Imagine All The Fathers...
We live in a different age, we do indeed. Kind of touchy-feely, letting it all hang out kind of thing. There is not all that much difference after all, emotionally, between men and women. Particularly when it comes to their offspring. The maternal instinct? All that different from the paternal instinct? Depends, one supposes, on the species. Some birds share the raising of the young. Some male fish eat their young.Humans, traditionally, left the rearing of the young to the female of the species. Men don't, after all, breast-feed babies, and most men don't think too highly of changing soiled diapers. It's a kind of individual emotive-practical thing. There are women with the sensibilities more associated with males, and there are men with the emotional sensitivity of women. We're that complex, as a species.
Generally speaking, however, most of the basic requirements, particularly in the early years from baby to infanthood and childhood, are female-assigned tasks. But not necessarily, in this new age where fathers may opt to stay at home as primary care-givers and mothers haul themselves out to the office, instead. If it works for them, then it works and that's that.
Fact: It's not that new a phenomenon that husbands/fathers take a deep interest in their progeny, along with the wives/mothers. There have always been those fathers whose engagement with their children has been deep and emotionally fulfilling, just as it was for the mothers; those were very particular partnerships and relationships.
Currently, however, Western society in particular has embarked on the institutionalization of fatherhood as intensely complementary to motherhood, and men have been investing themselves as deeply in parenthood as women. But there are choices to make in thus investing time, energy and emotion in one's newborn and infant offspring.
Choices, as above, that the male partner of the family unit surrenders himself by choice to primary care-giver, leaving the female to earn the family income. That's logical and it's a decision that works for some. These men, however, do not position themselves as they do, if they have a job that makes them responsible for the well-being of a nation and its people.
Britain's new Prime Minister, after having taken a holiday, now decides he will also take weeks of paternity leave? Appropriate within the family unit, to demonstrate how much of an uxorious man he is, and a fully engaged, loving new Dad. Of course he does have other children, four of them. But, in the interests of 'bonding' with his new baby, he has left the office of Prime Minister to a deputy.
If he is that expendable, why not just discharge him from all public, political, lawmaking duties? Clearly, the wrong man for the job.
Labels: Biology, Britain, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, September 01, 2010
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