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Kevin hunched forward in the booth of the coffee shop, rolling the mug slowly in his calloused hands. “We didn’t really know what we were getting into; hell we didn’t even know we were going to get pregnant.” His shock of blonde hair and his slight, muscular frame suggested an inner tension that energized his slow movements. He looked up at me, catching my eye for just a moment. “But once Sara was born, I was blown away, I was totally into it.” Kevin’s baby entered the world one hot July night. “I had watched a lot of those birthing-class videos and every time I’d be like, ‘Oh man, this looks terrible .’ But it wasn’t like that when Sara was born. It was magical.” Kevin’s eyes started to fill with tears as he talked about wrapping himself around the little being, or how she grasped the air with tiny hands, arched her back, and opened her perfect, pink mouth. Even six months later it was clear that for that moment, and from that moment, Kevin’s world was engulfed by this new little person. Kevin is destined to become a new kind of father. Gone are the days when Dad’s job was simply to keep his daughters well dressed and his sons straight. Today’s fathers change diapers and brush hair, pack lunches, and bandage scraped knees. The ideal father is no longer the stern patriarch or distant provider, but a warm and accessible caregiver. Dr. Spock and Penelope Leach, child-rearing specialists, put dads next to moms on the covers of their books and Bill Cosby was raised to God-father status as he bantered with his TV teenagers. 1 1 American Fathers and Hospital Childbirth It was as if a part of me hadn’t woken up until then. Something innate, I really started to feel a small voice talking to me and I was listening to it. I never heard it before then; and it was so very, very deep—very, very special—and very, very strong. —Mark For generations, most dads have carried out their loving duties, quietly painting cribs and coaching Little League. The image of the new father emphasizes qualities that have been considered secondary in men’s role in the family. Rather than authorities, fathers can be nurturers. Although they may still drive the car, dads are now responsible for doing laundry, sweating over homework, and comforting sick kids. In addition to being strong, they are expected to be empathic and understanding fathers. Despite the stresses of being overworked and underpaid, these new fathers are finding time and energy to be full parents. While media focus on absent and uncaring fathers, almost half of American men have reduced work time to be with their kids, and three-quarters would like to do so more (Griswold 1993, 245). What do we know about these new fathers? Although academia has devoted decades to studying motherhood, we have only recently become aware of fathers . In the past, research focused on the economic man, the political man, and the physical man—but rarely the family man. When fathers were noticed, it was for their faults. Public interest and national research about dads focused on their failures: absent fathers, uncaring fathers, teenage fathers, abusive fathers, and unmarried fathers. Only in the last decade have social scientists discovered fathers and uncovered a multifaceted phenomenon. Anthropologists study the evolutionary importance of fathers; historians have traced the changing place of fathers in families and society; psychologists point out that babies form powerful ties to their dads, which are important for the child’s psychological and social development ; and sociologists trace the roles of men as parents and how those ties change over the life span. In all these various fields, it is clear that a man’s relations with his children are not only important for the children, but for dad’s identity and place in society as well. Men and Birth Academic treatises did not turn my attention to fathers—I stumbled across fatherhood when my daughter was born. After years of working to be a man, a husband, a friend, and a son, I somehow became a father without thinking about what it meant. I attended to my little daughter in those first months, hardly aware of the change that was taking place in me. When my son was born several years later, I realized that I had become one of...

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