Dear School Moms, It is Time to include Dads.
Sandra Lopez
Tech Exec | Fractional CMO & GM | Board Member | Investor | Exits (2) | Speaker |
Growing up, I was surrounded by cliques. The cool clique. The smart clique. The athletic clique. The {insert blank} clique. As a kid, I thought this cliquish mentality would end in my “adulting†years. Unfortunately, adult cliques continue to exist and one of the most pervasive cliques is the “Mommy Clique.â€
The Mommy Clique slips us back to our young childhood days creating a feeling of inferiority, unwantedness, and exclusion. While not overt, the Mommy Clique is a message of exclusion. Yet ironically, the women that are driving today’s rhetoric of equality are often the same women that participate in the mommy clique. Since today is Father’s Day, I believe today provides an opportunity to drive a dialogue on how dads should also be invited to participate in school functions. In fact, many dads want to partake in school activities.
In my vocation, I have the fortunate opportunity to meet professional men that are also fathers. Correction they are not fathers. As Barack Obama once stated “Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It is the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.†These dads have embraced one of the most difficult tasks: active parenting. They are teaching, nurturing, protecting, and actively engaging in their children's life. They are changing the dialogue from "mom"-parenting to "we"-parenting. These dads that want to equally contribute have also shared the sentiment that they are being excluded by the Mommy Cliques. Often times, they are overlooked and not included in school activity emails, birthday invites, weekend gatherings, playdate emails, etc. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a male professional, who is the primary caregiver of his five children, he stated, “Excluding me is excluding my children.†His statement stuck and I became self-aware of how Mommy Cliques were counter to the equality movement.
As demands from society increase, both parents are being challenged to contribute financially as well as nurturing. The roles are becoming genderless. The rhetoric of inclusiveness goes both ways if you want to establish an inclusive society. We need to end the Mommy Clique syndrome and make it "OK" to have dads participate in the various school functions. Otherwise an inclusive society is just a distant dream.
Happy Father's Day to all of the amazing dads that have also agreed to take on parenting as their second shift!
#HappyFathersDay #Coparenting #Inclusivity #Equality
Employee Communications at Intel Corporation
6 å¹´Love this - thanks for sharing! My husband is the primary caretaker for our 1-year old, and he's shared with me that he sometimes feels isolated when he takes her to the library or the playground, as he's often the only (or one of a few) dads there. I hope we're able to continue to raise awareness of this issue.??
Working on a story tying together Stephen Ives’ The West, Dan Fogelman’s This is Us, and Goodman Ace’s You Are There.
6 å¹´After a month of kindergarten, my youngest daughter wandered into my home office and said, "Dad, when are you going to volunteer in my classroom like the other moms?" While initially taken aback by my child's question, I considered what she was saying. With a five-year-old's wisdom, she was reflecting that nurturing was not gender-based -- both women and men were equipped for this assignment. She also understood that her father working a half mile from school was a better choice for this particular assignment than her mother who worked twenty miles away on the opposite side of a toll bearing bridge. A decade and a half later, I recognize how that brief conversation changed how I viewed myself both as a professional and as a parent.
Gerrel 1 Button, the TV studio for your office
6 年As one of my favorite musicians Da Truth wrote: “if it wasn’t for his spankings then I’d probably pop pain pills.†Thankful for my dad’s commitment and love (even the discipline).