The Myth of Mr. Mom: Real Stories by Real Stay-At-Home Dads

By Jeremy Rodden

The Myth of Mr. Mom is a collaborative non-fiction essay anthology written by stay-at-home dads that shares the personal stories of eight men from around the world.

The goal of the book is to help bring awareness to the fact that men are just as capable as women of being the primary caregiver, homemaker, and stay-at-home parent. We feel that there is a societal bias against stay-at-home dads that does not exist for stay-at-home mothers and seek to bring our stories to the public.

Filled with humorous anecdotes and eye-opening personal experiences, The Myth of Mr. Mom is simultaneously inspiring and entertaining.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portmanteau Press LLC
• Release date: Nov 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983425328

Jeremy Rodden

I spent the first ten years of my professional life in retail sales, working my way up to store management positions in two different Fortune 500 retailers. Along the way, I managed to earn a BA in Religion and English Writing from La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA and an MA in Secondary Education from Holy Family University, also in Philadelphia. After completing my Masters, I began teaching high school English. When my second son was born in May, 2010, however, my wife and I decided that it would be more prudent for me to be a stay-at-home dad, taking care of the new baby along with my first son, who was born in June, 2005. I have since had the challenge and pleasure of being a homemaker. It was at this time that I finally grasped the stories that had been in my head since I was a teenager and wrangled them to paper. Toonopolis began as a silly interactive fiction game played with some real life and virtual friends. The game only lasted a few years but the world I had created and my characters never escaped my thoughts. As a writer, I consider C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll as my strongest influences. They were able to create magical worlds that readers of all ages enjoy, which is exactly what I want to achieve with Toonopolis. It is a lofty goal, indeed, but the only goals that will invariably be unachievable are the ones that are not set. Welcome to my world. I hope you have as much fun as I do.

Book preview

The Myth of Mr. Mom

Edited by

Jeremy Rodden

Authors

Sonny Lemmons * Christian Jenson * Shawn Scarber

Jeremy Rodden * Toby Tate * Leo Dee

Charlie Andrews * Gerhi Feuren

Published by Portmanteau Press LLC, Chesapeake, VA

Smashwords Edition

Published by:

Portmanteau Press LLC

PO BOX 1411

Chesapeake, VA 23327

http://www.portmanteaupress.com/

Text Copyright © 2011 by Portmanteau Press LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Portmanteau Press LLC.

ISBN: 978-0-9834253-2-8

Cover design by:

Jennifer Bruck

Cover picture by:

Samantha Rodden

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Table of Contents

Preface: Popular Culture Propels the Myth of Mr. Mom by Jeremy Rodden

Chapter One: Committing Professional Suicide by Sonny Lemmons

Chapter Two: Mr. Mom; A Retrospective by Christian Jensen

Chapter Three: Project: New Dad by Shawn Scarber

Chapter Four: No, I’m Not Babysitting by Jeremy Rodden

Chapter Five: Fang Fang Meets Super Dad by Toby Tate

Chapter Six: In At The Deep End by Leo Dee

Chapter Seven: Little Pink Umbrella by Charlie Andrews

Chapter Eight: Bumming In The Margins by Gerhi Feuren

Afterword by Jeremy Rodden

Popular Culture Propels The Myth Of Mr. Mom

by Jeremy Rodden

Oscar Wilde argued that art demonstrates what will later become accepted as a representation of ideal beauty and thus art is imitated. For the sake of this discussion, replace the concept of beauty with one of culturally acceptable family dynamics, and the point remains the same. Popular culture serves as an example of the general acceptance of cultural changes, whether it is the perception of what is beautiful, or the understanding that men are very capable of being primary caregivers and nurturing homemakers. If Wilde was correct, the rare stay-at-home dad in Western culture is far from being accepted as a normal representation of life.

Popular culture is often a good indicator of how well cultural change has been assimilated into mainstream society. For example, Captain Kirk and Uhura kissing on Star Trek in the late 1960’s caused a little stir at the time. An interracial kiss would barely cause a ripple in the world today, a sign that interracial couples are not as taboo now as they once were in Western culture. Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg certainly didn’t cause a big outrage when Made in America came out in 1993. Neither did Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas with 2001’s Save the Last Dance.

In more recent years, the same trend has been seen in the rise in acceptance of homosexuality in popular culture. While homosexual couples are not as accepted as interracial couples, recent films like Brokeback Mountain (2005) and The Kids are All Right (2010) explore these relationships in a nonjudgmental way that promotes realistic discussion on the acceptance of this cultural change in modern society. The characters on the television series Glee are further helping to normalize homosexuality in pop culture, even amidst controversy.

While these two examples may seem to be much more far-reaching and society-altering examples of changes in Western culture than the subject of this book, men struggling with the stigmas associated with being a stay-at-home father feel their concerns are just as real.

The title of this anthology, The Myth of Mr. Mom, is an allusion to the 1983 film, Mr. Mom, starring Michael Keaton. As this was one of the first examples of a stay-at-home dad in Western pop culture, it serves as a harbinger of how stay-at-home dads would be perceived for years. For those who don’t know the plot, Mr. Mom is the story about a successful automotive engineer who loses his job and has to flip roles with his stay-at-home wife because she is able to find work before he can. Myth #1: A man staying at home is the result of a lack of options, not a conscious decision by a family.

As he adjusts to this new role, Michael Keaton has hilarious escapades involving his inability to handle basic household tasks such as vacuuming. One of the most famous scenes from the movie is when Keaton resorts to using the hand dryer in the bathroom to dry off his baby’s bottom. Further, he doesn’t even know how to operate the washer and dryer, leading us to Myth #2: Men are incapable of completing even the most basic of household tasks without the aid of a woman.

