To think that men just actually don’t want to do that much after their OH gives birth?

However most threads like these are overwhelming filled with posters saying how brilliant and hands on supportive their partners are, this wasn't generally the case when my DC were born, 17-25 years ago when me and my friends overwhelmingly did the majority of the childcare and household tasks and our careers took a massive hit so it's really encouraging things are changing.
I do still think however most mothers do put their DC first and make sacrifices that fathers just aren't willing to.

I think what people are challenging, are the ridiculous "all men are useless" generalisations that some posters persist in putting on here.

My eldest dc is 28. My eldest nephew is 32. So I've been close to many people having babies before you as well as during the time yours were young. I was close to a LOT of parents, and only know of one couple where the Dad did very little. So my 'overwhelming' is definitely equal parenting.

My husband was a FT student working weekends when we had DC1. He still pulled his weight. He did a night time bottle whilst studying every night so I could get a longer stretch if sleep. I wouldn’t put up with anytime less. Over the years the years we have earnt about the same, sometimes him more and sometimes me. I’m not a princess and don’t expect him to pay my way. We both bring money and we both run the home and family.

@Mnetcurious Thank you - I see. Shared parental leave wouldn't have been possible for us as I breastfed my baby on demand and a primary teacher!
But hubby did take one day (unpaid) off a week for a year when I returned to work and it was honestly one of the best decisions we ever made.
He was seen as a bit of a legend in the classes which I think he secretly rather enjoyed 😆

There certainly are plenty of truly shit men like you describe. I’ve met a lot of them. I read about them a lot on here. It’s so depressing.

I am so thankful that my H was not one of them. Also self-employed. Couldn’t do enough. I, and my newborns, were waited on hand and foot and he is still a hugely engaged father. I’m not grateful per se, it’s how it should be, but I am certainly relieved.

The men who get complained about on MN don’t want to do much but I don’t know if that proves they’re all useless.

My husband is hands on and very helpful, so not all men are useless. Some women are useless and lazy, some aren’t, too.

Yes (although many companies are now offering longer than the statutory paid two weeks).
But in addition to this, in recent years “shared parental leave” has been introduced by the government, where a woman can choose to “give” part of her maternity leave to the other parent- eg of the whole year she’s entitled to, she might take 6 months and the husband/partner takes 6 months or they spilt it 3 months/9 months etc.

I agree that the gender stereotypes are washing out and becominess defined.

I was away with a friend a couple weeks ago and they have a 2 month old. The running joke was that breastfeeding was the only time in your relationship where you have a building slave. Ie whatever she asked for her husband delivered. This was reflected in all of our relationships.

He paced the floor with the agitated baby while mum after her hot food and his went cold. As soon as mum finished she fed and he ate. He then took the baby back for a Nappy change and paced to get her to nap. The point is while the actually breastfeeding needed to be done with mum every other aspect can and is shared.

In real life I only know of 2 relationships where the leave is treated it as a holiday. One of those was abusive and she finally left him ( thank fuck). The other was an older man who didn't view childcare as his job. However these 2 are the exception not the rule.

Personally I just give back the same energy I get.
They're just company until they've shown otherwise consistently over time.

I don't think every relationship, in terms of men, has to be meaningful or, meaningful in a fixed, certain kind of way.

I have no interest in 'settling' in order to fulfil some dream of family life. Because that dream just isn't relevant unless you meet the perfect person for you in that capacity. And, most people, if they are honest with themselves, won't. Because it's a bloody hard thing to meet someone compatible with similar lifestyle wishes, sane, good, who likes you as much as you like them. And for that to remain consistent long enough to marry and as you raise kids. Highly unlikely, let's be honest.

I think people make a mistake of pursuing the dream and fixating and end up settling to try to obtain it. It's like dreaming of being a billionaire. And missing out on actual life, twisting yourself in knots trying to be rich.

Find other dreams. Treat men as you would anyone else with regards to how they treat you. Speak your mind whenever you feel like it but don't chase after crap people. Live your life. Find new dreams that don't involve other people to obtain.

How do you continue a marriage with a man who left you alone with a baby, to recover from major surgery while he fucked off for hours every day?
I genuinely don’t know anyone having babies right now who would think they was acceptable, man or woman.

I actually think a lot of the time the generalisation is perpetuated by people who are older and lived their life with much stricter gender roles and so continue to push the idea that fathers have no role with newborns and don’t do anything until the baby is about one but I think those sorts of relationships are going further into the minority.
I have young babies at the minute and I know several friends where the husband took months off to care for their child either at the same time or separately to their wife. I also met a good amount of dads at baby classes this time.
I certainly know a single father who played golf on paternity leave.
While more of the running of the household falls on women I don’t actually think it’s all that rare for a father to be involved in the care of his infant anymore.
The “mental load” stuff will gradually change, but sometimes we forget both the wife and the husband most likely grew up in a household where the mother put her career on hold to care for children and lead the running of the house so the built in norm of who does what needs to be constantly challenged in a society where both parents work.

