Nancy E. Dowd is a law professor at the University of Florida, and for much of the book “Redefining Fatherhood” (New York University Press, $28.95), she writes like one, but that doesn’t mean her book lacks the impact the title suggests.
In fact, at a time when the legal system still can’t manage to give divorced or unmarried fathers an equal stake in parenting, according to Dowd, here is a female lawyer saying it is time for that to change.
” . . . Most custody and visitation schemes envision only a limited fathering role,” she writes. “For example, a typical court order usually sets up a schedule of visitation or shared parenting that is far more unequal than a fifty-fifty division of parenting time or tasks. Joint physical custody is the norm in only a minority of divorce cases. The vast majority of divorce cases presume very limited nurturing by fathers.”
But her stance is not simply one involving divorce law but fatherhood in general. Fatherhood, at least in a biological sense, is the norm for most men. As Dowd points out, 90 percent of men marry, and 90 percent of those become fathers. Yet, in an age when women’s roles in the family have been dramatically redefined, Dowd suggests that we have hardly begun to do the same for men in their roles as nurturers.
She concludes: “When my son grows up, I hope he will be as much a nurturer as he is now, and that he will teach other boys and men, and maybe his own son, that what it means to be a real man is embraced in the love and care one gives to another. And in that, I hope, he will not be an unusual man at all.”