women tend to mediate fatherhood. When men talk about having children it is always in the context of a family.
             The men interviewed saw marriage as a "package deal" where you get a wife and children. When they were picking a wife they were also choosing the mother of their children. Some of the men in his study said that they would not have married a woman if they did not believe she would be a good mother. Townsend concluded that it was the men's meanings that, "children provide structure and cohesion to a marriage, and that romantic love alone, without the cement of shared parenting and the economic partnership of working to support home and family, is a slender thread on which to hang a lifetime together" (Townsend, 123).
             Many of the men relied on their marital relationship with their wife for their paternal relationship with their kids. The women serve as the mediators between fathers and their children. They not only decide when to have children but also when and how the father will interact with his children. Women gained more control over reproduction both morally and physically with the pill and the IUD. Men then took less responsibility for birth control. Once children are born, the woman, since she is generally the primary caretaker, determines what she tells the father about the children and how the father will interact with his children whether it is as playmate, disciplinarian, etc. Townsend argues that both men and women act out gendered stereotypes because we have a highly gendered system of parenting. In doing this men and women continually reinforce a division between the sexes and negotiate gender.
             There are times though that these gender specific roles of mother and father are not as easy to determine. With all the new reproductive technologies there are now different types of mothers and father. With surrogacy you can have a genetic mother, a birth mother and a social mother. You ...