Three of the men dearest to me, my actual brother and two close friends, recently had their first child. Here’s what I know about having your first child that I shared with them.

First-Time Dads Tip 1. Babies don’t come out looking at colleges.

You have time to learn and time to make mistakes. The first three months are mostly about poop, food and sleep. It will get more complicated, but it all seems to come one complication at a time.

First-Time Dads Tip 2. Know what goes into your child.

You’ll be hearing a lot about what comes out — it seems poop is the Rosetta Stone for every ailment — but know what goes in. Go organic, read every label. If you can’t pronounce it, why would you put it into your infant? Food isn’t food like when we were kids. A tomato isn’t a tomato anymore; it’s spliced with the DNA of rats and fruit flies to make them more resistant to a weed-killing chemical that causes cancer. Yeah, it’s absurd. Just know what goes in.

First-Time Dads Tip 3. Things happen when they happen.

Relax. Your child will walk when he walks, talk when he talks, and use the potty when he uses the potty. That last one has been a bugaboo, but it’s happening. And it’s happening despite mom and dad’s best attempts to screw it up and complicate things. Things happen when they happen. Relax. If they don’t, call your doc, she will help you.

First-Time Dads Tip 4. It’s not a contest.

Trust me. Our pediatrician informed us that our son is of average size for his age and he has the ability of a first-grader to make complex connections and verbally express them. However, put a soccer ball in front of him and he’s utterly confused. When all the other kids are kicking the ball, he just wants to hug his coach. Comparing kids is like comparing a horse to an orange (or a genetically spliced tomato with a tomato); they’re not the same.

First-Time Dads Tip 5. While you can, wear your baby.

Seriously. Imagine holding your child all the time, carrying this infant everywhere, feeling them snuggle up and fall asleep in your arms. Now imagine that you can let go and use your arms to write, work, read, make dinner … and the baby still stays right there. That’s babywearing. Do it for as long as your body will allow. I stopped just as my son got big enough to kick me in the kidneys on a consistent basis. That was a good sign that we were done. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

First-Time Dads Tip 6. Speak softly.

This one is hard for me. I’m a big guy with a big voice and my wife gets a fair amount of glee from telling me I can be rather scary. I find that hilarious, but apparently I make a face honed over years of taking the 1 Train home to Harlem that can be menacing. I always thought a small amount of fear was a good thing, to know there were consequences for actions. Now, I think that’s hogwash. I don’t want my child to be afraid of me. I want him to know I will love him and respect him always, even when he screws up. So, we have a no-yelling rule. The punishment: burpees. This does not apply to any kind of warnings or life-threatening moments. It’s about having a house that is respectful and teaching him that soft voices can be more effective than loud ones. Speak softly. Better yet, whisper when you need to discipline. If you treat your child with respect, you’ll have a respectful child who grows up to be a respectful (and respected) adult.

First-Time Dads Tip 7. Remember, you’re a team.

There’s lots of numbers and statistics being bandied about in this never-ending merry go round of who works harder, moms or dads. The truth is you are a team. Have a united front, share responsibilities and, if need be, pick up the slack. There will be times when your spouse will do the same for you. Because you’re a team.

First-Time Dads Tip 8. Respect.

There are a lot of books out there about brain games and essential skills kids should know and how to get your kid into a preschool that will get him into Harvard. Some are excellent; some are no better than kindling. But one that I’d never heard of and found unloved on a library shelf is Parking Lot Rules by Tom Sturges. It’s my new favorite. Yes, there are some fun tips for not smashing fingers in car doors and staying safe in, you guessed it, parking lots. Practical things. But mostly, it’s full of short reminders that raising a child is about respecting them, their growth, their pace and their opinions. In the blink of an eye, your child will be choosing the stations on the radio, picking books to read, disappearing to the comic book section of the library, refusing to take a bath and then (minutes later) demanding a second bath and having an absolute meltdown about both. It helps to be reminded to treat all of these moments with respect.

First-Time Dads Tip 9. Take care of yourselves.

You don’t have to do any exotic workouts, just move. You want to be there when your child graduates high school, gets married, and has his or her first child. Then you can pass on all your fatherly advice.

