Author Archives: T.B. White

About T.B. White

lives in the New York City area with his wife and two daughters, 6 and 3. He is a college professor who has written essays about Media and the O.J. Simpson case, Woody Allen, and other areas of popular culture. He brings a unique perspective about parenting to families.com as the "fathers" blogger. Calling himself "Working Dad" is his way of turning a common phrase on its head. Most dads work, of course, but like many working moms, he finds himself constantly balancing his career and his family, oftentimes doing both on his couch.

First Baseball Game

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It’s hard to describe the feeling a father has taking his daughter to her first baseball game. To be honest, my oldest does not know enough about the game to care as much as I do, but I felt the time was right: it was an afternoon game during her “Easter/Passover break” from school, the weather was going to be warm and sunny, our team was doing really well, so it just seemed to make sense. She’s seen the stadium from a distance, because it’s near the Hall of Science, but this was her first time in a place that … Continue reading →

Dads and Depression, Anyone?

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I wanted to write an article about web resources for fathers suffering from depression. Problem is, there is only a limited area of depression that gets talked about in relation to dads, and a lot of that material tries to get new fathers to understand postpartum depression in their wives, though medical research has begun to suggest that fathers also suffer from it. As far as fathers are concerned, what I’ve read about is the adjustment issue: how you are supposed to adjust to your wife’s new relationships – with her baby and with you. Fathers have a lot of … Continue reading →

Playing Catch

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One of the most vivid memories of my youth is playing catch with my father. Footballs, Frisbees, baseballs: whatever we had, we threw, over the course of two different backyards. Even when each of us was angry at the other, we found a way to talk, by throwing. There are many traditional father-son activities that we did not do. My dad was not a hunter or a fisher. And he was not mechanically inclined, so I never passed him any tools to help him as he looked underneath any of the cars I remember us having. His was a white-collar … Continue reading →

What is a “Traditional” Family?

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Funny, how these posts get started. I was working my way through a very different post, when I found myself using the phrase “traditional family.” And I laughed. I should know better. Last fall, I assigned my students an essay by writer Barbara Kingsolver, in which she speaks about the meaning of “family.” I won’t go over the entire piece; my focus is on one of her key points. Using historical data, found in a number of sources, notably Stephanie Coontz’ fabulous The Way We Never Were, Kingsolver completely debunks the notion of the “traditional family,” as a conceptual term, … Continue reading →

Marriage Guide Books? What Every Husband Should REALLY Know!

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Heather’s post – “The Marriage Guide Book: What Every Husband Should Know” – made me do some serious – okay, humorous – thinking. Rather than leave a comment, I decided to write a reply to it. I hope it is received in the spirit it was intended. Here’s the advice, straight from husbands, about “what you need to know when you get married..” The original post’s words are in quotes. Mine follow. “Your wife is your partner. You have to treat her as such. You may want to protect her, but you should never take her choices away” – at … Continue reading →

Tattoos for MY Girls???? If it’s Good Enough for Mama…

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Sigh. This is the story of my wife’s tattoo. One that makes it a little difficult for me to lay down the law about body modifications for my girls!!! Of course, the one good thing I can point out about the small outline pattern of dolphins on the back of her neck: she got it when she was thirty. And out of her parents’ house! Once, when she was in high school, she came home with a fake ‘too on her arm. Her mother told her, “that better be a fake one, or I’m getting out the Brillo pad!” She … Continue reading →

The Talk, Guys Version

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I don’t know how many of you got The Talk from your parents. I suppose that there’s more communication mother-to-daughter than father-to-son, if for no other reason than the beginning of the menstrual cycle. I never got such a talk from my dad. In fact, my parents never said much of anything to me about sex. One of the benefits of this, I suppose, is that my information about it was so limited that I was not involved sexually at too young an age. But one of the drawbacks is that my parents simply trusted that my sexual education would … Continue reading →

My Wife is Great (Duh!)

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The stuff she comes up with…. She works really hard at bringing our oldest’s visions to life, be those visions recipes, stories, images, or birthday parties. Since she was two, we have always done a puppet show, which is normally my responsibility. We’ve used hand-puppets and stick puppets, based on whatever is available. Some years I make up a story, like when Dora got to visit Elmo’s World. Last year, we retold the story of Eric Carle’s Little Cloud, and used a spritz bottle to spray our gets with some rain water. But of course, it’s my wife who does … Continue reading →

“I’ve Been Killing Spiders Since I Was Thirty”

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I’m not sure why, but in our culture girls are “taught” that bugs are icky. Maybe it’s the Little Miss Muffett story, I don’t know. I think today it’s getting better; indeed there’s an episode of ELMO’S WORLD on bugs where a video clip shows us a young girl who loves bugs and can describe some of her favorites. But since my wife is, shall we say, uncomfortable, at bugs, I’ve been worried that this fear would be passed along to my daughters. Fortunately, since our oldest is into the Magic School Bus stories and videos, she loves to talk … Continue reading →

Volunteer Dad

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I regularly make appearances at my oldest’s school. I’ve been on a couple of field trips, and every few Fridays I show up for “parent centers,” where a few parents come into school for about forty-five minutes and supervises a range of activities – measuring objects, basic math, language arts, whatever. The children are grouped according to various tables (I think the teacher changes them periodically), and each parent works with a given table on a given day. While the teacher tries to have the parent with their own child’s group, it does not always work out (there are two … Continue reading →