Less than 1 percent of fathers stay home with their kids, compared with 21 percent of mothers. If we consider, for a moment even, my father's approach, we are cast, quite fairly, as Neanderthals. And if we try to split the difference, we never make full partner at work or at home. There will always be some hotshot who's willing to give up more to get where you could go if not for what you need to do at home. And at home most fathers take their child-care cues from the mommies, as if possession of a uterus automatically makes you a better parent.
Women are typically better parents, but more because of driver's-seat experience than biology.
Men are often either reactive or overreactive parents, coming in as a backup to the primary caregiver or as a misdirected disciplinarian, kicking ass and taking names because, well, that's what we can do. I realize that it's unseemly for a man to bitch about something that women have been dealing with for decades. He was talking about the U.S. military, but the analogy holds. The problem for American fathers is that there's no blueprint for what comes next, at least none that is reality based. Looking to television for a reality reflection is absurd in the extreme, but its prism is especially whacked when it comes to poppas.