A version of this post first appeared on Huffington Post Parents.

Someone from the Denver Dads Group recently asked me a question about potty training his son. I thought I’d share some advice.

Dear Potty Frus-Training,

Here’s something really important to remember:  You’re not “training him” to pee in the potty, you are helping him practice skills. Our pediatrician shared that with us when we expressed our frustrations. Think about it, we are expecting a 3-year- old to do something an inebriated adult can barely do.  So, we treated it like practice.

Here’s my setup: Go to Home Depot and buy a plastic lined paper drop cloth in the paint section. Lay it out on the floor and place a small toddler potty there and one in the bathroom. You can also put a training seat and stool on your toilet, or whatever he’s going to use. Toss toys and books all over the drop cloth, turn on Sesame Street (specifically, because it’s one hour… and because it’s Sesame Street).

Now, take off his diaper and put him in underwear NOT training pants. Make sure they’re underwear he picks and loves (my kid loved the Lego Jedi ones). Let him roam free and play on the drop cloth. It’s his special play place. Every 15 minutes, you race to the potty and set an alarm that makes noise to help with this. He races in and practices getting his underwear off and sitting.

Don’t have him stand and aim. Again, think drunk adult and ease of use. Standing will come.

Also, NO Cheerios or food in the toilet for aiming. That can be confusing for a toddler and next thing you know, you’re training your kid to NOT eat cereal pieces from the toilet.

When he’s done practicing, give him a reward – I gave my child M&Ms, letting him pick which kind he wanted.

If he has an accident, don’t get mad.  Take off the dirty underwear and have him race to the potty from all of the rooms nearby; his bedroom, the living room, the kitchen. Then have him sit on the potty while you grab the drop cloth and fold it up and toss it. Then you’re done. Let him know he did a good job racing to the potty and your work is done for the day.

The entire process lasts no longer than one hour / one episode of Sesame Street.

He will eventually make the connection between the feeling of having to use the potty and the skills you’ve practiced.  Mine did it when he got sick with the stomach flu and he FELT the urge. Hard. One day later, he’s completely diaper-free forever. We’ve only had four or five accidents in the last year.

And most important, make it fun and never seem like something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about.

A version of this first appeared on Skinned Knees in Short Pants.

A couple months ago, I participated in my first At-Home Dad Convention. For those of you shaking your head, yes, we have a national convention. It reminded me of the very thing I had been lacking since I moved to Denver from New York City almost a year ago: community.

A little history: a few months after my son was born I took over as the at-home parent. It was a remarkably easy job, mostly consisting of diaper changes, feedings, old movies on Netflix, and naps. (The old movies were for me and were “research” for a script I was … not writing.) It was also extremely isolating.

My wife stumbled upon a group of at-home fathers at the NY Baby Expo and came home with the contact info for NYC Dads Group and their facilitators, Lance Somerfeld and Matt Schneider. I attended my first event, a CPR training course, and then began hitting meetups all over the city.

Turtle was less than a year old so he wasn’t exactly “playing” with other kids. We, as fathers, weren’t having hour-long conversations about the hazards of fatherhood. Often we were silent. We’d sit back and have coffee and enjoy the sense of community. Soon, though, we began sharing.

Suddenly, I’m the expert in the room on cloth diapering and another guy has been through potty training with three kids and another has a bead on free events and yet another has remarkably insightful advice on lactation and breast-feeding. We were experts in several fields dealing with children and we were all sharing with each other, not as “dads” but as fully involved parents.

But now, here in the exurbs of the Midwest, the dynamic of parents on the playground is very different. Perhaps it’s the difference between driving to a park a couple miles away and walking to the park a mere block from your home; seeing the same people everyday versus an ever evolving circle of acquaintances.

I missed my dad community.

I have been trying to create a new one, and Turtle has wonderful new friends with the most amazing, generous parents (including some NYC expats), but there was still a void. I missed hanging out with at-home dads.