The story progresses with the main character becoming depressed and distant. He lets himself go physically and wears the same shirt every day. He begins watching soap operas and has strange daydreams about being with a woman other than his wife. Myth #3: Men who are stay-at-home dads are unhappy with their role and come to resent their circumstances that forced them into the situation.

As Michael Keaton finally gets his bearings and begins becoming an effective stay-at-home father and homemaker, the story focuses more on the problems with the relationship between the two parents. At the end of the movie, he gets his job back at the automotive plant and things return to normal–the happy ending. Myth #4: Men would prefer to work outside the home and the household dynamic can only return to normal if this is the case.

Exploring other examples of stay-at-home dads in popular culture over the last thirty years since Mr. Mom was produced, one finds the majority continues to propagate one or all of these myths. Growing Pains and Full House, two very popular sitcoms in the 1980’s, toyed with the idea but they were not real representations of stay-at-home dads.

In Growing Pains, the father became a stay-at-home but still worked as a psychiatrist from a home office. In this case, though, the children were already much older and the mother had already been the stay-at-home for what many consider the hard years to be an at-home parent. When the show later added a baby, they also added a nanny because, while the father was able to handle the grown children, a baby was just too much.

In Full House, the father had to deal with the untimely death of his wife and had three small children to care for. His brother-in-law and best friend moved in to help serve as co-parents to the girls. The show seemed to suggest with some of the comedic moments that even three men combined couldn’t handle the tasks of caring for young children. By season two, they added Aunt Becky to the mix to make sure a woman could be there to help the muddling men in raising the children. They sure solved that problem.

In the 2000’s, two more popular examples of stay-at-home dads came around. In 2003, the Eddie Murphy film Daddy Day Care borrowed a lot of the men-can’t-hack-it comedy from previous examples. Daddy Day Care presents another visual of a man staying home as a last resort after losing his job, bumbling through basic parenting skills, and being relieved to go back to a real job. In this case, at least, the movie ends with Eddie Murphy realizing he preferred

Reviews for The Myth of Mr. Mom

[donnambr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s the typical Ladybird book image: Daddy with a saw and Mummy with an apron and a baking tin and it can often catch people unawares to see anything other than this, even though the family dynamic is a constantly changing thing.I had firsthand experience of this recently. My husband is much better at housework than I am but I’m (affectionately) known as “DIY Donna”. So when David left to go to work recently and the door was sticking, I grabbed my rasp and file and set about fixing the problem. And boy didn’t I get some strange looks! Granted I was wearing yellow pyjamas with little pink pigs on and a pink towelling robe but I can’t help but wonder if a man in a dressing gown would have been met with quite the same incredulity.I have to say, I’m not remotely maternal in the conventional sense (i.e., unless the children in question are furry with paws) so I couldn’t compare my own experiences of parenthood but I have faced stereotypes myself: I’m a woman so I must want children. I have six cats so they must be child substitutes. I’ll reach a ‘certain age’ and suddenly my biological clock will kick in. All poppycock, of course, so I was interested to read The Myth of Mr Mom to read about the writers’ experiences of facing – and hopefully overcoming – gender stereotypes of a different kind.There are eight stories in The Myth of Mr Mom and surprisingly each one is quite unique, something Jeremy Rodden himself comments on in the afterword. These stay-at-home-dads or stay-at-home-pops (and my word even their abbreviations of SAHD and SAHP seem to start them on the back foot) have faced many similar scenarios or battles but each has started from a different point and approached their journey in a different way.There were two stories that really stood out for me. One was a very humorous tale from Christian Jensen (“Mr Mom: A Retrospective”), which amused me greatly but also underscored my reasons for not wanting to be a mother. (Sorry Christian: I’m guessing that wasn’t your main aim!). I say that because there’s a clear and evidenced love for Jensen’s children evident throughout the essay, despite the dry wit and sarcasm, which made it very touching but also made me very aware that I wouldn’t have the patience or compassion to take on his role!The other story that touched me was “Little Pink Umbrella” by Charlie Andrews. It touched me because I loved the idea of the father who stands, quite willingly, on a corner with a little pink umbrella, waiting for his daughter. Of course, there is a much more to the story than that but it stopped me in my tracks. My own father did many things for me that I daresay didn’t fit with his 'conventional role' but which he did for my sake. This is the aspect of fatherhood that often goes unrewarded or even unacknowledged. We joke about man flu or the father who can’t even get a diaper on. We assume that a man with a baby is stepping in or has been ‘lumbered’ for the day (my great maternal instincts kicking in again there!) but actually we often do ‘fathers’ the same disservice that women as a whole were done for many years. We make baseless assumptions about their validity and societal value, their roles and responsibilities and most of all, who they are.If The Myth of Mr Mom had a flaw for me, it’s that I would have liked to read an essay from someone much older who had really had to fight against the norm, not just of recent decades but an earlier, stauncher and perhaps more judgmental time period. Not that the stories contained are not inspirational but I think that would have added an extra dimension for me. However, Rodden mentions a potential second volume so perhaps this is a tale yet to be seen.I have made this a ‘Christmas Pick: For Dads’ because I don’t think you need to be a Stay-at-Home-Dad to enjoy it. In fairness, I don’t even think you need to be a male to enjoy it. However, I do think it will resonate with loving fathers because the key thing that links all of these stories is fatherly love and bundles of it. Buy this for your father and show them not only that you love them but that you love the love that they gave you and that every sacrifice – large or small – has not gone unrecognised.Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. I did not receive any additional compensation.