Response To Nonfiction

1324 Words6 Pages
Trying to decide between one’s job and the people that matter most to them can be extremely difficult and can leave someone very stressed out and over-worked. Trying to handle both is surely a balancing act. The articles, “Double Daddy,” “The Diary of a Mad Blender,” and “The Child’s View of Working Parents,” all have to do with the same issues: parents, and their choosing of family and home life, or work. The authors of these articles have done different studies and interviews that helped enlighten their readers about the difficult lives of parents in today society. In the article, “Double Daddy,” Penny Parker discusses fathers and the struggles they have trying to balance work with home life. Parker opens the article by describing what fathers are doing away from work, helping their families and tending to the needs of their children. Parker then moves on to the information she has gathered from interviews and other magazine articles. Referred to as “daddy stress” by Forbes magazine, the weight of responsibility generated from managing a job and a family is affecting not only single fathers, who are already stressed out by having to act as both parents, but married fathers as well. As quoted by Linda Dunlap, chairwoman of the psychology department at Morist College, men are starting to say, “I’m working my tail off to get ahead, for the most part of my family, but I’m not spending anytime with my family. This doesn’t make sense.” It’s not fair for working fathers to be overwhelmed with work and not able spend time with their families, which they obviously deserve. In the second half of the article, Parker focuses on Brian Wills, a stay-at-home-dad who had left his job in order to stay at home with his children. Wills picked up work as a freelance copywriter and became more involved in his children’s lives; spending an equal amount of time with each of them,
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