I’d seen them in the grocery store, but most were reticent to admit they were full-time at-home parents. There was a shame and embarrassment associated with it. While I fully embrace the role, most of these men saw it as a temporary situation they were forced into by unfortunate circumstances.

And then a wonderful blogger in Portland put me in touch with the Denver Dads. The local group is spread far and wide over an area that encompasses Fort Collins, Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs. As timing would have it, the Denver Dads were hosting the 18^th Annual At-Home Dad’s Convention this year. So I plugged in.

Not knowing what to expect, I was surprised to find the fathers who attended had created an incubator for ideas on parenting, an advocacy group for fathers.

And not just fathers who are primary care givers – all fathers.

All of the speakers at the convention gave us practical, useful tips on how to be the kind of parents we aspire to be. But we gave them something in return: We brought them into our dad community.

None of them had heard of dads’ groups before.. They didn’t know that there are advocacy and education groups dedicated to fatherhood.

But they do now, and they are part of our ever-growing dad community.

In the weeks following the convention, I found myself wearing my National At-Home Dad Network shirt in the grocery store, at the gym (any other CrossFitters with Huggies logos on their gear? I think not!), and I carried a handful of the network’s business cards with me. I began approaching dads shopping with their kids in the morning and handing them cards, striking up conversations, asking about their kids and play-dates in the exurbs of Denver.

Building community.

Reading reactions to the recent Pew Research Center study on women as primary breadwinner made me feel like I had been time-warped back to the 1950s.

Or maybe the 1850s.

“The public is still divided about whether it is a good thing for mothers to work,” noted a New York Times article. “About half of Americans say that children are better off if their mother is at home and doesn’t have a job.”

I say: Horse pucky.

The idea that men have to bring home the bacon is as antiquated as the one that only women can fry it in a pan.

Most fascinating about the Pew study is this seeming contradiction: People say they believe women’s increasing role in the workforce is beneficial overall while also believing it is having a negative effect on children and marriage.

Americans have to stop thinking this way about being the family breadwinner. We have to see families as a unit, a living entity. Income is simply a facet of the whole; which parent brings it in is irrelevant.

I work in the arts, specifically a field where I’m either surviving on odd jobs or able to buy multiple homes in Beverly Hills. My wife works in higher education. As her profession is far more stable, having me take on the role of at-home caregiver was a no-brainer. It made fiscal sense.

I have been home with our son, Turtle, three years and soon he will begin school. When that happens, I will re-enter the workforce. I don’t need to have a job with pay that supersedes my wife’s income but if it that happens, well, bully for us. I’ll pay her back for the opportunities she’s afforded me to raise our child.

Otherwise, our income is just a part of the complex matrix that is our family. Gender plays no role in parenting competency.

Far most important issues concerning income and gender should be grabbing the attention of the American public and media (especially you, Pew-study-shows-“something going terribly wrong in American society” Fox News):

• Why aren’t women paid equitably for doing the same jobs as men? (And yes, women want to be paid the same as men.)
• Why do single mothers comprise the fastest growing segment of women in the workforce? Why are single mothers also more likely to be minorities and less likely to have a college degree?
• Why are most families required to have two incomes to survive in this country? Shouldn’t we have a social construct that helps working families deal with the untenable costs of childcare?
• Why is there such an entrenched system of income inequality and class division in this country?
• When will we stop seeking work/life balance and start encouraging a life/work balance?

These discussions about our role – society’s role – in creating policies that provide better lives for our citizens and more opportunities for children are needed now rather than this dwelling on whether a woman being a primary breadwinner emasculates men.

In my experience, it doesn’t unless you let it. And if you let it, there are other issues you might want to address.

WTF!?

That’s the first thing that popped into my head and, simultaneously, out of my mouth when I saw the new cover of TIME Magazine:  A skinny, detached mother, her face oozing judgement with what looks to be a four year old, just standing on a chair, attached to her exposed breast.

Just hanging out… sucking a tit.

The MOTHER’S DAY issue has this disturbing cover with the title, “Are You Mom Enough?”  This implies that there are mothers who are not.

Since my wife was only able to nurse our son for the first year, I assume they’re implying that she isn’t.

I know differently.

