Wall Street Journal: Maternal Gatekeeping an Obstacle to Fathers' Involvement
June 18th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.Have Wall Street Journal editors been reading GlennSacks.com?
Here's a WSJ piece that aims to educate readers about the recent advances in our understanding of maternal gatekeeping (The Wall Street Journal, 6/17/09). It's a pretty good piece; it looks at the issue, quotes the researchers into maternal gatekeeping and even touches (ever so lightly) on the idea that men and women tend to parent differently.
Better yet, it strongly suggests, without coming right out and saying so, that father involvement with children is not simply his responsibility. That is, the article gently rebukes President Obama and the "irresponsible father" crowd. They're the ones that claim that father absence is all the fault of irresponsible, uncaring men who can't be bothered to pay for, or pay attention to, their children. Those who place all the blame for absent fathers on their poor characters willfully ignore the many systemic barriers fathers face in trying to be a meaningful part of their children's lives. Maternal gatekeeping is one of those barriers.
The WSJ piece also points out that fathers may, wittingly or not, contribute to gatekeeping behavior on the part of mothers. By hanging back, displaying hesitation or lack of confidence or less than complete competency, a father may be issuing a none-too-subtle invitation to Mom to take over. Certainly the research into maternal gatekeeping suggests that there's an interpersonal dynamic at work between father and mother.
The Journal piece doesn't discuss the role that culture plays in that dynamic, but it's undeniably present. Women are socialized to play the maternal role; men are socialized to believe that we're uninterested in and incompetent at childcare. So when Dad hangs back, becomes frustrated or doesn't know what to do or how to do it, his behavior fits the cultural norm. To fit her cultural norm, Mom steps in and says "Here, let me do it."
Add to that the fact that the bulk of the parenting hormones are hers and what results is Mom as the dominant parent. And Mom as the dominant parent means Mom does less paid work, earns less and saves less. And when Mom works and earns less, Dad works and earns more, which means he sees less of his child.
Cheers to the Journal for running an informative piece that eschews blame in favor of giving accurate, important facts about a subject that is going to be with us for a long time.
"));
19 queries. 0.312 seconds.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Seems as though the main stream media prefers the softer sounding maternal gatekeeping to Parental Alienation.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Let's not forget the cultural view that if a guy wants to work with kids "too much" people look at him strangely. So if a guy (me) does have the balls to work in a pre-k class, he has to ignore some odd looks he gets, or answer questions like "why do you like working with kids?". It's very frustrating.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:59 am
It's time to look at the many millions of mother-as-sole parent failures evident in the Great Society's Aid to Dependent Children. Women's part is carrying the baby and then nursing. But parenting a child doesn't end with nursing. How many times must single motherhood fail?
June 18th, 2009 at 11:02 am
"Add to that the fact that the bulk of the parenting hormones are hers and what results is Mom as the dominant parent. "
Not necessarily. If the father is present during the pregnancy, he experiences hormaonl changes along with the mother. These changes are milder than what she experiences, but that doesn't mean that after birth he doesn't catch up. Men have even been documented as beginning to lactate.
The general condition is called couvade and in some cultures there is even a set of customs that acknowledges it.
The dominant parent business grows more out of a general division of labor in which women stay home and control the house and men go out in to the outer world. It's not really about hormones.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Seems as though the main stream media prefers the softer sounding maternal gatekeeping to Parental Alienation.
Which would serve the effect of minimizing the problems dads face. I would say that maternal gatekeeping is a tatic used by those that practice Parental Aalienation. Keeping the child away from the father is but one part of the alienation process. Other steps would inclue bad mouthing the other parent in front of the children and lying to the children about the other parent's behavior with the purpose of swaying them to their side.
Let's not forget the cultural view that if a guy wants to work with kids "too much" people look at him strangely. So if a guy (me) does have the balls to work in a pre-k class, he has to ignore some odd looks he gets, or answer questions like "why do you like working with kids?". It's very frustrating.
Yes this is one stigma that most people refuse to acknowledge. A woman with no kids can do almost anything she wants but a man with kids of this own might get run out of the park they get too far away and he is spotted when they are aren't around.
June 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
We shouldn't assume the causal factor is Dad's hesitancy: http://www.fira.ca/cms/documents/186/Candice_Wilsonmothers_expectations.pdf The attitudes of mothers are shown to be a predictive factor in paternal involvement. As usual men get blamed and women get off scott free. A whole lot of BS that is. I've had this argument on my site with women who like to blame (present) fathers for not being more involved with their children, housework etc., yet research shows men already contribute half the housework, provide near-equal nurturing to the child if mommy get's out of the way, work and earn more, provide more of their income to support the family instead of spending it on themselves, and do most or all of the traditional male work like home and yard care, auto maintenance, handiwork etc. Anyone who says men aren't pulling their weight is caught up in the same princess complex delusion that most American women are. The nut of the matter is that men are just stoic and the women won't stop bitching even when they are already ahead of the competition.
June 18th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Jim - I posted two pieces quite recently on exactly the type of hormonal response by males you refer to. What I said was correct. Women do in fact show more pronounced spikes of those parenting hormones during pregnancy than a man who is present. There's only one study I'm aware of and that's what it says. And in other bi-parental species, the parent with the greater hormonal spike is the primary caregiver. That's usually the female, but, for example in certain New World monkeys, it's the dad.
June 18th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
New World Monkeys.... :-)
I like that.
That puts it in the correct perspective. Humans have overcome many animalistic ways. We're "Civilized," or so we think.
Today we have a more "social upbringing" of the child, and not base "animalistic functions" that help our offspring to survive in the modern world.
We have learned to share, communicate, teach, and live within large communities. We have created laws to govern ourselves.
But when it comes to fatherhood and equality, it immediately becomes about basic animal instincts and hormones.
Selective thinking to match certain qualities of selective hearing.
It's ...
FatherTime
June 19th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Hurry please... someone do a study or authoritative report on going potty... I just can't seem to manage it without being told by a PhD or some such saying I really hafta goooooooooo.
Good criminy people... WAKE UP!
We've KNOWN this for years!!!
Gunner Retired
June 19th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Ugh...the worst day of the year for me is in two days...Father's Day.
I sure wish I could see and help raise my son.
And that others would try to help the child see *both* parents.
June 19th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Hey Stan I'm with you there, I have never raised my hand to anybody and I pay my CS on time (like I had a choice) "garnish" and I'm no longer in the arrears, and my ex still won't let me see my children.