If what I said doesn’t make sense, I plead “brain mush.” I’m not getting very much sleep. : )

I was once a Naval Aviator, an occupation that involved traipsing off on a large gray ship with 5,000 of my closest pals into parts unknown, for six to thirteen months at a time. I was devastated after the birth of child #1 to realize that there would be huge gaps in his — and later his brother’s — development that I would just never see.

Eventually the loss of family-present time and other factors pressured me out of the military. With women tackling both a uniform and motherhood, there have to be similar factors (maybe even more difficult) pressing on them.

I do wonder if the brute biological fact that women are the ones who provide for the essential needs of the baby (feeding, etc.) in the first years of life has some kind of emotional correlate in terms of their getting more satisfaction from care giving. It would be kind of surprising if it didn’t.

Since you and I are believers in “embodiment”, it does seem reasonable to think that the fact that women go through a physical change when they have children would change them in some way. When I was a child I watched our cat have kittens, and act a lot like my mom in some ways, with no socialization at all. I think that this goes with my observation of women I know (including my mom) being surprised by the impact motherhood has on them. Yet whether this change should be properly characterized as love, is an interesting question. The fact that Christians and Jews have traditionally identified God as Father suggests that they see paternal love as somehow more congruent with agape, maybe precisely because it’s less of an animal instinct …? Hmmm.

My brain went mushy only when I allowed it to do so, frankly. (During sickness bouts when I was a short-term, stay-at-home dad, I compensated by telephoning, reading, and the like. But it was not a long-term process, I admit.)

As for whether there are wired-in differences, I’m sceptical. The anthropological data seem mixed (although the majority of reports support a female-role connection to caregiving). I think it’s easy for us to underestimate the strong-hand influence of cultural “role expectations,” values, pressures, and the like.

In the legal world, I think there is much more understanding (if not approval) for a woman’s preferring a “mommy track” to a man’s opting for a “daddy track.” I have never met a big-firm lawyer (male or female) who thinks that a daddy track would be considered in their firm.

Given no socialization to be caregivers, it might not be surprising that boys/men tend not to adopt or feel “fulfilled” in such roles.

Dwight P

Of course a lot of people see it differently. St. Benedict, for one, who divided up the monastic life into equal parts physical labor and spiritual exercises. Wendell Berry comes to mind as a contemporary example. His anti-technology lifestyle isn’t just in the service of ecology. He thinks we’re better people for sweating and getting our hands dirty. Shoot, anybody who’s able to drop Thich Nhat Hanh’s name into the BS session at the local Starbucks knows that enlightenment begins by washing those dishes as if you were created for no other purpose.

But if flourishing can occur through the very tasks that Hirshman denigrates, why don’t more men take advantage of them? Maybe women do love their children more than men. I’ve seen more than a few marriages break up in my eleven years of ordained ministry, and it’s astonishing how easily men can walk away from their own progeny. Maybe women take the spiritual life more seriously than men, which explains why there are more women in church than men, more women wiping baby bottoms than men (“I am among you as one who serves”), and fewer women wielding corporate and political power than men.

I was unaware of this article and its accompanying firestorm, even though I read the Prospect’s blog relgiously. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. You don’t have to agree with the author to enjoy her “Rules”-based advice: Women, in order to succeeed, don’t major in art history; marry someone who did!

With that said my wife (who is AWESOME) goes to work & brings home the bacon She does this because she also loves our kids and she wants to provide for them even though she wants to be at home with us as well. Since we can’t both stay home she sacrifices for us so that we can have the family lifestyle that we as a family chose. Did I mention that she’s awesome?

In answer to does staying home with the kids make your brain mushy. I’d say Yes & No. Kids suck up all your energy with asking the same question 50 times a day, every day. Never going to bathroom alone (or having a moment – really not even a moment to yourself), Playing Chutes & Ladders (all day) and making totally cool spaceships out of tinker toys and play dough. All this with out talking to another adult for a full day or more. Can school be done with all this? Sure, but will it be easy. No, probablly not but what was the last thing that you did that was really fulfiling that was easy?

Are men and women different. Yeah, I think we are but I think that as parents we both get to the same place. Sometimes by different routes but still the same place.

Anyway, just my two cents.

/Steve

But I think men lean a little bit more toward the latter, and women a little bit more toward the former. There’s nothing wrong with either impulse; kids need parents that have both.