Monday, November 2, 2009

Obama on fathers

Barack Obama has announced that men 'need to be knocked across the head' to see the imbalance between how much work fathers and mothers put into raising children.

The U.S. president said he knew it was not fair for his wife Michelle to have to 'make sacrifices' all the time.
Recently in the Daily Mail and really nothing new by Obama as he critisized fathers before.
But if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.
Besides the obvious double standard (no one would suggest one should ever knock anything on mothers heads), President Obama seems to have a very simple view of things when it comes to parenthood. Overworked mothers, feckless fathers and a need to push men in the right direction.

A simple view indeed. What about trusting Joe and Jane Normal they both are able to figure out how to arrange their family life, due to their best interests and abilities (as President Obama and his wife obviously have done). And looking at time tables we find out that men actually work as much as women. So the average person already balances this out. Also keep in mind that men are doing more housework and child care than ever and a lot of working dads would consider to be a SAHD and the deadbeat dads we learn about are often "dead broke" dads. In addition, we do not have to forget injustices fathers compared to mother face when it comes to divorce courts or seeing their children after all (PAS).


So what is happening here? Obama is basicly spitting into fathers faces and saying, do more. And contrary to popular believe fathers are already doing there equal share and considering to do more child caring (and less work) if they could financially, while other fathers who want to be good parents are denied their possibility to see their own children.

Society, divorce courts and the law already regard fathers as second class parents, we don´t need another one that undermines fathers.

What he could have done would be reaching out to fathers. Realising the plights fathers are having, removing the injustices, helping to put fathers on the same podest mothers are now on (or removing this podest completely). This would have let to more fathers being with their children. But what did you expect from a guy that talks about deadbeat dads on father's day? (We don´t talk about mothers abusing children on mother's day or about the vile acts christians have done on X-mas)

It is time to say something nice about fathers.

3 comments:

  1. You might also be interested in Sachi's (Daffyd Ab Hugh's wife) take on that basketball game.

    Also I wrote a piece a while back which I think I managed to bury the headline in my rush to do battle over the internet. The headline wasn't that a one or two feminists have misjudged history, but perhaps feminists in general might be claiming too much credit for woman's suffrage?

    I was wondering if you knew more about this or had some perspective on the issue.

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  2. "What he could have done would be reaching out to fathers. Realising the plights fathers are having, removing the injustices, helping to put fathers on the same podest mothers are now on (or removing this podest completely). This would have let to more fathers being with their children. "

    Uh huh. Good luck with that. Since the entire effort is an INTENDED pogrom of fathers.

    - signed Aoirthoir (easier than logging in for now).

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