Moms Playgroup Bans At-Home Dad, Citing "Security of Our Children"

A family moves to a new town and the father, who shares child-care duties with his wife, makes an effort to meet other parents and set up a play date for his toddler son. He discovers the local Mommy & Me Meetup Group Web site and signs up, and begins receiving regular emails notifying him of upcoming get-togethers.

With both the father and mother working different schedules, he finds it hard to make the play dates, but finally, after a few months, is able to fit one in. He goes online and adds his name to the list of attendees.

He then gets an email from the group telling him not to come.

Sound odd to you in this day of stay-at-home dads and female CEOs? It's a true story. The place is Surrey, British Columbia, and the father is Rick Kaselj. ("Moms club to Surrey dad: we 'hate to discriminate, but...," Surrey Now Online, Oct. 14, 2008).

The play-date group: The Cloverdale Mommy & Me Meetup Group.

The email Rick received from the group read in part: "I hate to discriminate, but hope you can understand when it comes to the security of our children and especially since you have not been able to attend a meetup." (From the Surrey Now Online article.)

Jennifer Grenz, the original creator of the Cloverdale Meetup group, posted a long comment on the at home dad Web site saying she was "horrified" by the new organizer's decision to exclude Kaselj.

"My original vision for the group was that it be a PARENTS group," she wrote. "I wanted the group to include all parents because I have met and befriended a number of dads that stay home with their kids."

With regard to the note on the Cloverdale Mommy & Me Meetup Group Web site (which has since been taken down) -- "This Group is specific to moms only as requested by a majority of its members" -- Grenz wrote that "a poll went out to the group regarding this issue," however, "the poll was confusing as it had multiple questions and not one that pointedly asked whether dads should be allowed in the group with a yes or no answer."

She went on to say that she is planning to start up a new group that will "include all parents" and attract "forward thinking people."

The at home dad site reported later that Kaselj and Grenz are working together to launch this new play group.

In defense of the Cloverdale group's decision to ban men, Amanda Carkener, a member of the club, sent an email to Surrey Now Online:

"We talk about the things we went through during our pregnancies, our postpartum bodies and minds among various other things," Carkener wrote. "Unless this dad physically gave birth to his son, he would have little to talk about in that department."

Jay Timms, a marriage and family counselor who was interviewed by Surrey Now Online, believes the group took the wrong approach, however. Fathers are important in the healthy development of children, he said, and they should be encouraged to participate fully in their lives.

"Parenting is parenting whether you're a woman or a man," Timms told the publication.

My own brother has provided some insight into the Cloverdale group's decision to exclude Kaselj. The divorced father of a five-year-old girl, who shares child-care duties with his ex-wife, he has attended many Meetup.com get-togethers.

("Anyone who is willing to pay $12 to $15 a month for the service can set up their own meetup group of whatever type," he tells me.)

"[Like Kaselj] I have also felt a little frustrated with the fact that I'm locked out of the 'mommy' groups," my brother told me, "but I do understand."

That Kaselj didn't attend group get-togethers early on may have made the organizers nervous.

"Even the co-ed parent meetups require you to attend three meetups a month and the first within two weeks in order to discourage 'lurkers' inside the private wall, checking out the women and their children along with the pictures they post to their profiles for the other mommies to enjoy."

Not to say that Kaselj is a "lurker," of course, but this does help explain why the new organizer of the Cloverdale group may have been apprehensive.

After I posted the above content on my Web site -- TripletsDad.com -- Amanda Carkener, a member of the Cloverdale playgroup sent this comment:

"That is exactly why I agreed with my group's decision to remove Rick: the lurker factor. It was (for me) nothing personal against him as a person or a dad, but for the fact that over 2 or 3 months, even though there are events planned every day (sometimes 2-3 events per day), he couldn't be bothered to meet with us. It was my fear that he could have been a stalker, having never had the opportunity to meet him."

This begs the question, however: would a woman be treated the same way? Or, as a reader put it: "Would they react that way to a woman who was a member of the group for three months before being able to attend an outing?"

No, I think not. And this shows the problems men face when they become at-home dads. Society does -- sometimes subtley, sometimes egregiously, as in this case -- discriminate against them, assuming the worst, where at-home moms are given the benefit of the doubt.

Incidentally, why did it take so long for Kaselj to come to the first get-together? It may be because he has been extremely busy trying to help support his family with his new business.

Sources:

http://www.canada.com/surreynow/news/story.html?id=f9c4dd2f-d9bc-4f76-bacf-22905730c3f6

http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/athomedad/index.blog

http://tripletsdad.blogspot.com/2008/10/dad-banned-from-moms-play-group-starts.html