Keith Veronesi's post on Parenthood

After doing my own presentation on parenthood and also listening to other students present, I think the main principles of each presentation was very clear: parenthood has been socially constructed around what society has deemed “acceptable.” While doing research and trying to find clips for this presentation, the difference between finding an image of fatherhood was harder than finding one for motherhood. Why? I think it is because fatherhood is not as clearly defined by society as motherhood is. Are fathers supposed to be nurturing towards the children, or is their sole purpose to provide for the family and perhaps help out with athletics? While searching through google for images of fatherhood there is everything from loving father to funny pictures in which a father and son are in some way degrading women. However, for mothers, there is one clear cut image of what motherhood is from society’s view and that is caregiver. There are countless pictures online of the mother with a baby being nurtured by the mother. John Gallagher did a great job in portraying this image and connecting it back to Hollingworth’s social devices.

            I thought one of the most interesting part of this project was researching alternative parenthood. This is because the idea of alternative parenthood is so different from what society has constructed as proper parenthood. For my image of alternative parenthood I did the image of stay at home dads. If you see a father and son on the playground during a work day, people tend to look more into that than if a mother was with her son during a work day. Society has made it clear that the fathers should be at work while the mothers take care of the children at home. I read a piece in a sociology class last term about an experiment a sociologist did in which he recorded the views the public gave him when he would travel on the subway at noon with his young child. The common consensus was that the public tended to stare much more because of the fact that he was a male and he was the one taking care of the young child, instead of the mother. I think for the most part everyone did a great job in showing this contrasting image in each alternative parenthood piece.

            It was really interesting to listen to how each student envisioned their life as a parent. For the most part, most of the males said that they wanted to be the providers for the family, and hopefully be successful enough to not have the mother work and give her the option of being a stay at home parent. However, I think this may be part of the problem. Males have come to the conclusion that they have to be the provider for the family and if they are not able to provide enough to allow the wife to stay home than they failed themselves. I know from a personal standpoint the reason why I envision myself as the sole provider for the family while my wife stays home with the kids is a direct relation to my own family dynamics. My father has always been the provider and my mother was always the caregiver, even to this day. My mom worked up until she had kids, and now that my brother has graduated college, I am in college, and my sister is in high school, did my mom go back to work. I think that the dynamic of each students family directly affects how we envision ourselves as parents.