Way back when, my oldest daughter Katie nominated me for The Baltimore Sun’s “Father of the Year” award. I was fortunate to win this award, and I am sure it had something to do with my daughter’s creative and persuasive writing style. And while I have always put my family first, I did not feel fully deserving of this award. After all, I certainly wasn’t doing anything different than my wife. Actually I was doing less, since she was a hard-working, selfless, and dedicated full time mother at the time. We were both throwing ourselves into our family, and trying to balance work, family, housework, our marriage, finances, and caring for three children, one of whom has autism. At the time, I do remember that I seemed to always be running from here to there, in order to carve out enough quality time to be a good daddy.
Last year, a book came out entitled Superdads: How Fathers Balance Work and Family in the 21st Century. The book is based on interviews by Gayle Kaufman, Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. Kaufman interviewed a diverse group of men who are making “significant changes to their work lives in order to accommodate their families.” Advertising for this book continues, “They are nothing like their fathers, ‘old dads’ who focus on their traditional role as breadwinner,“ rather they “buck the system” and in the process challenge our views of gender roles.
Once again, I feel uneasy. Are these dads super simply because they are deviant, meaning they do not conform to the norms of society? Moms make significant sacrifices each and every day, and yet their contributions are often minimized or go unnoticed. Moms’ lives, in many cases, reflect a total commitment to family (and work as well in many cases) that is not about them or “leaning in or leaning out,” but rather about others.
So while I applaud, with reservations, a book about “Superdads,” it seems to me that much more attention needs to be directed at the moms in our lives and the unbelievable sacrifice they make each and every day.