Two Dad Memoirs and the End of Fatherhood

In 2005 I married a man whose detailed thoughts about parenting, childcare and family life I knew very little about. We’d agreed that we wanted children—or, rather, I’d said I wanted a large family and he’d said, “well maybe not too large,” and we’d each believed the other to be in agreement. In retrospect, this seems insane, but it’s not so unusual, really: People who move to New York City generally do so in pursuit of ambition; they’re choosing themselves and their dreams over good conditions for child-raising. Parenting for us was a haze on the horizon. So I was surprised a few years in when my husband and I found ourselves locked in bitter conflict during my pregnancy with our first baby. He, an American-educated Russian expatriate who’d never shown previous signs of being a social conservative, turned out to have traditional ideas about childcare: as in, it was my job, and if he did any, it was a favor to me. I, a typical American liberal-feminist of my class and region, was appalled and vehemently disagreed with him. I thought our contributions should be equal. I also thought gender was a construct, money didn’t matter, and cloth diapering was a moral imperative.