Just Jump Right In
Another busy week in the news.
07/16/2002
Jump right in, that’s my new style. Don’t worry about cute newspaper-style opening paragraphs, just get on with the ranting.
As usual, everyone asks me about role reversal. Can it work… can a man make a passable mommy?
Well, yes and no. There. I finally said it.
Since a father lacks productive breasts and also hasn’t passed the child through his body for ten or so months, any comparison requires a certain suspension of disbelief, even to a creature as gullible as a newborn. To the new father who felt loathed and powerless because The Baby was wailing like a blender at Happy Hour during his watch, I say relax. Babies cry; it is the first order of business. It’s just a coincidence that your breasts and reproductive system are all wrong. No need for a body image crisis.
Though much is made of the difficulties facing a man entering full-time Homedaddy-hood, lesser known are the dangers awaiting the working mom. She has to carry her weight and then some when she comes home. Consider:
• By the time mom gets home the kids have long since had enough of the old man, and they’re just looking to take it out on someone.
• The daylong buildup of "Mommy-itis" often erupts in a torrent of whining and clinging.
• All requests for sweets, TV, and assorted indulgences which have been patiently denied by Dad throughout the day are resurrected, aggressively and simultaneously.
• Whereas Mom’s defenses are down after her long day’s work, the children have been sparring with Papa all day, staying sharp. Feeling guilty for being gone all day, she is tempted to indulge in leniency in order to demonstrate love and also to hopefully put a stopper in all the ruckus.
• Pressing their advantage, the children re-negotiate all boundaries set during the day. Divide and conquer.
Being a Homedaddy is no cush job, but being a working Mom is no walk in the park either.
This week in my world, the housekeeping struggle takes a dramatic turn, or at least one can hope. As I mentioned last time, I am now a regular guest on the internet radio program The Mom Show. They have a weekly guest called The Fly Lady, a.k.a. Marla Cilley. I checked out her site (www.flylady.net) got kind of hypnotized by her incredibly detailed meticulously time-budgeted method for keeping a clean house. Even though the tone is non-judgmental and achingly cheerful, it’s also overwhelming to a lifelong practitioner of that "lived-in" look. Still, even a little bit of the Fly Lady’s technique goes a long way.
The problem with this kind of thing is that if you want to really get it together, you have to get all the way on board, no fooling around. Deciding to try to keep the house clean is like trying to get religion. If you want true enlightenment, you gotta believe, you gotta be in for the duration. Housecleaning is the same way; it’s a never-ending process. The day your faith wavers is the day you lose your car keys behind the TV set.
Here’s a little item in the parenting news this week:
HOMEDADDY COALITION PASSES FRAUD PENALTY PROVISION
WASHINGTON (AP) - Faced with a decrease in healthy food consumption, the Homedaddy Coalition adopted new penalties for dinner fraud as the House of Children scrambled to issue a formal protest.
A motion to allow stiff bedtime penalties and dessert embargoes to be levied against children who illegally avoid eating their healthy food was adopted by a unanimous vote of the Homedaddy Coalition on Monday. The Coalition established new guidelines last April to tighten oversight of green vegetable portions, but at that time did not act on recommendations to create stiffer penalties.
"This is a tough stance that cracks down on the uncooperative children," said Tanner Hyde, the Homedaddy Majority Whip and chairman of the Homedaddy Disciplinary Committee. "It is time for the children to be held accountable."
The new ruling will result in t0ugher penalties for children found guilty of misleading accounting practices when reporting bites taken so far, as well as for those found guilty of smuggling bites to family pets.
A four-year-old member of the House of Children, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said HOC leaders still held out hope that a final compromise with the Homedaddies could be reached by the end of next week. When asked his opinion of this week’s developments, he stomped his foot and proclaimed it to be "not fair!"
The HOC has accused parents of applying a double standard in light of several adult behaviors which have recently come to light; among them late-night binge eating of cookies, use of bad words, and refusal to share mysterious beverages in fancy bottles.
That’ll do it for this week. That’s one of the advantages to no longer writing specifically for newspapers… I can just end the column.
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