DADWAGON

Big Preg over at Accidents Will Happen pivoted off of our Babies-in-Bars dust-up and wrote a fantastic essay on Parentitlement. In a handful of linked arguments, she adds more thought to the subject than a thousand screaming monkeys (I include us in that) scared up last week after the CNN.com story. A vignette:

Children are humans. They are you, us, in training. Arguments like “you wanted them, so keep them at home” focus on a parent’s desire for an object to the point of negating the subjecthood of the child. Children are at the behest of their parents, certainly, but they exist separately from them. I can totally understand hating on inconsiderate parents. I do not understand blanket hate on children. While I am hesitant to make the “you were a child once” argument, because it’s a dumb platitude, it seems pretty worthwhile and logical to me. I support people not having children. I think there are intelligent arguments against having children. I think it a good idea to examine the biological imperative. And yet, you, adult who enjoys your freedoms and is going to abstain from procreation: you came from somewhere, and hopefully someone tolerated your existence so you could get a hotdog, or go to the library, or heaven forbid your own parent could have a cup of coffee or glass of wine that I find it hard to believe  that you now, in retrospect, would deny them.

Preach on, Big Preg, and keep doing what you do.

As part of my top-secret, undercover assignment here in Italy, I have to repeatedly lie about my work. That can be easy in certain parts of Europe, particularly France, where asking “What do you do for a living?” is considered the least imaginative question possible. Indeed, friendships and even marriages last decades with neither participant entirely sure of where the other person spends the majority of the day.

Italy, for better and for worse, is not France. Eventually, someone at the dinner parties I’ve been going to will get around to asking me “Che cosa fai per lavoro?,” which is when I’ve been deploying what is probably my one joke in Italian. “Io sono casalingo,” I tell them, then wait a full second while they process this preposterous statement—then explode into uproarious laughter.

What I’ve told them—”I’m a househusband”—may sound innocuous in America, and especially in New York, but to Italian ears it’s an absurdity. Here, every wife is a housewife (casalinga), even if she works longer hours and makes more money than her husband. Women cook, clean and take care of the kids, while men… do pretty much whatever they like.

But while I thought I was merely providing my hosts with some “What a country!” amusement, two journalists friends—both Italy vets, one of whom has lived here his entire life—told me today my partially true quip would have other results.

“First,” they told me, “Italian men will lose all respect for you.” Italians might understand if, say, I’d lost my job and was at home, looking (or not) for a new gig. But to actually do stuff around the house? To cook? To change diapers? That’s what a wife is for! To even consider doing dishes is like putting on women’s underwear and squatting to pee.

Okay, so no one here has any respect for me. I’m used to that. But I think my friends might be underestimating Italians’ tolerance for men’s new role. On the Internet, at least, I’ve found a remarkable organization, the seven-year-old Associazione degli Uomini Casalinghi, dedicated to “rediscovering the pleasure that can come from participating in activities that were once considered humiliating or undignified for true men.” The Website is full of information at once useful—how to organize and keep a clean kitchen, how to install solar panels in a historic district—and inspiring. “Italian wives prefer househusbands,” says one article. Another has news of a University of Parma psychologist who’s started a program called “Non chiamarmi mammo!” (Don’t call me Mommo!)

But who is the Uomo Casalingo? I haven’t seen any around yet (after all, they’re hidden away in their homes), but the site tells us he loves his work, is a pacifist and a free man, and is a testament to his times.

I don’t know about the pacifism, but this uomo sounds like he might be someone we want to get on the ‘wagon. (Or, as they will probably never say here, sul vagone.) He might be a humiliated wuss, but his fashion sense will make us look good, and we can rely on him for prosciutto.

And it is in pageants. Thank you Zach Galifianakis. You have shown me my destiny as a father.

Okay, this is unscientific almost to the point of being Gladwellian, but I’ve noticed a lot of crazy names written under the pictures of schoolkids in my meanderings through the pre-K and kindergarten classrooms of the New York public schools.

Sometimes I wish we weren’t all so predictable, but in my small sample, the three major ethnic groups populating Upper Manhattan seem to be in a race to prove that, as Denny Green said, they are who we thought they were.

White people: Wow, you really do name your kids Aiden and Addison. I appreciate that yuppies have turned away from Mary and James and such. But it appears that even in the race for creativity, the most empowered majority group to maybe ever walk this planet—the White American—still struggles to avoid hivemind.

Black people: Armani makes a nice suit, but a dubious first name (yes, it was there on one pre-K picture-wall). Years ago, I spent some time in the East Harlem classroom taught by a friend of mine. The big thing then were names with Asia in it, like DeAsia—or just Asia. Not that anybody is looking for my approval, but I liked those names. One name I saw twice in pre-K classes last month that I don’t like so much: Hennessy. I know now from the Internet that it is a Celtic name that means “descendant of Angus.” But something tells me that this Hennessy was more the aspirational, VSOP kind.

Caribbean people: I try to understand. When I lived in Cuba, I knew a girl named Janeeyre (pronounced ha-neh-eh-reh). One of the bravest blogs in the world, Generación Y, is named in honor of all the Cubans with Y-names like “Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky.” I was pretty sure Generation Y was a thing of the ’70s, but those caribeño compound names are alive and well in Manhattan pre-K classes: Marisleysis, Dileisy, and even the adverbial Eddily. Props to my friend Alvaro who, when I asked him about it last week, had a joke ready to tell:

Teacher to student: “You’re lazy.”

Student to teacher: “No, my name is Yudelka. That girl over there is Yurleisy.”

Enough said.