While Father’s Day is coming up this Sunday, over the past year there has been an increase in attention directed toward the “other” parent.
It has come in the form of more serious dad books, blogs, and television commercials which treat fathers as more than just slapstick fodder. Dads are even finding themselves the subject of scientific research.
This month, award-winning American journalist Paul Raeburn published his latest book entitled Do Fathers Matter?: What Science is Telling Us about the Parent We’ve Overlooked. Raeburn looks at and overturns many myths and stereotypes of fatherhood and argues that the role of the father is distinctly different from that of the mother and embracing father’s significance in the family is something that everyone can benefit from. This, together with DIY books such as Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects and Dad’s Book of Awesome Science Experiments, both from Mike Adamick, are forming a wholly new genre in bookstores.
On the less serious side, a plethora of funny dad books are being published too that reflect changing social attitudes around involved fathering. Two notables are Jason Good’s This is Ridiculous This is Amazing: Parenthood in 71 Lists and Dad is Fat from stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan. Dads who blog about parenting include Lunch Box Dad and How to Be a Dad.
Television companies are slowly waking up to the change in dads. Blogger Zach Rosenberg suggested notable progress in TV depictions of fatherhood. Fathers typically have either been portrayed as stiff disciplinarians or as hapless boobs, but advertisers are starting to realize the appetite for dad as an extra child is dwindling.
Researchers at the University of BC recently published a study that found daughters of men who take on a fair share of household chores are more likely to avoid gender stereotypes when talking about what job they want to have when they grow up.
PhD candidate Alyssa Croft said the study, published in Psychological Science, found differences in how girls expressed career aspirations between families with gender equality in their homes, compared to families without.
The “open secret” of involved fatherhood is finally breaking out. As attitudes have changed about women in the workplace, so too have those around the equality of men as parents. Happy Father’s Day.
