Who;s your Daddy? Where he at? You ever see him? These are common questions asked from kids to each other on the playground and in schools. In fact in many schools the teacher doesn’t instruct students to go home and remind their parents about blah, blah. They say, go tell whomever you live with at home or who takes care of you to remember blah, blah.  Everyone just cheered Bruce Jenner for killing off his Dad image to his 10 children. Now that he is Katlin can his kids still call him Dad? It is no longer the image of the strong athlete they knew. But it is all just fine somehow in this generation. Truly anything goes. Anyone can fill that Dad position in any kind of family.

I was happy to meet a girl that finally took me seriously,   that believed in me and who wanted me in her life. Most women do not need men anymore. Women are opinionated, intelligent goal driven machines that seem to have their lives planned out. They can have a baby anytime they want to and not necessarily include a man into their lives to have that Dad role to their children. Men are just sperm flowing geysers but a woman is the vessel, the nurturer, the suffering martyr who has to pass a human being through her tiny body,   and if you are lucky enough to have her want your geyser of sperm, want to change her entire life to bear your child that could come out looking just like you, it is a wonderful thing. The cherry on top is when she says she wants you in her life for the rest of your life and she wants you side by side her to raise the most wonderful child in the world.  Your child and you now have a new name DAD.

Many new roles for Dad is that Daddy is home. Mommy can get a better paying job now so Dad is home raising the kids. Dads are   raising   kids that don’t look like them at all and are not from their gene pool but they are being Dad. Some Dads are lucky to be able to get parental leave from their jobs, as much as six weeks off, to spend some time at home with their newborns but many companies in America still do not offer that to their employees. Price Waterhouse is a great company offering Dad paid leave. According to the United Nations, 71 countries offer paid leave for their Dads. The United States is not on that list. The United States also lags behind in the world for paid mothers. In fact we are   one of two countries in the world that does not provide paid maternity leave for the mothers. The other country is Papua New Guinea a small country in Australia. Sounds like a joke but it is a reality.

Congress could care less about American families. There have been some small changes. In 1993 President Clinton signed into law The Family and Medical Leave Act. Or (FM LA). It grants citizens up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and is only offered to companies with 50 or more employees. You also would have had to have worked 1,250 hours in a 12 month period. That leaves an estimate of about 40% of other workers out of luck. Most people can’t afford to take 12 weeks off from work unpaid so they don’t even take advantage of the law. There is evidence out there that seems to indicate that if Dad’s take off from work when their children are just born, they tend to be more in the child’s life throughout the years to come.

A Boston College study says that most Dad’s take off about two weeks. Many Dads fear that even taking off only two weeks may have adverse effects on their careers. There is still a stigma that Dads have to be the primary bread winners for the family. There is plenty of work place pressure to even make a Dad feel comfortable taking a leave from their job for Parental   Leave weather it is paid or unpaid. Daniel Murphy The second baseman for the New York Mets was critic sized in the press for taking off from games. Yet according to another survey 80% said they would be in favor of paid leave for new parents.

This year at his State of the Union Address President Obama who grew up without a father pushed for a vote by congress for paid maternity leave for Americans. The Democrats responded with a proposal called The Family Act that would provide three months paid leave up to 66% of a monthly salary.  California passed the countries first Paid Leave Law back in 2002 offering workers six weeks of paid leave at up to 55% of their wages. It is employee funded through a parole tax. Since then 91% of employees have no problem with the extra tax on their check. No law is going to make a person a better parent but perhaps if there were more Dad’s present in kids’ lives we would have better kids. A 21 year old kid just shot up people praying in a church.  Maybe if divorce was outlawed until kids had a chance to mature less buys would be holding guns making their own poor decisions. So Happy Father’s Day Dad. You earned it.