Blog Post #9:

From Coltran’s article “Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Dilemmas” we can infer that in most of the different aspects of life such as social, economical, and political the society doesn’t play in favor of fatherhood.

As Coltarn reminds us, most divorcing men are not awarded child custody following a divorce (442). This shows us how society privileges motherhood over fatherhood. Does that mean that a child can totally grow up without a father figure? No. But this shows that if a child is to be raised by a single person, that person has to be the mother by (unfair) convention. For society to accept a father to have custody of his children over the mother, that father has to be “Superdad” or the mother has to be in a real trouble. In other words, (to make a metaphor staying in the juridical context) when it comes to the custody of a child, a mother is always innocent till proven guilty, but the father is guilty till proven innocent which explains Coltran’s statement, “Although single-father households have increased in recent years, single mother households continue to outpace them five to one” (442).  Besides, not only the juridical aspect is not in favor of fatherhood, but it seems like women in a family are not too. When after giving us some good benefits of fathering, Coltran tells us,  “We cannot simply assume that more father involvement is better for all families” (440), he simply questions those benefits compared to the ones given by a mother. What is catching my attention here is that nobody would questions the benefits (to a child) of parenting, and yet fathering is being questioned (unlike mothering). Too much fathering can be harmful, according to Coltran, but not too much mothering. The last aspect that shows that preference for mothering is, according to our society, a father is considered as actively involved in parenting when he is doing the mothering aspect of it, such as taking care of the kids, doing housework etc…  and he is working. So fathering would resume to doing mothering, with just being a provider as a variant. On the other side, when a woman is mothering and is the provider for family at the same time, she’s seen as that supermom who doesn’t need any man to raise a kid. As Coltran states “Ironically, women’s enhanced economic position also makes them able to form families and raise children without the fathers being present” (444).