| More U.S. Dads Balance Laptops, Kids on Laps | 0 comments |
 21 Jun 2003 @ 23:53, by Raymond PowersBelated Father's Day Article.... More U.S. Dads Balance Laptops, Kids on Laps By Julie Shields - WeNews correspondent (WOMENSENEWS)--Now is the perfect time to go back to the roots of Father's Day in the United States and celebrate and support what is called "involved fatherhood." Few know that Father's Day in this country arose out of a daughter's desire to honor her father, a widowed single Dad who raised six children--including a - newborn--on a Spokane, Wash., farm. Sonora Smart Dodd, so the story goes, heard a Mother's Day sermon in 1909 and wondered why fathers like hers were not similarly celebrated. In 1910, Dodd organized the first such celebration in Spokane on June 19, a date she chose because her father was born in June. Dodd believed her father courageous and strong because he made sacrifices and behaved selflessly while she and her siblings grew up. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge advocated for a national father's day to help establish better relations between fathers and children and to remind fathers of their responsibilities. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the third Sunday in June a national holiday, making it official. This Father's Day, we should support fathers who have followed in the footsteps of William Jackson Smart, Dodd's father. We sit on top of what could be a watershed moment in fatherhood. All kinds of evidence document a zeitgeist shift for modern fathers. The recession and altered views about men, women and work bring us to a point where real economic and family change can occur--and has occurred--quickly. Feminists, economists, legal thinkers, and practical folk everywhere have long recognized that women will never achieve equality outside of the home until men become equal partners inside the domestic sphere. On average, U.S. women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by U.S. men. The gender wage gap occurs in part because of the disproportionate family, child rearing, and household responsibilities that mothers bear. Current statistics indicate that, until they have children, women earn roughly the same as men. Often, as women's family involvement intensifies, mothers' work-force participation--and income--diminishes or ends altogether. Many argue that the glass ceiling is in the nursery. |