The Shame of the Stay-at-Home Dad

For all the gender bending and all of the attacks on stereotypical sex roles, the fact remains that a father who stays home to take care of the children while his wife works is made to feel some measure of shame. Link here.

Ann Althouse explains what it means. "These deeply embedded sex roles-- they don't change so easily. Being large-minded and flexible and into change is not enough. It doesn't get at the root of what you really feel, and you can't just feel what you want to feel." Link here.

If Althouse is right, why do we want to continue to be at war with these sex roles? Surely, people are able to adapt to circumstances, even when their adaptations do not coincide perfectly with traditional gender roles. But that is quite different from pretending that we are going to change the nature of the human animal itself.

Human beings are not silly putty. You cannot just mold them into any form you like, throw them against the floor, and expect that they will bounce.