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Do fathers deserve equal credit for unequal work?
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When my daughter was two months old, I had to have all four of my abscessed, badly impacted wisdom teeth out. It was something of an ordeal, and not only did it leave me bed-ridden for a couple of days, I wasn't allowed to nurse the baby for twenty-four hours while the general anesthetic left my system. I had pumped plenty of milk, but the baby refused to take a bottle -- she just couldn't grasp what she was supposed to do with it. As a result, my husband had to feed her with a straw, dribbling little amounts of milk into her mouth over and over until she was full, every two hours around the clock. That was on top of taking care of her two small brothers, bringing me smoothies, and even emptying my bloody spit cups, although it would never have occurred to me to ask.
I share this story not to brag about how awesome he is (although he is so very awesome) but to explain why I shouldn't have read this story without refilling my blood pressure medicine first.
Mr. Williams' point seems to be that he feels that Father's Day is not as well-celebrated as Mother's Day. Maybe he has a point, although it doesn't seem too universal to me -- I don't know how much you can tell about people's lives from commercials, but I've been hearing Father's Day ads since the beginning of June. And where ads for Mother's Day are for jewelry, the Father's Day ads are for tools and expensive gadgets, so I'm not quite seeing this as a culture wide thing. Maybe his wife just sucks at gift giving.
Or maybe she's just as irritated by his entitled whining as I am, because if Williams is feeling truly neglected, has he ever gone about complaining in the wrong way. He piteously describes a weekend in which surgery has left his wife bed-bound and he had to take care of his small daughters -- by himself, poor baby -- for two whole days. He recounts how he heroically cooked meals for the girls and bathed them and even went so far as to change diapers instead of carrying the baby to his wife's sick bed so she could do it. He concludes by saying that yeah, his feeble attempts at parenting pale in comparison to his wife's, but he's doing better than his father, so he totally deserves a "plasma TV . . . with surround sound." And while he'd argue, I'm sure, that it's all hyperbole, he's very clearly kidding on the square. Which makes me wonder why CNN.com decided that this essay was the one they wanted to run for Father's Day. Is the bumbling, clueless father really the narrative we want to go with in 2009?
Well, for Father's Day this year, instead of boxer shorts, maybe William's wife can buy him a clue. In the meantime, if I could swing it, my husband's Father's day gift would be not so much a plasma TV as an entire home theater, complete with a massage chair for his always-tweaky back. He deserves it, all the more because he doesn't write whiny columns about that one time he changed a really gross diaper. Geoff Williams (and CNN.com), please take notes.
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