I guess I should be upset that my son isn’t attached to my wife looking like a recruit from Camp Lejeune doing a keg stand while on leave.

I’m not.

It took me awhile to understand the image.  There’s a nice piece discussing the photos and the images they used, relating them to the religious iconography of Madonna and Child.  There are some beautiful images inside, but the cover image was so jarring it made me look at the issue.  (And that’s exactly what TIME wants . . . they are all the talk at the moment, aren’t they?  It’s all about selling something, right?)

And as I got into the articles, there’s truly nothing new, nothing shocking.  The response seems to be much ado about a photo . . .

And a headline.  A headline that pits parenting styles against each other.  EXTREME BREASTFEEDING!

Please.

TIME, I kind of hate you right now.  Why?  Because most people will not actually read what Attachment Parenting is.  Hell, in one of the articles a woman, who is an “extreme breast feeder,” makes the idea of baby wearing and co-sleeping sound like Nazi experiments in the 1940’s as she tries to desperately to convince us that she’s “not an attachment parent . . . “

Attachment parenting is not some detached skinny jean model with her four year old suction  cupped to her.  It is not some dogmatic thing where you must breastfeed until the child is in middle school,  co-sleep until college, and never vaccinate (In fact, Dr. Sears, the “Attachment Parenting Guru,” goes into great detail on what immunizations your child must have and when, also dispelling many common misconceptions about vaccines).

It’s not crazy.  Crazy people are crazy.  They’re not doing crazy things because they read a book on child rearing and said, “Let’s see just how bat guano we can make this?”

This is about following your instincts.

Attachment parenting IS, as described by Dr. Sears:

“A way of caring that brings out the best in parents and their babies.  Attachment parenting has been around as long as there have been mothers and babies.  It is, in fact, only recently that this style of parenting has needed a name at all, for it is basically the commonsense parenting we all would do if left to our own healthy resources.”

It is a return to the simple way of nurturing a child that somehow got lost in the “your baby is trying to manipulate you, put them in the crib and let them cry it out with a bottle of formula” style that became the hallmark of American parenting over the last half half century.

Dr. Sears specifically, in big ol’ letters so everyone can see them, titles a section:  PARENTING YOUR BABY, because this is about YOU and YOUR baby.  Pitting parenting styles against each other is not only a waste of precious energy, but detracts from a simple fact:  all kids and all situations are unique.  We have friends who Ferberized their child.  We chose to co-sleep.  (Safely co-sleep, there is a difference and most co-sleepers are aware of that.  We’re not shuttling down a bottle of Patron and a cigarette and placing the child between our 400 pound selves on a giant goose down cushion… that would be nuts.)

Point is, by the time these two children were one year old, they were both in their cribs, for the most part, sleeping.  The other parent’s path involved more crying, ours involved more feet to the face than I’d like and the occasional flying fist to the groin.  However, both kids got to the destination:  independent sleeping!

According to Dr. Sears book, The Baby Book, there are three goals to Attachment Parenting:

• to know your child
• to help your child feel right
• to enjoy parenting

There are seven steps to achieving this.

Bonding With Your Child Early.
Don’t keep your new baby in the nursery at the hospital.  Pick her/him up.   Your child wants nothing but you.  And you need her just as much.  I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to have the woman we shared our birthing room with text and talk on the phone all night and all day and then call the nurse whenever she needed a simple diaper change.  She complained about the child crying and how she couldn’t wait to get back to work.  The child was less than a day old.  Bond with your child.

Reading and Responding To Your Baby’s Cues.
Your child is not trying to manipulate you.  They cry when they need something.  That’s it.  They cry because they don’t have words.  When I need something, I say, “Hey, Bubba!  Get me that thing!”  A baby cries.  I get so frustrated when I hear someone say, “That baby is only trying to manipulate you for attention.” Well, yeah!  It’s a baby!

