It will be a long time before society thinks of fathers as little more than a source of money for their children. The label of provider we have been relegated to as fathers has been twisted and perverted to paint us as emotionally detached dispensers of money. Not only has it been a long time since we have been the sole provider in that sense, but the public simply refuses to acknowledge any of the other means by which we provide.
We are not all soul-less money making machines. We love our children just as much as their mothers do. Some fathers may have difficulty showing that emotion because society has, for far too long, chastised men for doing so. For the most part we were raised to be this way by the example of our own fathers and their fathers before them, by how boys and girls are treated differently in school, and by how boys and girls are treated differently at work.
We all know and agree on how women are treated unfairly in what is percieved as the man's world: work, education, and sports; but precious little is talked about how men are treated unfairly in what is percieved as the woman's world: child rearing, homemaking, and the family. If we truly want prejudice, bigotry, sexism, and racism to go away we must be willing and able to treat everyone as equals; no advantages or disadvantages applied to anyone due to some wrongly-perceived racial or gender-driven inferiority.
I'm glad someone is finally talking about us as something more. Thank you, Dahlia Lithwick.
