews on Allrecipes.com before cooking, check out the thoughtful Amazon reviews, which leaves me free to reflect on the great mystery that is successful writing.

I’ve been reading Laid-off Dad since just before he announced his divorce. In an era of seemingly-easily-disposed-of marriages, his anguish at succumbing to divorce, as a last resort, is immensely appealing and heart-wrenching. So I want to love his essay, I want to love every word that comes out of his mouth/pen/computer. And yet, his essay? A letter to his sons about the last summer before their family breaks irrevocably? It’s all over the place, with a genealogical section both baffling and distracting. 

It makes me wonder if writers reach a certain point of immunity from narrative flow. And if they do, probably it shouldn’t be before their first solo book is a bestseller.

I do love that LOD is emotionally candid about his divorce. His description of not-fighting in front of the kids as “two people ensnared in a fit of furious quiet,” “screaming in stage whispers,” is fantastic, and his ability to hope, while still in the acrimonious middle, that at some point mom and dad will be more amicable is a triumph of heart over instinct.

Then I read probably the most profane essay in the book, Peas and Domestic Tranquility, and I wanted to sit down Dick and my dad and his dad and Dick’s dad and my brother who will be a dad someday and every other dad and mother I ever knew and read aloud to them every profanity-laced sentence. I want to quote the entire thing here, but that might violate some copyright or other. Greg Knauss posted an excerpt on his own blog, though, so you can read a bit before running out later tonight to get the book for yourself.

His dissection of family dinnertime is so freakin’ spot-on that I will worship at the fount of his RSS feed for the rest of time. His essay is also organized, with what might even be called a thesis or road map: “Here’s what I’ve found that sets me off: disobedience, lying, and rudeness.” How deliciously un-p.c. and old-fashioned. Let’s here it for some basic, unquestioning-for-once-in-your-life obedience! On lying, he says:

If anything crystallizes the Pyrrhic victories of fatherhood, it’s the fact that my fondest wish is for hooligans instead of sociopaths.  . . . the lying bothers me . . . because I see my own weaknesses and failures in it. Lying is about not having the confidence to defend what you’ve done. Lying is about weaseling out of the consequences of your actions. I was a liar because it seemed easier.

I get angry at my kids for lying because now I know it’s not.

It’s a neat trick to inspire me to try to do better as a parent. I can read Love and Logic for Girl Children Aged 1-7, or Dr. Sear’s Discipline Book, but honestly, that kind of measured, well-meant drivel can make me want to match my three-year old tantrum for tantrum. Why do I have to be the adult? Why do I have to take the knees to the head and the screeches to the ear and the food spit out on the floor with a cheerful smile and maybe a lame time-out?

Somehow, Greg Knauss’s essay (and now the posts I have stayed-up-too-late to catch up on) are outrageously entertaining AND instructive. He understands, and informs me: 1) Why I do what I do, 2) Why my kids do what they do, and 3) That I am not alone in wanting my kids to just SIT. DOWN. FOR. DINNER. And (in the case of my girls) SIT UP STRAIGHT SO I CAN’T SEE YOUR PANTIES. DANG IT. 

What’s more, and most incredible, he makes me feel actual desire to be a better parent. I know what I should do. Making me feel inclined to do it is another thing entirely.

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