Dads and Fathering

The other day I was at a day long parenting conference and noticed that there were not very many dads. One dad, who happens to write for us, also made a comment about the lack of male participants.

Now I know that dads are more involved these days than they were when I was growing up but it does seem to be the moms who take on a lot of the nurturing and organizing stuff of families. But what's happening here?

I think that I have been a fairly involved father over the years and I have attended to my children's needs although I must confess that my wife tends to take on more of the parenting "tasks"—participating in school committees, organizing pick ups ort drop off, etc.—partly due to her flexibility of work schedule and partly due to her nature.

Perhaps there is a "hard-wired" aspect to all of this. Women seem to enjoy the congregating in groups (such as the parenting conference).

I'm not sure it's totally fair to look at a conference attendance and think that men are not involved with parenting. They are just involved in a different way than mothers. Most, I would contend, do not take it on as much as the female parent but definitely more than previous generations.

A quick aside but somewhat related: I was watching an NBA basketball game over the weekend and one of the commentators stated how well a player was playing on this day than at the previous game. It turns out that he got a good sleep "last night" as opposed the "other" night when he was up in the night with the baby. The commentators both recalled those days in their lives and said the dad out there on the court was probably looking forward to the away games. (I'm not sure in a former generation that the dad would be up with the baby during the playoff season.)