20 images Created 3 May 2018
THERE ARE GOOD MEN OUT THERE
When I was a child, my mother had a simple mantra: “Do not expect too much from men and you won’t be disappointed.”
She expected very little. She moved to Mexico from California in the 1960s, bringing the children from her first marriage. She met my father, married again, had more children, including me, and got divorced. She stayed in Mexico and worked to support us. On most days, she was my father figure.
I saw my father on weekends, but there were no hugs, no cuddling. He loved his children, but he was a Mexican man of his era, born in the 1920s, and he struggled to express affection. When we talked, I always used the respectful and remote “usted,” the formal Spanish word for “you.”
It’s different in my house now. Watching my husband, Rob, with our two sons fills me with joy. He relates to them in ways that are beyond me: the love hidden inside roughhousing, the relentless teasing, the way they model themselves on him. They climb on him, asking any question that pops into their heads, a natural familiarity that would have felt awkward to me as a child.
I’m not going to claim household perfection. My husband and I squabble about money and the division of household chores. We often disagree about how to discipline the boys. And I know we have it easy. There are tens of millions of women out there who don’t have anyone to share the parenting with, just like my mother didn’t.
When Rob was born, his father wasn’t allowed in the room for the delivery. His mother went off to the hospital and came home 10 days later, with all the business of childbirth done and dusted. My father-in-law was a wonderful man and a caring father, but I am quite sure that he never changed a diaper, rarely cooked a meal and never took his children to another child’s birthday party.
Rob hoped that one day he could replicate his wonderful childhood with a family of his own. But gender roles, both at work and at home, are not what they once were. And in less than a generation, men like my husband have had to learn a different way to be a father.
Rob was in the delivery room for our boys’ births and shared in the burden of sleepless nights. That’s normal now in our London world of two-career couples, but it was unheard-of just a generation ago.
The “Me Too” movement made plain how awful many men can be. So it can be easy to forget that men are also working to carve out their new place in the world.
It’s at birthday parties where I think about this most often, and often most poignantly, as I watch dads in daffodil hats, or wrapped in toilet paper, finding their way among a crowd of mothers who have been navigating these waters for years.
What will the world look like when my sons are adults? The idea of rigid gender roles is shifting in ways I couldn’t have expected just a decade ago. For now, I like to watch Rob and our boys and be reminded that there are some very good men out there. Contrary to my mother’s mantra, I can expect a great deal from them — and not be disappointed.
She expected very little. She moved to Mexico from California in the 1960s, bringing the children from her first marriage. She met my father, married again, had more children, including me, and got divorced. She stayed in Mexico and worked to support us. On most days, she was my father figure.
I saw my father on weekends, but there were no hugs, no cuddling. He loved his children, but he was a Mexican man of his era, born in the 1920s, and he struggled to express affection. When we talked, I always used the respectful and remote “usted,” the formal Spanish word for “you.”
It’s different in my house now. Watching my husband, Rob, with our two sons fills me with joy. He relates to them in ways that are beyond me: the love hidden inside roughhousing, the relentless teasing, the way they model themselves on him. They climb on him, asking any question that pops into their heads, a natural familiarity that would have felt awkward to me as a child.
I’m not going to claim household perfection. My husband and I squabble about money and the division of household chores. We often disagree about how to discipline the boys. And I know we have it easy. There are tens of millions of women out there who don’t have anyone to share the parenting with, just like my mother didn’t.
When Rob was born, his father wasn’t allowed in the room for the delivery. His mother went off to the hospital and came home 10 days later, with all the business of childbirth done and dusted. My father-in-law was a wonderful man and a caring father, but I am quite sure that he never changed a diaper, rarely cooked a meal and never took his children to another child’s birthday party.
Rob hoped that one day he could replicate his wonderful childhood with a family of his own. But gender roles, both at work and at home, are not what they once were. And in less than a generation, men like my husband have had to learn a different way to be a father.
Rob was in the delivery room for our boys’ births and shared in the burden of sleepless nights. That’s normal now in our London world of two-career couples, but it was unheard-of just a generation ago.
The “Me Too” movement made plain how awful many men can be. So it can be easy to forget that men are also working to carve out their new place in the world.
It’s at birthday parties where I think about this most often, and often most poignantly, as I watch dads in daffodil hats, or wrapped in toilet paper, finding their way among a crowd of mothers who have been navigating these waters for years.
What will the world look like when my sons are adults? The idea of rigid gender roles is shifting in ways I couldn’t have expected just a decade ago. For now, I like to watch Rob and our boys and be reminded that there are some very good men out there. Contrary to my mother’s mantra, I can expect a great deal from them — and not be disappointed.
