How Daddy Bloggers Could Change Parenting for the Better

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Before we dissect that, let's look at an earlier article from this week about mommy bloggers. Lisa Belkin takes a look at a study on mom bloggers that finds:

while only 14 percent of American mothers have a blog . . .  those who do are more politically aware, socially involved and, might I add, better educated, than the average woman with children (52 percent have a college degree compared with 37 of mothers nationwide.) They are wealthier too (with an average household income of $84,000, which is 4,000 times higher than the national average.)

Belkin ends by reflecting on some of the ways blogging (and the communities created through blogs) has shifted cultural expectations: "I have seen many a time when a parent's mind was changed by the virtual conversation."

A related conversation is touched upon in this article by Courtney Martin. Here, Martin explores the role that feminist blogging has played in organizing the feminist movement and shaping the future of feminist philosophy.  She goes on, however, to discuss the problem with feminist blogging: 

Samhita Mukhopadhyay, the executive editor of Feministing.com, explains, “Blogging has become the third shift. You do your activist work, then you have a job to make money and then you blog on top of that. It’s completely unsupported.”

It was with these two articles in the back of my mind that I found Hegedus' post about daddy bloggers.

 He discusses a recent (and amicably resolved) spat between a mom blogger and a dad blogger that involved some power dynamics. He discusses how the spat should teach us to be allies:

Mom bloggers need to realize something.  Dad bloggers are your allies.  These are the guys you should be nurturing, supporting, like sweet little fuzzy chicks tottering around the farm yard.  Like Avant says, these are the guys who are creating the new paradigms of fatherhood, the ones in which dads will not dump much of the child care and housework on women.

With that, Hegedus touches upon a point that is really important to me, and one I talk about a lot on this blog: gender equality is not sustainable if it means only that women get the freedom to take on roles traditionally ascribed to men. In that model, women either have to take on double-duty, or the work traditionally done by women goes undone (and that work is important, so that's really not an option). In order for gender equality to be truly reached, men have to also be free to take on roles traditionally ascribed to women. The ideal is that individuals then take on the duties that make the most sense for their skill sets and interests (and divvy up the work no one wants to do fairly, without concern for gender stereotypes).

This concept of individualism within the collective shift toward gender equality is an important one, as Hegedus points out in his post:

Many, if not most, guys are in some sort of trouble, with either their traditional jobs slipping away or their traditional family role disappearing. You may lack sympathy for this -- the dominant gender finally falling -- but it is confusing and hard for well-meaning, individual men. 

So, yes, the world is still an unfair place for women. We do not get equal pay. We live in a sexist world where objectified images of our bodies are used to sell everything from perfume to hamburgers. Little girls are told to be princesses when they play while little boys get to be whatever they want. We're still called sluts if we enjoy having sex, risk getting raped and then blamed for it because we wore a short skirt, and are generally still oppressed in a patriarchal system. But we have to recognize that's a societal system and that changing it means giving up some previously closed off spaces to men who are a part of the changes to that system. I blog because it helps me figure out my place as a parent. I read parenting blogs for the same reason. Men's participation in that system of communication is imperative to creating a more equally shared ideal of parenting. 

Hegedus concludes with this:

Mom blogger communities are a digital marvel, a true sign of how the internet can foster connection, not alienation.  But maybe now it's time to open the doors. This is not about stealing