Breastfeed.
It costs you nothing.  It’s better for your child’s health.  It helps you lose the baby weight (so you can fit into those skinny jeans all “real moms wear.”)  There are hormones that are released that continue to form the chemical basis for the bond between mother and child.  Maybe we should be subsidizing good breast pumps in this country instead of giving out vouchers for formula.  We should be investing in programs that encourage and teach new mothers to breastfeed, not handing over a check each month for a synthetic powder.  My wife and I… or really just my wife.. was able to do it for one year.  It was heartbreaking for my wife when it ended.  But, then again, it was a miracle that we could in the first place.  We were lucky.  If you can, then do it.

Baby Wear.
This one’s a burr up my butt.  Baby-wearing does profound things – it’s good for you, your baby and makes your life easier.  (I used to wear Turtle when I was doing dishes, walking, vacuuming, riding the subway, walking the streets of New York City, through Versailles – Yes, Ethel, through Versailles – and the Louvre, up the steps of Sacre Cour and the streets of Amsterdam.  We never used a stroller until he was 15 months. We carried him everywhere!  This is also a chance for me to share my vacation photos!)

Far too often I see mother’s wearing babies and, pardon my language, it’s all f*ed up.  The mother complains about back pain and wants to give up waaaaaay too soon.  Well, stop wearing that kid around your crotch like Nikki Sixx’s bass and maybe your back won’t be all screwed up.  Get the right kind of carrier for you.  The crappy ones ain’t gonna cut it.  Go to a place that knows what they’re doing. Find a place that will take the time to go over them with you and knows their stuff.

(I’m talking about you, Metro Minis.)

They’ll teach you all about carriers and try them on you, get the type that fits your lifestyle.  We got a Mei Tai style carrier initially because we were constantly switching who was wearing Turtle and, since it’s just fabric and knots, it’s instantly adjustable to the wearer and can roll up and slip into my backpack.  You CAN wear them as newborns IF you have the right carrier.  There are so many different types there’s bound to be one that suits you.   A knowledgeable expert will also teach you how to tie wraps, and the best way to position them at any age.  (I’m going to go in and have them help me with Turtle, who is 2)  Facing out is not the best way to carry them when they’re little . . . just an FYI.  Would you want all the lights and movement happening when all you really want is to be cuddled and protected?  Go talk to an expert.  (If you don’t trust me about Metro Minis, fellow New Yorkers, watch Koyuki do this on a moving subway.  Seriously.  She’s amazing.)

Bedding close to the baby.
Notice it doesn’t say, “co-sleep.”

Sleep near your baby, in a co-sleeper next to the bed, or with them in a co-sleeper in your bed (which was what we did).  You can put them in a crib that’s right next to the bed.  There’s lots of great reasons that are great for the baby, but the thing is, it’s great for YOU!  Why does the baby have it’s own room already?  They’re not having to do homework or shut you out in a tantrum… that’ll come.  Why get up in the middle of the night, step on the cat, avoid randomly thrown teddies or slip on baby books and trudge down the hall to do a diaper change or to check on them because they made a sound that turned out to be nothing more than a whimper loud enough to activate that $200 baby monitor you had to buy because you didn’t just put the crib next to your bed.

Keep them near you!  They crave being near you, you get more sleep.  It’s a win/win.

Balance and Boundaries
Know when to say yes and when to say no.  It also means taking care of your own needs as well, because a happy mom and dad equal a happy baby.

Beware Baby Trainers.
You know your child.  There are tons of “advisers” who will give you lots of detachment advice, like:  “Let her cry it out,” “Get her on a schedule,” “You shouldn’t still be nursing her!,” and “Don’t pick her up so much, you’re spoiling her.”  As Dr. Sears says, it’s a lose/lose situation.  Your baby loses trust in the signal value of her cues and parents lose trust in their ability to read and respond to those cues.

“Attachment parenting is based on sensitivity, baby training requires insensitivity.  Attachment parenting helps you get to know and read your baby better. Baby training interferes with this. The basis of baby training is to help babies become more “convenient.”  It is based upon the misguided assumption that babies cry to manipulate, not to communicate.  Baby-training books and classes teach mothers to go against their basic drive to respond to the cues of their baby.  Eventually they will lose sensitivity and their trust in their own intuition.  Before trying any of these baby training methods, compare them with your intuitive feelings.”

