JUNE: Here's to Involved Dads

-

Father’s Day…it is a day of honoring and praising dads.  BUT,  there is a generation of men who need recognition for helping to change fatherhood as an active integral part of daily family life. Some of these men did not have a blueprint to follow for the evolving family life that required a partnership in all aspects of the marriage. The women of their generation wanted partners in family life, not a division of labor.  Women sought higher education and wanted both a professional and a personal life like their male colleagues.

It was tough on couples who watched television shows that depicted the father as “king of his castle,” or a “bumbling buffoon” who is tricked by his “intelligently coy wife.”  stereotyping was embedded early. The “Baby Boomers” have a high divorce rate and a much has been attributed to it. Personally, the changing face of the roles in a marriage and women’s desires to have a partner and not another person to clean up after may have been another underlining issue.

Hats off to all you Dads, who took turns driving car pools, helping with bath time, reading books, did the grocery shopping, gave your wife a night off, went to parent-teacher conferences, stayed home with a sick child, stayed home when your wife got sick, etc., etc.  You are the generation who renegotiate the day-to-day intricacies of family living! Being a father takes more than changing a diaper, cleaning dishes, or cooking a meal.  Don’t get me wrong. Those actions are important and part of the parenting pact.  A card I saw once wraps it up, “The best thing a Father could do for his children is love their mother.”  Do I need to say anything more?



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be Strategic: Write A Holiday Memory

-
Image
The momentum of the holidays propels us into a frenzy of cooking, shopping, wrapping, decorating, entertaining, cleaning, and overindulging. Writing becomes an after thought in the midst of multiple "to do" lists.

BREATH. Schedule a break, whittle some time for your writing. Utilize these small chunks of time to "Write A Memory."  Exercise your creativity with the keyboard or a paper and a writing instrument to describe a "who, what, where, or how" about the Holiday Season. Find a quiet place and expound on the following events of the season or better still, scribe about something you experienced that day or during the season "to be jolly."

Cookie Exchange: Do you participate in this activity? Why or Why not? If you did, what was your choice of cookie? Who participates your exchange? Decorating the Outside of Your House: Who does it? How do you prepare for it? Describe the feelings and emotions of the participants of this outdoor activity.Gift wr…
Read more

December 2016 Book Review: Maeve's Times

-
Image
Warning to all writers who scribe thoughts on bits and scraps of paper and throw them in a box to rewrite later.  Those bits and scraps may be published posthumously.  Maeve Binchy's husband, Gordon Snell, found her "to do later" box. He built a biography of her life with her thoughts, articles, and ramblings.

Maeve's Times is dated and referenced making it easy to follow. Thank you Mr. Snell for sharing insights into her professional and personal life. Her spirit lives on with her words.

 This author captured my attention with Copper Beeches. Maeve Binchy wrote about what she saw, lived, and felt. Her stories reflected both Irish country and city life. Each book made me feel better about people. She wrote about hard times and working through them. She wrote about love and love lost. Her book Minding Frankie demonstrates a community pulling together to help a neighbor. Any of her titles are a "goodread."


Read more

Writer's $ense: Is My Book Ready?

-
Image
Yesterday, I used the WORD's handy feature to listen to my book. This great tool helped me finesse the final (hopefully) edit of my first novel. It allowed me to pick 'the lint and sticky stuff' out of my book. Many writers praise the exercise of reading your work aloud. This practice doesn't work for me. I substitute missing words and read words that don't exist. WORD reads the story as written and it is written. This editing drill helps on multiple levels. I find sequencing errors, conversation gaps, missing words, verb incongruities, just to name a few.

After reading articles, collecting checklists, eliciting beta readers, hiring an editor, and listening to my critique group input, my novel reach its final stage. Yes, there is a cover to finalize, acknowledgements to write, a synopsis to polish, a summary to hone, but this book no longer needs my full attention.

My novel may be ready, but there is still much to do. My marketing plan needs tweaking not to mentio…
Read more