(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

I guess I’m all on my own here. All three of my colleagues found Hannah Rosin’s Atlantic story overlong and under-persuasive. I powered through it the day it was posted on the Web, and gave it another once-over when the print magazine arrived in the mail a week or so later. Maybe I’m a sucker for a good anti-conventional-wisdom argument. Or maybe I am preternaturally inclined to Rosin-admiration, because we once shared billing on a big award. (Full disclosure: Those two stories were packaged together, but she and I have never met or spoken or even e-mailed.) But, for whatever reason, I bought her argument, even if the conclusions may have been too easy and broad.

I happen to think that the way girls are socialized does make them better suited to your average midlevel workplace job. The preferred female tendencies toward chat and conflict management are much more valuable than classically valued male attributes, like being able to lift heavy stuff and quote Caddyshack. Only in certain settings where the maleness of the culture is set very deep (as on Wall Street) or in places where the physical demands are still pretty stringent (say, the NFL) will a male bias persist for long. I see it in my own office, where nearly every young staff member is a woman: Below the age of 30, publishing has become a mostly female business. Same goes for jobs in the service economy—again, only if you’re talking in the broadest terms, but that’s what statistics-driven stories try to do. If the college-admissions stats are any guide (not to mention Judd Apatow movies), and if I could invest in such things, I’d be shorting my own gender.

If you need that fact slammed home, look around this site. Of the three married Dadwagon editors, Matt recently posted about his wife’s superior earning prowess, as has Nathan in the past. Well, time for a confession: My wife also brings in more than I do. That’s right, readers: It’s a clean sweep for the gals around here. (Ted works for a nonprofit-foundation-supported magazine, meaning that if he were to remarry anyone but a homeless person, we’d likely go four for four.) We’re not just irrelevant as a gender; we are also nearly useless as individual wage-earners.

I know I shouldn’t go looking for nuggets of wisdom in the (virtual) halls of our nation’s capital, but something about the URL compelled me to avoid my deadlines and browse. That URL? Fatherhood.gov, the website of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse.

Honestly, I didn’t want to make fun of this site. Clearly it fulfills some policy initiative or other, and it certainly doesn’t look very expensively designed. I just can’t stand my tax dollars going to froofy Flash animation. But… But then I read things like this, from the “Child Development Info” page:

Each stage of your child’s life is special. Infants and toddlers all the way up to adolescence there are developmental and social steps and stages. Learning about these and keeping track with them can help you guide your kids and help keep you involved.

This may be true, but this is terrible, terrible writing—up with which I will not put! I love hate to be so pedantic, but I do appreciate having my government-sponsored Websites copy-edited. “Infants and toddlers all the way up to adolescence there are…”?!? I can’t go on.

But go on I must! Fatherhood.gov, do you have some parenting tips for me?

Take Time to Be a Dad Today Tips

Watch a game on television with your children. Cheer for your favorite team and chat about the plays. Mute the commercials and use those minutes to talk about what’s going on in your lives.

Green Dads Tips

Buy compact florescent light (CFL) bulbs, which last about 5 years and use less energy. Switching just one standard bulb to a CFL can help you reduce your electricity bill by as much as 75 cents per month.

Well, those were sure helpful! Thanks, government!

Once upon a time, maybe six months ago, Jean and I were a bit worried. At a year old, Sasha was smart, healthy and endlessly … cute. I want to say she was adorable, too, but that wouldn’t be quite accurate. To be sure, she fit the textbook definition of cute baby—big eyes, awkward movements, a penchant for accidental comedy—but she was simply not affectionate. If we picked her up, she was fine being held, but she’d never relax. Instead, she’d remain alert and attentive, and only if she was really, really, really sleepy would she rest her head on your shoulder. She wouldn’t hug, she didn’t kiss. She was a stone-cold heartless beauty.

Of course, these things don’t last, and today she’s the exact opposite: she hugs friends, spontaneously kisses her teachers goodbye, rests her head on my shoulder when I carry her in the subway. Actually, though, she’s gone too far in this direction—she’s downright clingy, but with a twist. That is, if her mother is around, it’s like no one else in the world exists. She’s desperate for Jean’s attention, crying if Jean so much as makes a move towards another room. She stalks Jean outside the bathroom door, and often won’t let me take care of basic things like changing her diaper if Mom’s available to do it.

There are ways to get around this, of course. Sasha’s only 18 months old, so she’s easily distracted. Presenting her with a toy or a book just as Jean is, say, going into the bedroom to get dressed is my way of capturing Sasha’s attention. Which only lasts until Jean reappears, but at least it’s something.

All of this, I know, is just a phase. Before long, Sasha will be back to her old, cold self, or she’ll have transferred her limitless affections to yours truly. But there’s one thing about this current phase that makes me crazy:

She calls Jean “Daddy.”

This shouldn’t be a big deal. I know she’ll get it right eventually, but still, when I hear her running around the house saying “Daddy Daddy Daddy!,” I keep thinking it’s me and I’ll go to pick her up and be confronted with “No no no no no.” Oh, right, you meant that Daddy.

My solution to this problem, which I’ve just now come up with, is to think on Sasha’s level. To that end, I’ve invented an imaginary son, Arnold, who only shows up while Sasha is clinging to Jean. Arnold is a great kid, I’ve gotta say, full of energy and affection, with surprising ability to play catch. Plus, when I go to the bathroom, he doesn’t wait outside—we can pee together. Sorry, Sasha, this is what daddies do.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

I clocked Hanna Rosin’s Atlantic article on The End of Men, which is the subject of this week’s Tantrum, at over 8,600 words. The Constitution of these United States, including all 27 freaking Amendments, doesn’t even hit 8,100 words.

Am I jealous? You bet. I get paid by the word. And given that I work mostly for a magazine that loves listicles, I don’t get to write a lot of words at any one time.

I disagree that it’s not worth reading the piece, though. Rosin is a good writer. She keeps things from getting dreary. But in the end, let me just sweep aside her overbroad arguments (“A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way—and its vast cultural consequences”) as well as Matt’s counterpoint (“Men, let’s embrace our new uselessness!”). I’m more in Theodore’s camp: “There is, really, no such thing as Men,” he wrote. “There are specific men in specific places doing specific things.”

As Theodore pointed out, there’s a tendency for moms to push fathers aside—even beyond the natural limitations of what fathers can offer an infant.

So let me rephrase this whole conversation: If you’re worried that men are useless, or that you are useless, then make yourself useful. Push the wife out of the way, be there first with the diaper. Or if you need a manlier contribution, build a crib or treefort, paint the walls of the nursery. The individual men who are useless—at home, work, or anywhere else—shouldn’t have anyone else to blame for it besides themselves. Women may have passed us in education and other metrics, but we are far from being oppressed by them. So if you’re not contributing, look in your man-mirror.

Side note: I’ve got no beef with the length of this article, but there is something that needs more editing: The video with Rosin and her family (including husband David Plotz, whose writing about Barry Scheck I quoted in my most recent TIME article, because he’s that good). Plotz and Rosin and their kids don’t prove much about the gender wars (although the daughter does get points for using more concrete examples in her arguments). They do prove that my people (yes, the Chosen ones) might be a bit overly analytical/argumentative, even from a young age. And that the Atlantic needs to hire a couple more video editors. Nevertheless, here’s the video, if you’ve got more than five minutes: