Feeling vindicated somewhat… Finished the introduction to Father Time (I’m a slow reader and am busy caring for people) and it’s basically the argument I made in my masters thesis in 2018. From Hrdy: “men exposed to cues from babies tend to be more other-regarding and generous. Might baby-exposed men also come to prioritize the well-being of children—and the planet—above their own social status… Men first needed to be able to imagine themselves as nurturers as well as protectors and providers.”
Are there any myths, narratives, stories, etc.—religious or otherwise—about men as caregivers? I’m very ignorant of what’s out there. The only ones that comes to mind, strangely, are the Homeric Hymn to Pan (19) and the way Jesus talks about children in the synoptic gospels. Any and all suggestions or ideas are welcome!
“My unexpected finding is that inside every man there lurk ancient caretaking tendencies that render a man every bit as protective and nurturing as the most committed mother.”
1/ As I was doing some research for an essay I’m working on I realized something pretty amazing about Thoreau: when he left Walden in September 1847 it was, among other reasons, to live with Emerson’s wife and children to help care for them and the house while Emerson traveled around Europe.
2/ Walls puts it this way in her biography of Thoreau: “More prosaically, he left because he was called away by someone he could not refuse—Lidian Emerson. Waldo was planning a yearlong lecture tour in Europe, where interest in Transcendentalism and in Emerson himself was growing. As late as August 29, it still appeared that Lidian would board with a friend while her husband was away, but suddenly she invited Henry to live with her and the children instead.
4/4 What’s really interesting to me is not only the way this challenges the misguided but popular mythology about Thoreau’s time at Walden (self-reliant sylvan misanthrope) but the way it strengthens the truer mythology of his life (which I recently wrote about here https://medium.com/bookish-nook/the-genius-of-the-wood-0a97929dfcb9 )