Jeremy A. Smith

The Daddy Shift (eBook, ePUB)

How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

A revealing look at stay-at-home fatherhood-for men, their families, and for American society It's a growing phenomenon among American families: fathers who cut back on paid work to focus on raising children. But what happens when dads stay home? What do stay-at-home fathers struggle with-and what do they rejoice in? How does taking up the mother's traditional role affect a father's relationship with his partner, children, and extended family? And what does stay-at-home fatherhood mean for the larger society? In chapters that alternate between large-scale analysis and intimate portraits of men and their families, journalist Jeremy Adam Smith traces the complications, myths, psychology, sociology, and history of a new set of social relationships with far-reaching implications. As the American economy faces its greatest crisis since the Great Depression, Smith reveals that many mothers today have the ability to support families and fathers are no longer narrowly defined by their ability to make money-they have the capacity to be caregivers as well. The result, Smith argues, is a startling evolutionary advance in the American family, one that will help families better survive the twenty-first century. As Smith explains, stay-at-home dads represent a logical culmination of fifty years of family change, from a time when the idea of men caring for children was literally inconceivable, to a new era when at-home dads are a small but growing part of the landscape. Their numbers and cultural importance will continue to rise-and Smith argues that they must rise, as the unstable, global, creative, technological economy makes flexible gender roles both more possible and more desirable. But the stories of real people form the heart of this book: couples from every part of the country and every walk of life. They range from working class to affluent, and they are black, white, Asian, and Latino. We meet Chien, who came to Kansas City as a refugee from the Vietnam War and today takes care of a growing family; Kent, a midwestern dad who nursed his son through life-threatening disabilities (and Kent's wife, Misun, who has never doubted for a moment that breadwinning is the best thing she can do for her family); Ta-Nehisi, a writer in Harlem who sees involved fatherhood as "the ultimate service to black people"; Michael, a gay stay-at-home dad in Oakland who enjoys a profoundly loving and egalitarian partnership with his husband; and many others. Through their stories, we discover that as America has evolved and diversified, so has fatherhood.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Beacon Press
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Juni 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780807097373
• Artikelnr.: 37835349

Autorenporträt

Jeremy Adam Smith's writing has appeared in Mothering, the Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Wired, and elsewhere. A magazine editor, blogger, and former stay-at-home dad, Smith lives in San Francisco with his wife and son.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
Twenty-first-century Dad
 
Part I
The Fathers of Yesterday and Today
 
A Stay-at-home Dad’s History
of North America
 
Searching for Role Models:
Ed and Rachelle’s Story
 
Stay-at-home Economics, or
Five Myths of Caregiving Fatherhood
 
Searching for Community: Chien’s Story
 
Interlude: Now You See It,
Now You Don’t
 
Part II
The Dads of Tomorrow
 
Returning to Glory: Ta-Nehisi’s Story
 
The Astonishing Science of Fatherhood, or
Three More Myths about Male Caregiving
 
Searching for Heroism:
Kent and Misun’s Story
 
Conclusion
Remember the Future
 
Epilogue
 Another Fatherhood Is Possible
 
Acknowledgments
 
Notes
 
Index