In the end, Dr. Sears advice is to stick with what works and discard what does not.  Despite some of the companion pieces assertions about this dogmatic thing you’re supposed to buy into… it’s not.  Raising a child is a moment to moment exercise and here’s some time tested ideas to make it easier on you and your kid.  You’re beginning a journey together where you will learn just as much from this little creature as he or she will from you.  You are learning to pick up cues from each other that will last a lifetime, because you never stop being their parent.

This is important:  Attachment Parenting includes fathers.

No, we can’t breast feed, but we can be supportive of the mothers who do.  And, as every father will attest, we can hold a bottle in a pinch.  (Or two father homes… where breastfeeding is not an option but compassionate feeding is.)  Over the course of a lifetime, fathers have to know their children’s cues, the signs that something is wrong or that all is well with the world.  We are capable and willing to do all seven steps.  It’s easy, when you think about it.

I got all of this from the first seventeen pages… out of 700, of Dr. Sears book.   It’s called research.

StollerDerby over at Babble had a very funny take on the cover of TIME and I posted my favorite below.  While I agree with her about the insanity of trying to polarize parents for their child rearing choices and the sexism of the image, I did disagree with one thing.

Meet the MAN who advocates a system of parenting for WOMEN that DRIVES some of them to EXTREMES (read: crazy).

I don’t think it says anything about the “sad state of American female personhood.”  There are lots of things that are ripping at the state of American female personhood, Dr. Sears is not one of them.  He made motherhood easy and doable for my wife, who is our primary breadwinner and had to return to work after our cobbled together maternity leave.  Perhaps that’s an issue we can address.  Equal pay, a year paid maternity leave, a social structure that supports mothers (working or not) – these are issues that may speak more to the state of American female personhood.  The fact that an entire political party treats women as if they are quaint and their voice is simply not valid – and leads with a paternal fervor that influences many to vote or act against their better judgement or self interest, might be a bigger contributor the state of American female personhood.

This line is also dismissive of the work by Dr. Sears, a pediatrician who wrote The Baby Book in 1992 with his wife, Martha Sears, who is a nurse.  They raised children who went on to join their practice, all pediatricians.  His first book, The Baby Book is 700 pages of information for the first two years and is considered one of the definitive books on babies.  It is the first of 40 books on children’s health and well being.

He’s not just a MAN.  And he advocates a system of parenting that simply emphasizes the connection between PARENTS and CHILDREN.

As for the extremes, people are crazy enough without any help…

I, as a stay at home dad, get kind of tired of the bashing that goes on some of the mommy blogs when it comes to men.  I loved what StrollerDerby did, but this one sentence opened the door to the demonization of the entire attachment parenting community and the physician who created it – without any explanation of what it is.  And what followed?   A thread of comments bashing men.

(Not StrollerDerby’s intent, I’m sure.  Again, people do crazy just fine on their own, right?  All they need is an opening and an excuse.)

Now, I know, in the current climate, we’re not the most popular sex.  We’re doing-

-No, let me back that up-

Republican politicians, religious zealots and morons are doing stupid things aimed at women.  (Most of them are men, but let’s remember, the Susan G. Komen decision and the Congressional version of the VAWA were both written by women.)

Some of the comments seemed to be grasping at low hanging fruit.  “I’m sure it was a MAN who put this cover together.”

Obviously.

Because a woman has never put a provocative photograph of a scantily clad or extremely photoshopped woman on a magazine cover.

The one thing StollerDerby got spot on, that I hope you get from my lengthy treatise on the general ideas of Attachment Parenting, is that we’re all just trying to get it right.  This is an issue that we should all be passionate about, the raising of our kids, but it’s also not really anyone else’s business if we co-sleep, put them in a $2000 hammock (which looks so cool and comfy), carry them in a papoose or a ring sling or a sheet tied around us, wheel them in a $1000 Stokke or a $19 umbrella stroller, whether we breast feed until they go to elementary school or we are unable to at all.

And don’t judge.  I’m sure if we could still be breast feeding Turtle at two years old, we would.  Not just for the nutrients it provides him for the first few years of his life, but for the connection and bond that is forged.

