As often as I've been given this assignment, I always find it puzzling. Only one month before, the country breathlessly hauls out the flowers and bath soaps to fete the American mother; yet, come June, it's less celebration than evaluation. Are dads holding up their end of the parenting partnership? experts wonder. Have they gotten it yet? In this sense, fathers are a lot like baseball rookies. Even when we make it to the big leagues — and data indicates that the American dad's on-site batting average is, indeed, on the rise — we're always being closely watched, ever in danger of being sent back to the triple-A of second-class parent. Still, I have to answer the question. So who would I select as this year's top pop?
I guess I'd have to consider the President first. George W. Bush is the man who promised the crowd at the 2000 Republican National Convention to protect American children. "There's nothing more important to the future of the country," he said.
Unfortunately, the numbers tell a different story. After Bush took office, the child poverty rate increased for the first time in eight years, to more than 16 percent. Furthermore, because the President has not spared the rod on his proposed budget, he has left the national child anything but spoiled. Spending has flatlined on a host of child-friendly services, threatening everything from school lunches and Head Start to child care and college grants. Even his own No Child Left Behind Act is underfunded to the tune of $9 billion, leaving local communities to scramble to meet yet one more set of unfunded regulatory mandates. To the wealthy, he's the Tooth Fairy. To kids, the dentist. Sorry, Mr. President. Maybe next year.
Peter Baylies is always a fine choice for father of the year. As the founder of the At-Home Dad Network, Peter continues on his nine-year quest to establish a bona fide home front for the more than 2,000,000 American dads who have left the cubicle for the small desk in their den. But when I called Peter to get the latest at-home daddy scoop, he glumly informed me that no new data exists. ""The Census tries to track us," he said, "but their efforts fall short. They never ask who the primary caregiver is." According to a national study conducted by University of Alabama professor Jordan I. Kosberg, heterosexual men (which would undoubtedly include fathers, at-home or otherwise) are routinely overlooked in social work literature. Of the thousands of articles, advertisements and book reviews culled by Kosberg over ten years, half the males represented in the study were gay, while the rest were divided among absent fathers, abusers, prisoners, AIDS victims and the homeless.
"If you want a good look at how America views Dad," Peter suggested, "turn on the TV." Since the advent of television, parenting has been a staple of prime time; during my childhood, I regularly found patriarchal paragons across the dial — from "Father Knows Best" to "Little House on the Prairie" to the Cos. This year, comedian Bernie Mac would be the obvious choice as TV's favorite dad. His show has a bold spin (he plays a childless husband who takes in his sister's kids while she's in rehab), and the ratings are strong. My trouble with Bernie, though, is his kidside manner. "I'm gonna bust your head till the white meat shows!" he hollers in one episode; "I'm gonna kill one of them kids," he says in another. All in good fun? Perhaps. All too common? You bet.
"Fathers are depicted somewhat better in commercials," says Roland Warren, President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, which tracked 102 prime time programs over the course of five weeks to determine how fathers fare on the tube. "But on your typical TV series, I'm sorry to say that Dad still falls into the 3 D's category — dumb, dangerous or disinterested."
With no likely candidate in the White House, on the internet or on TV, I almost gave up my quest for 2003's best dad. But then I found him — right down the block: My pal, David. Newly divorced, David is one of 1.3 million Americans currently sharing custody of a child — or children — with an ex-spouse. Since his wife split from him (she decided she liked another man better), he has navigated his way through a dusty American legal system that favors motherhood while undervaluing dads. He struggles daily to reestablish the career he'd given up in order to help his wife nurture hers. As the primary parent, caring for the children often for weeks at a time, he maintains a breakneck schedule, juggling job interviews to attend class trips with his son, or escort his daughter on a playdate. He routinely number-crunches his shamefully inequitable child support payments in order to see to it that his kids are clothed, fed and, on good days, equipped with a GameBoy.
Most astonishingly, David's transformed his tiny new apartment into a warm family nest — papered with crayoned drawings, overrun by two cats and a hamster — in which his kids feel the freedom to exercise every child's birthright: watching too much TV, making too much noise, and loving their daddy to death.
What I have not witnessed firsthand, however — and hope I never will — is that unimaginably heartbreaking moment, when David drops the kids off with their mom, then walks home alone.
This is the real stuff of being a father. Data currently unavailable.
Bruce Kluger writes for Parenting Magazine and National Public Radio, and
is a member of the board of contributors for USA Today.