Tag Archives: satire

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The first time I read the piece, this final section had me laughing out loud at what I took for a deliciously silly spoof. Abandoning all efforts at coherence, Mr. Rosemond theorizes that men have been brainwashed by feminist propaganda into participating in their own emasculation. Consequently, he says, men are no longer even adults, let alone fathers or husbands. For proof of this he cites the high-fives they exchange with their children. (As the great Dave Barry would say, “I’m not making this up.”) He laments the passing of “the good old days — when dads came home fully prepared, at a word from their wives, to strike terror into their children,” then concludes by quipping, “Is it too late to bring back the patriarchy?”

Once I suspected that the column I had read was not necessarily intended to be funny, I re-examined it more soberly. With a bit of luck and much hard work, the reader might be able to construct some convoluted line of reasoning that connects all the parts of the column, but it’s a dodgy undertaking at best. Everything seems to be vaguely related, but the same may be said of items in an idea cloud or cluster diagram, both of which are visual tools used to begin the process of organizing one’s thoughts. Had Mr. Rosemond ordered and articulated his thoughts more clearly, he might have delivered a scathing indictment of social mores in general and the current state of the family in particular.

I feel a peculiar sense of loss that he didn’t, although I suspect I would disagree with some of his conclusions. It is so satisfying to sharpen one’s own reasons against the sharp reasoning of another! What a disappointment it was to find Mr. Rosemond’s wit to be duller than I had first hoped.

I imagine that the enemies of the patriarchy sleep much the better for it, however.

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In truth, Mr. Rosemond had me up to the point that the man comes home wanting only to spend time with his wife. I can’t think of anyone, past or present, for whom this was or is the case, with or without children. If by “spend time with his wife” Mr. Rosemond meant a roll in the hay and falling asleep, he got it right some of the time for some of the people, but it’s still a pretty big stretch for a lot of folks. Both my parents worked full time, and my dad also worked evening jobs for the additional income; he often didn’t come home until very late at night. My partner’s dad traveled a lot and was often gone for weeks or even months at a stretch. Grandpa worked the second of two twelve-hour factory shifts, so he came home, ate breakfast, and went to sleep for the day. He got up when the kids came home from school, ate dinner with the family, and went back to work.

Mr. Rosemond continues by asserting that men used to know that the way to be a good father was to be a good husband, and they “came home from work not to…play with their children, but to catch up with their wives.” No doubt there have been people who have come home from work wanting nothing more than to spend time with a partner, but I have neither experience nor knowledge of them. The vast majority of people have come home from work wanting only something to eat and then some form of relaxation that distracts them from their responsibilities, family included. In my grandparent’s day, the newspaper or radio provided suitable distraction; for my parents it was television, and now the internet and video games also fill that role. Sex has always been a distraction; again, perhaps that’s what Mr. Rosemond meant by “catch up with their wives.”

He makes an excellent point that most parents find it difficult to set aside their domestic business partnership (child rearing and household management) in order to nurture their personal relationship, which got them into the domestic business in the first place. He further notes that a stay-at-home parent’s primary need is for quality time with a partner, and that this need is largely ignored by both parents and society in general. Unfortunately, he wraps these invaluable insights in a nebulous collection of near-blame: parents don’t realize that they need to maintain their personal connection, men because they are focused on being dads and women because they are glad to have a break from child care; children don’t realize that they are best served by parents who maintain a strong personal connection. The latter is particularly vague: “…if they knew the difference, [kids] would prefer that Mom and Dad spent that time together…but they don’t know the difference….” This might have been a very strong argument if only Mr. Rosemond had clarified between what the kids should, but don’t, know the difference. As it stands, it is puzzling and incomplete.

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While waiting for my order at a restaurant the other day, I picked up a section of newspaper that had been left behind by a previous diner. I was delighted to find that the section contained the daily comics and a number of other entertainments such as the horoscope, crossword, and various advice columns. Among these was a column called “Living with Children,” which intrigued me because I live with children myself. As I read the column, however, I wondered if it had been accidentally put in the wrong section of the paper; it read like tongue-in-cheek satire. When I reached the end of the piece, a tagline identified the author as a family psychologist and listed the URL for his web site. I smiled to think that there would be more delightful sarcasm where this came from.

I was surprised to find that the author, John Rosemond, might not have been aiming for satire when he wrote the column I so enjoyed. Each page of his web site asserts that the contents are “in touch with common sense.” This raised a cautionary red flag, because experience has shown that someone who uses the term “common sense” more often than not really means, “whatever I deem sensible, regardless of whether or not you and I hold this opinion in common.”

Mr. Rosemond is a proponent of what he calls “traditional parenting,” which he explicitly identifies as any parenting techniques practiced before 1960. The column that caught my eye is one of a series in which he criticizes “the myriad of stupid parenting ideas that came out of the 1960s” (April 7, 2009). He is spot-on in identifying and critiquing many of these notions and the practices that they spawned, but in the process he uses generalizations and assumptions that render his entire argument suspect.

Take the column I first read, for instance, which was about fathering. When someone (we’ll call him Mr. X) complained that his father was remote and distant, Mr. Rosemond’s response was, “I bet he wasn’t.” This seems an odd response for a psychologist; most people would ask, “What makes you say that?” or “What do you mean?” It would be more logical to discover Mr. X’s reasons for believing this in order to refute or debunk them.

Mr. Rosemond then tells Mr. X that he is the victim of “anti-traditional-male propaganda.” (This is point at which I began to think the piece was satire.) Mr. Rosemond goes on to describe Mr. X’s dad as “a responsible guy who worked hard…trying to provide well for his family,…and that when he came home he wanted nothing more than to spend time with…his wife.” Mr. X has an epiphany, recognizing the truth about his father in this description, and is told to go and do likewise.

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