parenting

A Guest Blog for Moms Rising by Pamela Tanner Boll

How do women continue to do work they feel called to do while not turning their backs on their families? How do they sustain their efforts? What do those efforts mean for their children, their families, and their communities? Why are women still whipsawed between giving to others and developing their own skills?

My younger daughter is graduating high school, and my older daughter just graduated from Penn State, so this fathers’ day is a good time to reflect on past successes… and failures. So here’s some advice for young men contemplating fatherhood today:

Marry well. Find someone you can talk to about almost anything; you’re going to spend a lot of time talking after children arrive... And find someone who isn’t planning to stay at home for 20 years raising kids. Sure, there are great parents who pull off the breadmaker/homemaker stuff, and I know and admire them. But most involved dads have partners who have a job or a career; it gives us more time with the kids, and more say in decisions about the kds.