Posted on 06/08/2003 12:57:03 AM PDT by Z in Oregon
Now playing: "Daddy Day Care"!
I'm always amazed by the "Three Men and a Baby" motif of popular entertainment, which declares that men who can build a computer from scratch are somehow supposed to be befuddled by the changing of a diaper or warming of a bottle. It's silly, and to such an extreme extent that one wonders what the motivation for such ridiculous portrayals are.
Physical tasks involved in childraising are fairly simplistic. Presuming one signs on to bottle-feeding as acceptable, as I and millions of others do, the day-to-day tasks of childcare are something that anyone of reasonable competence could do well.
Paternal care is inclusive of, but not equated with, basic caregiving tasks: rather, those tasks are noted as a universally do-able baseline by anyone with a functioning-human level of capability.
Packaging them as such permits the discourse to move to the second level: are good fathers able to provide emotional care that is equal to that provided by the best mothers? I would say yes. As I noted in a previous article, "...the deepness of love that a good father feels for his children is in no way less than that of a good mother for her children. Love is a human trait, not one restricted to, or found disproportionately within, only one half of the human race."
All that being so, there is a third level: what do good fathers bring that good mothers do not? Each parent brings, on this level, a mirror image of what the other brings.
Good mothers give their sons a positive, foundational relationship of love and respect, security and trust, with the female half of the race, while providing their daughters with role models.
Good fathers give their daughters a positive, foundational relationship of love and respect, security and trust, with the male half of the race, while providing their sons with role models.
It is just that synergistic.
FMCDH
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