Kirk blAug

I have seen a bit of controversy stirring up in the stay at-home dad world lately. First I saw one of my dad friends post this video about "Little Boy Larry" by Mark Driscoll a few days ago. In it, Driscoll describes at-home dads as less than manly lazy asses who live off their wives and what they really want in a wife is a mom because they are deep down mamas boys. I am not that familiar with Driscoll. I may have heard the name a few times, but this is the first time that his name has really caught my attention. Wikipedia has him as a Christian pastor from Seattle, so the sense of patriarchy does not surprise me. There is a lot of patriarchy justified in the Bible, but I will get to that in a minute. I have have to wonder if, since he calls relationships where the man stays home with the kids while the wife works a mother/son relationship, he then considers a more traditional relationship where the wife stays home with the kids and the husband brings in the income a father

According to the Guardian , there are many more at-home dads in the UK than there used to be: There are now 10 times as many stay-at-home dads in the UK than a decade ago, with one in seven fathers (14%) now the main childcare provider, according to research from Aviva. It says about 1.4 million men are now the primary carer in their households. The rise is unsurprising. It seems the more egalitarian we become, the more women are going to be making comparable and better wages than their male spouses. There are also more adoption agencies willing to adopt to gay male couples , which account for at least some of the stay at-home dad count. Related, is the increase of single father households. As culture here and in the UK gets less patriarchal, the difference between primary caregiving moms and dads will continue to even out. We are still a long way away from that, but studies showing improvement are encouraging.