#commstudies

The Comm Center is putting on several workshops & events this week & for the rest of the entire month of October! 🤗

I went to a work conference back home, which is Sacramento for me. I work with a network marketing company through which entrepreneurs can build their own business and thus, create a life of their design over the life chosen for them by larger corporations and societal expectations. That is, at least, how I view and utilize the opportunity.

At the top levels of the company I work with, the leaders, or National Marketing Directors as they are entitled, unlock corporate-level health care, tuition reimbursement, holiday expense bonuses, and more, all while continuing to be their own bosses. This has allowed so many families I’ve seen to leave the actual corporate world and spend more time at home with those they value most.

Every six months at our biannual company conference, every newly promoted NMD gets to go on the main stage and share their story. It is the most powerful and inspirational part of conference and always manages to bring tears to my eyes. Men and women alike share their stories of struggle and hardship, and how they were pulled to be a part of a company that not only allows them time- and financial-freedom, but also gives them the opportunity every day to share the power and their passion for healthy living (it is a health-based company). Being that this last conference was the first time I’ve gone while simultaneously being in a communication studies class surrounding gender, I must say I paid attention in a different way than I typically would.

One of the stories that truly affected me was from a husband that had worked in the real estate sector and was the sole provider for his family for years. He and his wife had three children and mom primarily stayed at home (figuratively speaking, since being a mom requires not staying at home for, I’m sure, most of the day). When the housing market crashed, and, subsequently, the economy, he found himself out of a job and really out of a career. His entire industry that he knew and was skilled in had crumbled around him. He went on to tell us how after months of job searching and not getting anywhere, he said he felt his “worthiness as a husband, as a father, and as a man was diminishing.” My heart crumbled for him, and I knew it wasn’t his fault for feeling this way.

As I’ve learned time and time again in my Gender and Communication class, our society has been set up to develop men as breadwinners and providers for their families. In a way, society has created what we can refer to as a “transformational truth- that nineteenth-century capitalism and nineteenth-century gender created each other.” From the time men start thinking about dating, we (I use the term “we” in referring to a capitalist, heteronormative society) assume they will be paying for the date, we breed them to believe they must take up a skill or career that can provide enough for an entire family to live on. Also, men and women alike value men that are paid more and hold jobs of higher status. Essentially, “the content of masculinity and femininity [is] always in flux. Placing people already classed as ‘male’ or ‘female’ into legal structures, financial relationships, and emergent states.”

It broke my heart that this man’s self-confidence in his ability to love and care for his family dwindled on a preconceived notion of what men should be that was placed on him long before he ever would have realized.

No one’s value should be placed on their income. No one’s value should be placed on their job status. This man’s value should be placed on the amount of love he bestowed through his words and actions over anything else. I fear it will be long before we realize that love can’t be measured by a dollar sign.

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This isn’t just happening in the states, either. While in 2016, President Barack “signed into law a bill mandating diaper change tables in every bathroom of a federal building- meaning men’s restrooms, too” (although this clearly isn’t necessarily what’s happening in practice according to my dad friend, Jake), Elizabeth Porto, an Ontario-based mother has had enough with the gender-biases. Elizabeth and Mr. Porto claim themselves to be tag-team parents and equals when it comes to parental duties and started one of “at least six online petitions in Canada demanding baby stations accessible to all.”

Now, if you ask me, it seems ridiculous that this would even be something to debate about. Don’t men do half the work in creating a human life? They should be doing half the diaper changes too, if you ask me.

Moreover, it seems that men DO want to be doing half the diaper changing! As Jeremy McCall, a sponsor of another Ontario-based petition and president of the Dad Club London, proclaims, “It feels like getting punished for wanting to be good dads.”

Unfortunately, as I’ve been doing my research, the problem doesn’t simply stem from a lack of government interference. The backlash stems from private businesses who are concerned about the cost or space parameters that they would have to take into consideration when installing a changing table in a mens’ restroom. If this is the case- if small businesses are worried about reconstructing spaces to make this necessity available to all parents, I just wonder why it wasn’t an issue that was thought about when creating the businesses in question. 

I love the way Elizabeth Porto, a former restaurant owner and now federal occupational health and safety officer, sums up her opinion that is fully supported by myself and I’m sure parents all over the world, “Don’t tell me there’s no space for change tables. If we fit them in airplane restrooms, we can find a solution for small restaurant bathrooms.”

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