Okay, a 2nd diary posting for me!  Woo hoo!

In the comments of my previous diary entry about me possibly reentering the workforce, someone said that I should be sure to :negotiate major participation from DH in the family/child/home care areas. Major participation--like 50-50 if possible."

In theory, I think that's great, but in practice, it can be hard to achieve.  I'm just wondering where everyone else is at with it?  (More on me after the jump.)

Details magazine recently ran a blog post by David Hochman about how straight men are uncomfortable with the thought of having a gay son. "The fact is, parents—dads especially, even those who cry at weddings and like to make soufflés—take pride when their kids follow culturally ingrained gender roles." Progressive dads are not immune from this; in fact, the article contends, they may be more susceptible:

It may sound like liberal-dad hypocrisy, but guys like Ron say it's their hyperawareness of gay culture that makes them so fear the idea of their kids being homosexual in the first place. "You see the news; you see movies like Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don't Cry," Ron says. "You think, It would be a hell of a lot easier if my kid turned out not to be gay."

I remember perfectly the first moment I realized my husband had a different learning curve with our daughter. He had just finished bathing her and was putting on her diaper and sleep sack in her room. I'm sitting on the couch comatose and I can hear some distress coming from her room. He walks out with the baby crying, her sleep slack half on, trapping her arms, and I kid you not, her diaper on backwards.  He needed help.

How I have two boys is beyond me.  I thought for sure collecting china tea sets and thinking pink would do the job.  Besides that, everyone said I was carrying like girl...both times.  What did they know anyway?

So now I have these two boys.  One is three and a half, the other barely nine months.  The three year old, MJ, is really giving me a run for my money – he is all boy...even down to the dirt under his fingernails!

When I got pregnant and enrolled in our insurance company's well baby program, we received two free books: What to Expect and The Expectant Father.  The Expectant Father was a nice touch, a way to say to the expectant dads, you're involved in this too buddy!

As far as pregnancy goes, the father's role is obviously one of support.  "We" are not pregnant.

After the baby is here, with the exception of nursing, all aspects of childrearing including decision-making can be shared equally.  However, this is often not the case and the authors of The Expectant Father bemoan this current state of affairs.  Some of this is society's fault according to the authors:

Quite simply, Americans don't value fatherhood as much as motherhood.  Even the words conjure up different images: motherhood is equated with caring, nurturing and love, while fatherhood doesn't seem to be much more than a biological relationship.  As a result, men are rarely accepted if they assume a different role than the one they are "supposed to assume".

Then there are the barriers that the mothers put up:

Here's an all-too-common scenario:...their six-month-old-son started fussing.  Colin who was holding the baby began rocking him.  Suddenly his wife appeared and whisked him away.....What it seems to boil down to is that most of us--men as well as women--simply assume that women know more about kids than men....

Although most mothers feel that fathers should play an important role in the kids' lives, research has shown that they want that role to be not quite as important as the mom's.  In fact researchers have found that two out of three women seem threatened by equal participation and may themselves be subtly putting a damper on men's involvement with their children because they are so possessive of their role as primary nurturer.