Are mums more attached to their babies than dads?

@ancientgran
Can you seriously think fathers don't care.

No one has said that. Of course good fathers love their children and vice versa.

Maybe working long days in a demanding job to provide for their baby shows how much they care.

that is exactly what i meant about fathers and mothers having different but important roles in the early days.

dads can clean, cook, shop, change bedclothes, change nappies etc. Decent men understand that their role in the early days is to support their child and partner however they can.

Babies want their mothers and vice versa when they are tiny. This is not social conditioning. It's due to the fact that they were literally part of the same body for most of the previous year.

Denying this isn't feminist and it does nothing to support women's rights and wellbeing. In fact it undermines everything that is powerful and unique in that experience.

If you’re expecting equal parenting you’re deading for disappointment.

Don't set your bar so low.

Have you seen film of the dads in Turkey and Syria, out of their minds with grief as dead children are pulled from the rubble? Sitting cradling their one surviving child? Can you seriously think fathers don't care. Maybe working long days in a demanding job to provide for their baby shows how much they care.

One of my babies was an EMCS, I had to have a general as there wasn't time for an epidural. By the time I woke up DH had helped bath and dress baby, was happily cuddling baby while singing a lullaby, as he knew I wanted to breast feed as soon as baby was delivered he got a very groggy me into a suitable position and managed to get baby on the breast. I think they bonded.

You are likely to feel very differently once you have given birth.

I also wanted my partner to feel like an equal parent. I was amazed by the very visceral difference in the way we felt and in the way our babies responded to us.

We had to move house when my first baby was 2 days old and he had to go and sort it out for hours. Being separated from my baby would have been truly painful and extremely distressing for me at that stage. It's difficult to describe the pain of that separation. It's like losing part of yourself.

Fathers and mothers have different, both important, roles in the early months.

I would advise you not to take specific advice from posters on this thread that might actively harm your baby.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/helping-your-baby-to-sleep/#:~:text=For%20the%20first%206%20months,(sudden%20infant%20death%20syndrome).

You say we can only be guided by our own experiences but then make out your own experience is fact 🤔

A baby can be equally close to either parent. That is my experience of my baby and my husband.

We haven’t been clear, the studies some of us are referring to show that the baby bonds closets with the primary caregiver(s). They show that this is true regardless of whether the primary caregiver(s) include the baby’s mother or not.

Yes there are issues if a baby is taken away from any primary caregiver…but primary caregiver is not synonymous with mother. Primary caregiver can be any adult, or even an older sibling.

I think it is a different feeling because of hormones. You see it in female animals, when their young are taken away to soon. Presumably natures way of stopping people/animals abandoning their babies. That isn’t to say that men don’t love their babies just as much, but they don’t have any physical changes when their child is born. They can be a father without even knowing about it.

I guess your children must be adults by now then. My eldest is 13 and it was certainly the advice then.

Perhaps don't advise new mothers to do things which are widely known to increase the chance of their baby dying if your advice is 20 years out of date?

Or, you know, Google it?

No, it's nothing to do with you. I was referring to two (at least) other individuals who are very active on different sorts of threads that are about denying women's biology.

Equal parenting can happen, it society that isn’t set up to support it. Some of us have managed it. My DH was a SAHD as were other officers’ husbands.

I wouldn't say indistinguishable but yes a baby will adjust to anyone quite easily up to about the age of 2 and will form the strongest bond with their primary care giver.

Exactly. There's evidence to support this.

With DH in the army, he was away more than home in the first few years. (Tours, exercises, courses...) Went away when DD1 was 2 weeks old for a few months, completely missed DD2s birth.

He's always had a very close bond with them. Maybe circumstances made him try more than taking it for granted.

I find some comments like not trusting the father to take the baby for 30mjns quite bizarre... DH loved taking them out in the pram for a bit. Added bonus is it usually caused them to nap!

I believe the bond is created when you work at it, not just occurring. But you don't need to be physically present all the time to create it.

I'm assuming that's a dig at me.
It's okay for people to have a different view to you.
I'm not denying anything I just believe that men and women are equally capable of bonding with their child and raising children.

Agree with this. My husband and I equally share all the feeds, nappies etc and baby is perfectly fine with whoever. However, I do feel she has a preference to him and he is the better one at calming her down when she is upset. Probably because during the first 2 weeks after my c section he would attend to baby when she cried as I was slow and in pain getting up.

Are there (that’s a genuine question)?
monkey I’ve been lead to believe that early attachment in infants/young children is extremely important and that loss of a primary care giver, even, at a very young age can be very detrimental. Hence some children having attachment disorder (not sure if that is the correct term). Also there are a lot of infant adoptees quite vocal about their belief that infant/maternal separation can cause trauma for the baby (obviously it is necessary some times).

I just find it hard to believe that you could take away the one person an infant/young child knows, without there being some kind of impact.

I have no idea what the recommendations are now but that certainly wasn't the advice then. It wasnt mentioned by Health Visitor/Midwife.
I also had cot bumpers which I understand are out now!

So pregnancy and giving birth just happens in a sort of separate module, in your view, that has zero interaction with the rest of the person?

I didn't say that did I?
But men and women aren't as different as some people would have us believe.

Women don't have magical childcare powers. If you take breastfeeding out of the equation then men and women are equally capable of caring for a child. Studies show that if dads are actively involved in caring for a newborn their levels of oxytocin rise which aids bonding.
The issue is that lots of men aren't actively involved in childcare from the off so don't bond in the same way as mum does.
That doesn't mean it's not possible.

I don’t believe the poster was suggesting that there are male and female brains. But rather what is going on in our minds is linked to what is going on in our bodies.

After I gave birth I was surprised by how primal my responses were, including my ability to wake just before DD woke and made her demands known.

I'm backing away from this thread now but it's very interesting and more than a little concerning to me to see who the specific posters are who are highly invested in denying the biological realities of motherhood.

Exactly. There are dozens of studies showing this.

I wouldn't say indistinguishable but yes a baby will adjust to anyone quite easily up to about the age of 2 and will form the strongest bond with their primary care giver.

Of course men are wired differently

a man’s body doesn’t physically react the same way as a woman’s when his baby is hungry

i had the feeling of milk rushing in long after I stopped breast feeding (and also mixed fed)

the experience of women waking from their sleep before their child even calls out is an experience I hear over and over again yet men I know have not felt this

are bodies are connected in a different way a man’s connection is from love and a desire to protect not from the need to

Hahahaha

Why on earth would the baby feel equally close to the Dad when baby has only just met the dad and baby has lived inside you for nine months?

We can only be guided by own experiences. My DH and all the other dads I’ve met had zero maternal instinct. That’s why it’s called maternal instinct. They gradually fall in love with the baby (and vice versa) but it takes time.

If you’re expecting equal parenting you’re deading for disappointment.

It's biological - we are female mammals so in general it will always be the mother who is primary caregiver.

Having a baby wired my DHs brain too - he wouldn't have wanted to leave for 2 days when he was really small. But it's still different.