My recent post “Are Stay-At-Home Dads a Threat to Children in Playgroups” dealt with a situation where a dad was removed from a playgroup by the other moms. They considered him a “security risk” to the children.
Well the issue has gained a lot of traction on other dad blogs, including Greatdad.com:
There is a bigger issue going on here. It’s how we socialize men to be caregivers rather than keeping them on the outside. We don’t want men hanging around playgrounds because we don’t trust them alone with our kids. Part of that is because we don’t usually allow or promote a role of men as active parents and child care providers. In turn, men are confused about how to act around kids.
That’s exactly right. This whole situation is self-fulfilling. When dads are ostracized from social settings that have traditionally been “mom only,” it reinforces the fear women have about other men being around their children, and it causes men to disengage from the whole dad-thing altogether.
In a day and age when a lot of society’s woes are blamed on the lack of involvement many dads have in the lives of their children, it just doesn’t make sense to banish dads from things like playgroups.
Just because dads are men, doesn’t mean we’re inherently dangerous to other people’s kids, does it?
So what can we do to change this?
