Men Can Take Care Of Children
This is insulting.
The Enterprise – Those enlisted will be expected to walk with up to 40 pounds on their back, listen intently to screaming voices with urgent commands, respond calmly in seconds, clean the mess hall, get up at 4 a.m. and walk, and sometimes crawl.
This may sound like the boot camp where uniforms are donned, bunks are pulled tight, and quarters are bounced for the sheer enjoyment of the drill sergeant.
But this not your soldier’s boot camp. This is “Boot Camp for New Dads.”
The program, started on the West Coast, is entering its 15th year educating future, expectant or new fathers about all facets of becoming a dad.
And as social issues evolved, Boot Camp for New Dads has expanded over the years to where it now includes such topics as shaken baby syndrome and post-partum depression. It also is being presented in different languages and reaching dads from a variety of backgrounds.
“We have teenage dads, to guys in their 50s having their first child, and mentally challenged expectant fathers to CEOs,” said Steve Dubin of Kingston, national public relations director for the program.
South Shore Hospital in Weymouth offers the program on the first Saturday of the month, holidays excluded. There, the “drool sergeants,” as they are called, lead a three-hour morning workshop, where they provide more information on parenting babies than most dads of earlier generations ever dreamed of knowing.
Do we really need to perpetuate this stereotype? That men are inherently worthless when it comes to caring for children? I know more than a few first-time moms who are pretty clueless when it comes to caring for their children.
I’ll not deny that women may have certain instincts for motherhood that are not present in men, but to assume that men need a class to teach them how to care for their children is just plain silly.
Maybe this class can be useful, but it also bugs me a little bit too. There’s just a trace of condenscension about it, but I can’t tell if it comes from the program or from the reporter’s article.
As it happens, I’ve done a pretty fair job of adjusting to parenthood…but then again, I was 9 1/2 when my youngest brother was born. I’d been around babies a little bit. My wife, on the other hand, was an only child. The adjustment was harder for her. Even now, she’s more prone to panic or worry than I am when it comes to our little Bear.
Experience matters, and I think classes like this may become more important as more and more parents come from only-child households or have siblings so close to them in age that they were never around babies.
I disagree.
My wife and I had our first child almost a year ago. I took a class through the local hospital here and it was called, “Boot Camp for new Dads.” I laughed at first, but took the class because I wanted to show the wife that I would be there for her and our new baby. And we took a prepared child birth class and it was so good, I figured this one would be the same. It was.
The most important thing I received from taking the class was there were new Dad’s there that had 6 month olds. They told us everything they went through – from many late nighters, diaper changing and helping the new Mom. It was kind of reassuring to the new Dad to say the least.
Honestly, a lot of what they did and taught I could have learned on my own. But I know there were guys in there that were a little shell-shocked about becoming new dads and the class did a world of good for them and for me.
i dunno. sounds like a grand plan to me.
actually, my husband is a wonderful father. he wouldn’t need the class. i just think it’s cool that it’s out there. if they had one for women it would be cool also.
I’m probably just being touchy. Being a divorced father who’s had to suffer through the biased-toward-mothers court system, custody proceedings and child support system I’m just a little bit bitter.
Plus, it seems like everywhere you turn these days you see men portrayed as lazy, sports-crazed couch potatos. You see it in movies, in television shows and in commercials. Perhaps the above mentioned program isn’t exemplary of this stereotype, but it does exist.