Jeremy Adam Smith is the editor of Shareable.net and an author and blogger whose work focuses on family and community life. Prior to helping launch Shareable.net in October 2009, Jeremy was the senior editor of Greater Good magazine, the founding director of the Independent Press Development Fund, and publisher of Dollars and Sense magazine. He blogs about the politics of parenting at Daddy Dialectic.[1] In 2010-11, Smith will be a Knight fellow at Stanford University.[2]
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Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift: How Stay-at-Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms, and Shared Parenting are Transforming the American Family (Beacon Press, June 2009); co-editor of The Compassionate Instinct (WW Norton, January 2010); and co-editor of Are We Born Racist? (Beacon Press, August 2010). He is also the author of numerous essays, articles, and short stories for publications that include Mothering (magazine), San Francisco Chronicle, Wired (magazine), and Utne Reader. He blogs regularly for Mothering magazine, and is the founder of the blog Daddy Dialectic. Smith has also collaborated with the web show DadLabs to produce a series of segments on the science of fatherhood, and has appeared on Nightline, Forum with Michael Krasny, and other TV and radio shows.
Smith’s writing—much of which covers family life from a male but pro-feminist perspective—has been acclaimed by feminist intellectuals such as Miriam Peskowtiz,[3] Shira Tarrant,[4] Stephanie Coontz,[4] Rebecca Walker,[4] and Lisa Jervis,[4] who calls The Daddy Shift "a major contribution." SUNY sociologist Michael Kimmel also praised The Daddy Shift as "impassioned and insightful, careful and compassionate."[4] The 2009 book argues that as the definition of fatherhood has grown to encompass both caregiving and breadwinning, men are better equipped today than in the past to survive layoffs and other economic calamities. He also argues that workplace and public policy must change to recognize that the definition of fatherhood has changed.
On March 25, 2007, at the liberal website Talking Points Memo, feminist lawyer and author Linda Hirshman harshly criticized Smith and the blogger Rebeldad, whom she describes as "legendary stay-at home dads of the Internet." Smith, she writes, "didn't even stay home a year ...I'd hate to be the woman with the desk next to [Smith], taking family leave while he minds the workplace."[5] Smith responded three weeks later on his blog, Daddy Dialectic, saying "Dads like me and Rebeldad are not really her target,” wrote Smith. “Instead she is attacking the very idea of caregiving."[6]