Generation X Dads on The Current

The Current, a current affairs show that airs weekdays on CBC, did an interesting feature on Generation X dads. The first part described a flip-side story to my post yesterday on the pressure Kate's getting about her maternity leave. In Canada, parents are entitled to a year of paid (by the government) parental leave. This can be portioned out as they want: the mom home for the first six months, the dad for the second six months, one parent can use all the leave, both could be home for the first six months. Apparently, however, employers aren't being particularly supportive of fathers who want to partake of this leave, and they interviewed a guy who is in court right now because, after six months of paternity leave, he was fired for "performance issues" the day he got back. So the pressures certainly apply to both sides of the parental equation.

Afterwards, they had a round table discussion between two men and a woman, Andrea O'Reilly of York University. I thought it was fascinating (and you can listen here). Alot of positive things were said, for instance about how data shows that both men and women are spending more time with their children these days. I think I was most interested in O'Reilly's views, which sounded largely negative.

She said some stuff that I agreed with wholeheartedly. Specifically, I thought she made a great point about how all parenting is not equal: driving a kid to a hockey game and planning the kid's schedule for the week do not require the same mental energy or level of involvement in the child's life. I completely agree with that.

But I thought it was interesting that she carefully avoided using the word "parenting" to describe the activity of raising a child, referring to it instead as "mothering". She actually said something like "If men start mothering their children, ...." I found this fascinating, because it seemed like she was setting up a gold standard of child care that amounts to a contradiction in terms. Bottom line? Men will never meet that standard no matter how involved they are in their children's lives. Now, it may be that she's just defining "mothering" to mean "the highest standard of child care", but isn't that sexist? I can't imagine that there wouldn't be an objection if someone suggested that women do more "fathering".

I guess my point is that she seemed to be completely neglecting the possibility that men and women could have different, but equally high, standards of care for their children. I'm talking in the ideal here. I'm not so naive as to think that the current landscape is completely equal. I can't help but think that a dedicated single father can be an excellent parent on his own terms even if he can never meet O'Reilly's standard of "mothering" his children.