DADWAGON

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:

This bit of smartstuff from Lev Grossman, a novelist who is also TIME’s book critic and resident nerd-blogger. He inexplicably started an additional personal blog on the side, and quickly used it to give voice to a concern I’ve been having: that writing too much, or at least in too many forums, keeps us from really writing.

I’m blogging and tweeting and Facebooking on top of the king-hell amount of e-mailing and magazine writing I was already doing. A lot of writers do. Instead of — or at any rate in addition to — building up lots of words and releasing them in big novel-sized chunks, we’re constantly dribbling them out. Like we’re the victim of some unfortunate literary prostate condition.

He retracted that prostate analogy later, but it seems fitting enough. And for me, there’s an additional anxiety: that all this connectedness keeps me from being a better father. Terrific irony, I know—dadblogging and dadtweeting keep me from being with my kids. Those who don’t do, blog.

I value the conversations we get to have with fathers we’ve never met—and maybe never will—all over the country, and I’m glad they are blogging about this common battle we all face. But in many of their compulsive status updates and tweets, I see a bit of the worst parts of myself. After all, what is really happening in the household when a father tweets that his preschool son is being particularly sluggish getting ready for school? At least the boy (presumably) isn’t tweeting about it.

So that’s the question: where to draw the line? Does this endless virtual loya jirga of fathers cost us something at home? Am I the only one worried about this? Have any of you set limits for yourself? If so, can I borrow them?