Sunday, June 17, 2007

To All Fathers...

First of all, I'd like to say happy father's day to all of the great fathers in this world, and even happy father's day to the bad ones also. My question however is, how do we draw the line between good and bad? Obviously, we all know that the drug dealers, the abandoners, the molesters, the abusers, and the like fall into the latter category, but is that all it takes to be bad daddy?



I was watching the view a little while ago and our favorite republican and BUSH SUPPORTER was saying that a mother who cheated on her husband was not a good mother to her children. While the thought of this sounds ridiculous, her logic behind it was genius. She said that if a woman loved her children then she would do anything for them, including making her marriage work, and that if she went through and purposely broke up her marriage because of her own selfish reasons then she was not thinking of her children, and this in turn made her a bad mother. I feel like this is true, and I have to agree with her.



My question is however, why are we as mothers held to a higher standard than the men we choose to reproduce with? If a father is cheating no one calls him a bad daddy. He is able to just blame it on his hormones, his wife, his stress levels, and whatever other sorry excuses the wind blows into his ear that day. A man is allowed to leave his family and only see them on his "appointed days", he is able to move across the country and because of a monthly check he can still claim that he is "taking care of his responsibility". The same however cannot be said for a woman, even if she does leave her children and send that same monthly check she can not just ignore and forget about her children. During my pregnancy I was repeatedly asked if I had ever been pregnant before or how many times I had given birth, and every time I look into the mirror for the rest of my life, I will see the scar that brought my son into this world. No matter what happens I will never be allowed to just walk out of my child's life and forget about him. I will be the on who has to sit up at night with a sick baby, I will have to drive him to school when he misses his school bus, I will have to make 200 cupcakes for his school bake sale, I will stand when he graduates from elementary school, high school, and even college, and I will be the one he calls when his own child is born. That is what makes a good parent, and I for one believe that fathers should be held to the same standard as a mother. They will never quite attain that level of greatness, but they damn well better try.

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Posted by ME at 11:57 PM

c2mments!
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