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Between the recession and feminism, we have reached the inevitable moment when the stay-at-home dad becomes a real, quantifiable phenomenon. Journalist Jeremy Adam Smith just published the Daddy Shift tracing this "startling evolutionary advance in the American family," and Lisa Belkin interviews him. Smith argues that our maternal lens causes us to miss the things dads do differently and well—encourage risk taking and independence, for example. I buy that argument. In general, moms could use a lesson from dads on how you can leave the house without individually wrapped snacks and still have a fine time. But there's one problem with the daddy shift argument. The more dads find their own voices the more they sound just like ... moms.
Neal Pollack started this lamentable trend with Alternadad and now there are dozens (and three new dad memoirs coming out this summer alone). Rice Daddies, DadLabs.com, and Mike Adamick's blog Cry It Out are three Smith praises. In his view, dads just need to keep "telling their stories" to inspire other dads. I'm not so sure. I read these blogs and I'm not finding so much risk taking. Instead, once again, I'm lost in the minutae of epidurals and homework and yes, snacks.
Though I don't share her worldview, I find myself recalling a snippet from Caitlin Flanagan's story on wives who won't have sex with their husbands.
The men who cave to the pressure to become more feminine—putting little notes in the lunch boxes, sweeping up after snack time, the whole bit—may delight their wives but they probably don't improve their sex lives much, owing to the thorny old problem of la difference. I might be quietly thrilled if my husband decided to forgo his weekly tennis game so that he could alphabetize the spices and scrub the lazy Susan, but I would hardly consider it an erotic gesture.
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Between the recession and feminism, we have reached the inevitable moment when the stay-at-home dad becomes a real, quantifiable phenomenon. Journalist Jeremy Adam Smith just published the Daddy Shift tracing this "startling evolutionary advance in the American family," and Lisa Belkin interviews him. Smith argues that our maternal lens causes us to miss the things dads do differently and well—encourage risk taking and independence, for example. I buy that argument. In general, moms could use a lesson from dads on how you can leave the house without individually wrapped snacks and still have a fine time. But there's one problem with the daddy shift argument. The more dads find their own voices the more they sound just like ... moms.
Neal Pollack started this lamentable trend with Alternadad and now there are dozens (and three new dad memoirs coming out this summer alone). Rice Daddies, DadLabs.com, and Mike Adamick's blog Cry It Out are three Smith praises. In his view, dads just need to keep "telling their stories" to inspire other dads. I'm not so sure. I read these blogs and I'm not finding so much risk taking. Instead, once again, I'm lost in the minutae of epidurals and homework and yes, snacks.
Though I don't share her worldview, I find myself recalling a snippet from Caitlin Flanagan's story on wives who won't have sex with their husbands.
The men who cave to the pressure to become more feminine—putting little notes in the lunch boxes, sweeping up after snack time, the whole bit—may delight their wives but they probably don't improve their sex lives much, owing to the thorny old problem of la difference. I might be quietly thrilled if my husband decided to forgo his weekly tennis game so that he could alphabetize the spices and scrub the lazy Susan, but I would hardly consider it an erotic gesture.
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Want to hedge against the downturn by investing in precious metals? In Germany, shoppers will soon be able to buy gold from vending machines. (Daily Telegraph)
More than 40 communities across the country have canceled their Fourth of July fireworks, conceding that shooting off a colorful array of explosives is now a luxury that borders on wasteful. (Washington Post)
Cash-strapped and unemployed New Yorkers are meeting job contacts on the fly, in nontraditional settings, outside of their professional networks. (New York/Daily Intel)
The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance rose slightly last week, with the number filing ongoing claims fell for the first time since the start of the year. (CNN/Money)
The recession has evidently created “a new breed of stay-at-home dads.” (New York Press)
With the economy shrinking and more consumers defaulting on debts, credit card issuers are raising rates, cutting limits and slapping on new fees. (Wall Street Journal)
“If you’re waiting on housing and finance to get us out of the mess they caused, then you better pull up a comfortable chair and a bag of popcorn, because it’s going to be a long wait,” writes Daniel Gross. (Newsweek)
“So far, the collapse of the world economy since April 2008 has actually been worse than the rate of collapse in the Great Depression,” writes Henry Blodget. “The main difference between now and then is that most economists expect the world economy to recover more quickly than it did in the 1930s.” (Huffington Post)
The recent wave of legal layoffs, rescinded job offers, and even bankruptcies has created the ugliest market for lawyers in more than a quarter century. (New York Times/City Room)
President Barack Obama said yesterday that the recession struck largely because a post-Depression era business regulatory scheme couldn’t keep up with an increasingly global economy. (Associated Press)
