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COPYRIGHT 2005 Mothering Magazine
Before 1970, fathers paced hospital waiting rooms handing out cigars as their wives labored alone. After the birth, they could see their new babies only from behind glass. Emboldened by the natural-childbirth renaissance of the 1970S, fathers changed all that when they demanded to participate in birth. At first they only watched the delivery, but soon they began to coach their wives during labor as well. Some lucky fathers even caught their babies. The role of the new father was forever changed.
In the 1980s, when I taught parenting classes for Family Week at the Omega Institute, mothers would complain to me that they had to drag their husbands along; few dads attended at all. By the time I taught my last class there, in the late 1990s, it was mostly couples who attended--fathers were not at all reluctant.
Men have lacked good role models. My grandfather never changed a diaper, never carried a baby. But by the 1990s, I saw men proudly wearing their babies in slings, carrying diaper bags and using them with authority. Men have come a long way from the detached parenting of the Father Knows Best era to become the responsive fathers of today.
Today's father is more actively involved than his grandfather, and perhaps even his father. He is proud to have a fairly egalitarian relationship with his wife in which they share decision-making, financial responsibilities, and household chores. While this "equality" is never cut and dried, most couples aspire to it.
Most couples also aspire to the equal sharing of parenting tasks. Some mothers...
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