Men Resisting Containment

This blog by Etan Thomas, author of Fatherhood: Rising to the Ultimate Challenge depicts the modern day father’s resistance towards society’s efforts of containing men to traditional gender roles. In his post, Thomas talks about how a Huggies commercial portrayed dads as being incapable of taking care of their own children. Outraged by what he thought was an unfair portrayal of men’s role in child rearing, the author did some research to prove that this “helpless” image of fathers who cannot care for their kids without the help of women is more of a gender stereotype than a fact. He uses his personal experience as well as evidence from the U.S. Census to further successfully prove that men are not as inept at taking care of children as implied by the commercial.

Even though society has made all sorts of progress in promoting gender equality, some stereotypes remain. In my opinion, this blog post shows efforts of resisting containment. Men no longer have to and neither do they subscribe to the traditional gender roles that were most popular in the 1950’s. In our society today, it is becoming more and more common for men to take on the role of stay at home dad while more women are entering the work force.

This commercial by Huggies however successfully exhibits how society constrains individuals’ choices such as men who decide to stay at home and raise their kids. In the 50’s Cold War era, women were the ones being forced to abide by the socially accepted roles assigned to them. It is interesting to see how men today are now faced with a similar situation and how they react towards it.

Stay at home dads today are commonly mocked and insulted by people who do not understand why they do it. In a passage by Roland Martin in the authors book mentioned earlier, Martin points out that there are many other commercials, not just this one by Huggies, insinuating that mothers have a better relationship with their child than father’s, who are described as impatient and useless when it comes to household matters. Whether we are aware of it or not, any attempt to stray from social norms are never reacted to positively. This is why there are many people who try to contain these men who are proudly taking care of their kids and they are doing it well. People who just don’t get it may be hostile towards these fathers just because they don’t comply with what society deems is “normal”.

However, these fathers are not just letting the negative remarks slide. They are taking action and refusing to be made fun of for what they do. They demand respect and recognition and I think they deserve it. Women are constantly being praised for their work at home as a mother and are always told to be proud of what they do; why should it be any different for men? Isn’t the modern American society aiming towards gender equality?