The journalists Guillaume Daudin, 37 years old, and Stéphane Jourdain, 46 years old, after being interested in male contraception in a previous work, published The new fathers scam. Investigation into a failed revolution (Glénat, 184 pages, 20.50 euros). In this book illustrated by the designer Antoine Grimée, they question the lack of involvement of men in parental tasks and want their work to have the effect of a “boost”.
In your book “The New Fathers Scam”, you suggest that the image of the superdad that has spread in recent years does not entirely match reality…
Guillaume Daudin : According to the speech mainstreamfathers would be more involved, more concerned with managing their children and sharing household chores. There would be a consensus around this image, disseminated in particular in the press. When we began to discuss this subject around us, we came up against the feelings of women, who were a little tired of hearing all these praises addressed to their spouses when they never received any when they did the same tasks, if not more.
So it is the feelings of women that led you to question this myth of the “new father”?
Stéphane Jourdain: Yes, but not only that. What caught my attention were the parent-teacher meetings, where each time I counted the number of men. The other day, for the start of the school year, there were twenty-eight parents and there were six. Fathers always have better excuses to skip this kind of event: a job that is more important, a whole bunch of constraints.
However, we observe greater involvement of fathers, particularly emotional…
GD: The emotional investment has progressed faster than the investment in the basely material management of the daily life of a household, which is very difficult. The grind of parenthood is picking up the children, dropping them off, managing their activities, the house, the shopping.
SJ: On that side, things move much more slowly. In France, in 1986, women carried out 80% of parental activities. And twenty-five years later, in 2010, it had risen to 71%. This is key data. Another crazy figure: men spend less time on domestic chores when they are parents than when they do not have children. The progressive man on the left has the impression that the essential has been done. In reality, the biggest battle is ahead of us.
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