Someone told me about this report at dinner tonight, and whaddya know, Rebel Dad has it linked on his site (with its freshly renewed domain name. Welcome back, buddy).
Starting with every parenting book published in the 1990's and still in print in 2001, researcher/masochists from Gannon Universityanalyzed every mention of dads--and found that "only 4.2% of paragraphs referred to fathers," and fully 1/3 of these mentions were negative or false statements or stereotypes.
When fathers were mentioned, their roles were overwhelmingly described as ancillary, voluntary, or negotiable.
Where's Daddy? [washpost, via rebeldad]
Fleming, Tobin, "Popular Child-Rearing Books: Where Is Daddy?", Psychology of Men & Masculinity - Vol 6, Iss 1 [via apa.org]
There's a journal called Psychology of Men & Masculinity? That strikes me as funny. I wonder what the staff of that journal is like.
This drove me nuts as we prepared for the arrival of our son. Every book and magazine starts out their advice to dads with, "You should start doing more chores." I wanted to burn them all in protest. Some of us already balanced the chores pretty well, or did more than just a balanced amount.
Why does "Parenting" magazine have a section on beauty tips? I think they should rename the magazine "Mothering".
There is already is a magazine called Mothering, and it's about a gazillion times more interesting to read than that drivel in Parenting.
And yes, they are surprisingly equal-opportunity. Sometimes I catch my husband reading them.
Huh? what other kind of parenting is there besides mothering?
But seriously, Parenting recently underwent a 2-year-long redesign to address the needs of a new generation of parents...by
refocusing on women's lifestyle issues.
.. and then today, I see Time has a list of the 50 best websites on their website, so I look in the Blogs category, expecting to see daddytypes listed... Alas, I see a category of 'Motherhood', but no 'Fatherhood' category.
How did I miss this? We were just reading that Baby Whisperer book last night and I had several audible eye rolls at some of the dad-denigrating statements in there.