12 Reasons It's Harder to be a Dad Than a Mom

This is quite funny. Matthew Archbold notes that mommyblogging is a far more prolific field than daddyblogging, and that this is unfair. After all, it's harder to be a dad than a mom:

1) When we gain weight we can’t blame the pregnancies.

2) When one of your daughters gets in a fight at school and your other daughter yells, “Sweep the leg Johnny” everyone blames you.[...]

5) “Wait until your Mommy gets home” just doesn’t sound as scary. It just doesn’t.[...]

10) When women see Dads out with kids they assume we’re sensitive people who like to chit chat. We’re guys. We don’t chit or chat. When we see people we know we say “hey” but we don’t stop moving. We never stop moving. We’re like sharks in that way.

Link via Brian J. Noggle | Photo by Flickr user JeffS used under Creative Commons license

There is an archetypal male and female. Or rather, there are achetypal traits of the human mind. These traits are classically attributed to male and female. These can be certain types of love "motherly love" and "brotherly love", or they can be other traits. In general however, the masculine archetype is seen as methodical, rational, adverse, challenging, authoritive and active. The feminine archetype is seen as sporadic, irrational, accepting, submissive and passive. The attributes of each archetype are opposite of the other. People are often judged upon where they fall on these axes. Some men are referred to as effeminate, and some women as boyish.

However, the archetypal axes are not really male and female, however, men and women tend to align themselves as such in a given culture. And though the archetypes may not be explicitly expressed in a culture, they are generally implicitly expressed and maintained. Modern western cultures tend to up-hold these archetypes implicitly while renouncing them explicitly. So although few would venture to say that women are by-and-large submissive, or that men are by-and-large authoritive, in-fact exact balance is made explicit, you still won't find baby-changing tables in many male bathrooms, nor will you find many "Men and Children's" shelters.

What men and women both apparently suffer from is the implicit adherence in society to these archetypal (stereotypal) forms of masculine and feminine. The implicit is perhaps more difficult to address because explicitly it can be denied or justified with forked-tongues.

"There ought to be shelters, period. Without excluding anyone."
"But statistically men are more often the perpetrators of domestic violence."
"According to statistics gathered from 'Women and Children's Shelters' which are inherently biased."
"But men are more capable of causing serious injury."
"Women are quite capable of manipulating weaponry."
"Yea, but men are just more aggressive, women are less likely to over-all."
"It doesn't mean they don't, remember Lorena and John Bobbit?"
"John was sexually abusing Lorena, he deserved it!"
"Oh, so now there is justification for dismembering someone?"

Remember, radical feminists post-Bobbit argued that he had it coming and that it was completely justified. Arguing that she could have left him fell on deaf ears because they asserted he had psychological dominance over her. Notice this means women are inherently weaker, or at least passive and submissive. And men are inherently more capable, quite contrary to what feminism was suppose to be. It elevates men to a position of greater responsibility within the society. Which, has already been implicit in the past. Except women were always explicitly submissive, now the women are supposedly as active but occassionally absolve themselves of responsibility as if they weren't.

Gang psychologists assert that female behavior within gangs is different from males, and it differs in one area, they do not get involved in physical conflicts. However, they do get involved in verbal disputes, trash-talking and encouraging physical conflicts. Although, there are some exceptions when it comes to the girls who one might call boyish.

So my number 1 reason it is harder to be a dad is that men are implicitly pigeon-holed into this archetypal image of the masculine, generally to their own detriment while being pushed off the feminine by females who also want to be masculine. And that is why there are no change-tables in men's bathrooms or men and children's shelters, not because they wouldn't be useful.