It’s offensive to parents everywhere, mothers and fathers, to force us to take sides against one another.  All parents make the best decisions with the information they have at hand and our goal is to raise loving, self reliant human beings.

My writings here mainly focus on the outlier status of being a stay-at-home father. We’re different — outside the norm. As such, we cater to the ever growing, tight-knit community of fathers who, for whatever reason, have found themselves at home in an unfamiliar position. What goes by the wayside is the fact that we are parents and part of a team, a pack, a family. 

And that family is under attack.   

I’m sure you’ve heard it every day, all over the news: The American family is under attack. There’s a war on families. And yet, depending on where you get your news, everything you have heard is probably wrong. We hear that “gay marriage” is going to be the end of marriage. We hear that “Stay-at-home fathers lead to emasculated young men.” Not just wrong, it’s utterly laughable.

But there is a war on families. Women are under attack.

When we undercut women and their reproductive freedom, their economic equality, and basic protections in the workplace, we undermine the family and put our effectiveness as stay-at-home fathers in jeopardy.     

There is a concerted effort to roll back the rights and protections women have gained over the last hundred years. Last week the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced it was cutting grant funding to Planned Parenthood. The decision was pointedly political.  The outrage was immediate, the impact so harsh, that thirty years of groundbreaking work on women’s health issues were erased by 36 hours of narrow minded political hackery.  his was the culmination of a year long coordinated effort to destroy one of the only places where women of any income can get the kind of life saving care they need – all because they perform abortions – which constitutes a whopping 3% of what they do. 

This war on our families includes a fight over pay equality. The Lilly Ledbetter Act was passed into law in 2009. The bill’s basic assertion is that a woman should be paid the same as a man for the same job.  It seems insane that it was actually necessary to make this a law, and yet it still faces opposition. How can anyone realistically state that a woman is second class; that a woman deserves to be paid less than a man because of her gender – or, for that matter, that a man is worth more?   

It is also perfectly legal to fire, without substantiated cause, a woman who is pregnant.  Several states have targeted unions, which have historically protected employees from these kinds of abuses by employers. This leaves a pregnant woman, in the case of a dear friend of mine, a woman five months pregnant, without an income or health insurance.  Since we tie health insurance to employment in this country, many women are forced to work because the medical costs associated with having a child require health insurance.  (We have not touched on the fact that there is no paid maternity leave in the United States, something that differentiates us from every country on the planet save Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.)

How does all of this affect us as dads?

I’m a writer and actor. I work freelance and my income is not steady.  I have no insurance save that provided by my union and it’s tied to how many weeks I am hired to work.  My primary occupation is stay-at-home parent. My wife, who works in higher education, has a steady paycheck, great insurance, and ability to provide us with the stability we desired when starting our family. Organizations like Planned Parenthood provided us with health care early in our marriage and the tools we needed when deciding to have our child.  Prescription birth control allowed us to have the child when we chose and not before we were ready fiscally and emotionally.   As the primary source of income, we expect my wife to be compensated according to her ability, her education, and her skill – not her genitalia. We expect her job to be protected from the kind of unscrupulous tactics that caused our dear friend to lose hers, leaving another family to scramble in an economy where the same people attacking our families through harmful legislation or backwards corporate decisions are also actively working to dismantle the very safety nets that ensure none of us fall into poverty.  Our definition of “family values” includes the institutions and protections that give us the freedom to raise our child the way we do.  

On a bigger scale, this is a battle against our wives, mothers, sisters and daughters.  It’s one we, as men, must join.   

So how do we fight back against this war on families? Vote. Be active. Find out how your representatives actually voted. Don’t listen to spin, get the actual voting record. Join local groups dedicated to protecting the health of women and mothers; to ensuring our women are equally paid and respected; fight to make sure we are always moving forward and never to the regressive past.  Progress is what we strive for as stay-at-home fathers, breaking the conventional rules every day, proving we’re just as equal to the task as any stay-at-home mom, bringing our own set of unique skills to the table. Much in the same way our wives, mothers and girlfriends do in the workplace.