Jeremy Adam Smith

Biography

“Jeremy Adam Smith writes so well and so honestly about the love of staying home with his son, about the economics of his family life, and about the politics of our nation at large. Whoever doesn't already think the public and the domestic are linked needs to spend some time on his blog, Daddy Dialectic, or read one of his essays. Thanks, Jeremy, for all the writing you do.”--Miriam Peskowitz, Author, The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars and The Daring Book for Girls

“Jeremy Adam Smith says what I wish I could about the politics of fatherhood and what it means to be a dad dedicated to equity, change, and social justice for our children and for all children.”-- Daddy in a Strange Land


Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift, forthcoming from Beacon Press in 2009, and co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct, forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co. in 2009.

He is senior editor of Greater Good magazine, published by the U.C. Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, a quarterly that collects, synthesizes, and interprets groundbreaking scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships.

Jeremy is also the founder of Daddy Dialectic, a group blog that explores the experiences of twenty-first-century dads, which has earned praise from the Washington Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and many corners of the blogosphere.

His essays, short stories, and articles on parenting, popular culture, urban life, and politics have appeared in AlterNet, The Nation, Mothering, Mothers Movement Online, Our Stories, Public Eye, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books, most recently the anthology Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power. Jeremy has also been interviewed by many media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, Nightline, The Forum with Michael Krasny, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, KPFA, Newhouse News Service, Toronto Star, SF Weekly, and Chicago Reader.

His book, The Daddy Shift, will tell the stories of fathers who have embraced caregiving and egalitarian marriages, explore the hopes and ideals that inform their choices, and analyze the economic and social developments that have made their choices possible. Stay-at-home dads represent a logical culmination of fifty years of family change, from a time when the idea of men caring for children was literally inconceivable, to a new era when at-home dads are a small but growing part of the landscape. Their numbers and cultural importance will continue to rise—and Smith argues that they must rise, as the global, creative, technological economy makes flexible gender roles more and more possible and desirable.

“Forty years ago, a man who wanted to share child-care equally with his wife would have been called 'deviant' and a wife who wanted him to would have been condemned as an 'unnatural' mother,” says Stephanie Coontz, historian and author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. “The Daddy Shift shows how far we have come and how much we have to gain by completing this revolution in marriage and parenthood.”

You can pre-order The Daddy Shift at Amazon.com.

Selected Works

Blog
Daddy Dialectic
“A really neat site” – Our Bodies, Our Blog “Thoughtful” – Washington Post
Essays & Stories
Recent Publications
"Entertaining and thought-provoking.” – Lit Haven
Magazine
Greater Good Magazine
A new voice of compassion, hope, and inspiration.
Nonfiction
The Daddy Shift
How Stay-at-Home Fathers, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting are Transforming the American Family

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