Are you Daddy enough?

Photo credit: Lionsgate

Photo credit: Freeimagesarchive.com

Even as Father’s Day approaches, as usual it seems that mothers are getting most of the attention.  Consider last month’s Time article about attachment parenting posing the in-your-face question “Are you mom enough?”  In this week’s issue, David Poniewozik turns the spotlight on dads with “Daddy Issues.”  Why, he wonders, are dads with baby carriers still sight gags in the media?  Why does the perception linger that these dads are somehow not “man enough”?  

The assumption is fraught with age-old stereotypes.  It’s the false perception that the “henpecked” husband has been forced into daddy duty--an insulting prospect for both parents no matter how you slice it.  Or perhaps that dads’s "invading" mommy territory: as Poniewozik points out, the baby carrier in front gives men a slightly pregnant look.  For some absurd reason, this makes people uncomfortable.  

The dads with baby carriers striding toward the camera in slow motion in the movie “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” is a spoof of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” in which a line of hip mobsters in sharp suits and skinny ties approaches the viewer.  One is decidedly cooler looking than the other.  The baby carrier spoof was meant to be hilarious, poking gentle fun at a group of dads who long for their glory days, but there’s a cynical message as well, as in “Those poor schmucks!  They gave up the glories of bachelorhood for THIS?!”

Then again, maybe I’ve got it wrong.  Maybe the “What to Expect” slow mo is meant to show the dads as being empowered.  They are owning fatherhood: to hell with what anybody thinks!  I hope so.  Still, it treads a fine line.  

Dads, you are brave, and you don’t get enough recognition.  You’re not a poor schmuck for changing a diaper; you are showing love for your child.  You’re there because you want to be, not because you’ve been tricked or forced.  You understand that these are the glory days, not what you did in high school or college.

This is equal partner parenting, and society needs to get comfortable with it.