I think the paternity leave is a great idea to try to reset the balance for working parents plus bonding opportunities.

Dh got 1 week leave and took a week holiday. He was brilliant but when he went to back to work there was an expectation that he worked and I did home without the understanding that home was 24 hours a day. We got there in the end but it took time for us to reach a fair compromise

I agree OP - DH is amazing in many ways but there will always be a little part of me that feels so let down with how he was on paternity leave.

He viewed it as a 2 week holiday which meant playing golf, going to the gym and running lots of personal errands. All accompanied by lots of moaning about being tired and having to do all the cooking (reheating the batch cooking I did pre baby!!). I’d had a c section was basically house bound while he disappeared for hours every day.

My husband only got 2 weeks' paid paternity leave. Isn't that still the case in England?

Almost all the men I know who.have become dads in the past few years have taken 6-7 months parental leave, but that's in Scandinavia. Although at a national level men still take only about 1/3 of parental leave, it's frowned upon in probably most social circles (definitely in my circle /workplace) if a dad doesn't take at least a few months parental leave.

There are lots of rules around it to stop fathers from using it just to play golf make sure it serves its purpose. There are 90 days that can't be transferred. If dad doesn't use them, you lose them. And only 60 days can be taken by both parents at the same time, so no playing golf or going on long bike rides while the mum is doing the actual childcare.

I don’t respect her opinion at all, as she has no concept that others might not have found it that way, when you’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid to boot to not realise many women find newborns hard.

You've slightly misunderstood how the scheme works.

You can both be on shared parental leave at the same time, and he could have taken it at any point in the first year.

If you have annual leave that needs using, for instance, you could switch to annual leave for the last 4 weeks of the year and that frees up 4 weeks of SPL for him to take at any point.

To those objecting to the generalizing here - it is a verifiable fact that domestic violence is more likely to appear in a relationship when the woman is pregnant or in the post partum period. That's behaviour of the worst kind and it happens far too often. Those ringing the praises of their husbands or partners here need to realise how lucky and perhaps also how unusual they are.

YANBU

I'd like to see some rigorous research into pnd and I'd like to interview women who decide to divorce when their children are young to examine the impact of men's appalling post natal behaviour on the decision to call a halt to the relationship.

I have several friends who have been divorced since their children were young. All of them had their moments of utter disbelief and disgust when they came home from the hospital with their babies, some after a CS.

They saw behaviour that they said they could never unsee - one husband taking off for a weekend of golf leaving his wife one week post CS with the toddler and baby to fend for themselves, one husband sulking about being expected to entertain his own toddler and prepare simple toddler meals for two days in a row (one day was the straw that almost broke the camel's back apparently), one husband who ignored the shopping list his wife had prepared for him (diddums didn't know what was in the fridge, freezer, or pantry or what anyone liked or needed to eat) and bought a 24 pack of beer, three packets of hot dogs and a steak instead, for a family of toddler twins, himself, and his wife. The list had included items like yogurt, bread, apples, cheese, mince, pasta, cans of tomatoes, sliced meats, lettuce, peas, eggs... Then gave her flak for picking up the phone and ordering food for them all to eat.

Even friends who decided their husbands could be forgiven for atrocious failures post partum (and not after their first babies, so there was no excuse) had stories to tell of older children who hadn't been dressed for days and hadn't been fed anything but breakfast cereal while mom was in hospital, their hair untouched, laundry festering. Absolutely disgraceful conduct by grown men capable of holding down responsible jobs who simply didn't care enough to engage their brains and do simple parenting and adulting.

Even on this thread, men who are doing what women do daily with babies are ''helping'', ''hands on'' etc when really, they are just parenting as they should be.

It is really ingrained when a man parenting is ''helping'' because it implies that ultimately, childcare is the woman's responsibility.

My DP did want to 'help', fortunately he works for himself so it was possible. He did about a third of the school runs / tea / homework when they were little. No nightimes due to bf. The whole distribution of DC related tasks was tough. I'm glad we're past it.

2/4 of my newborns were not massively difficult. But that’s a BAD dickhead comment.

Also some men misunderstand what parental leave is. When I worked in London in finance one of the directors was talking about all the rounds of golf he’ll play while on parental leave…not sure who was supposed to take care of his baby while he was at the golf course.

This is spot on. A policy change doesn't undo generations of culture that still assumes the ideal worker is a man with a wife at home taking care of everything in the domestic sphere. When anyone deviates from that, the system punishes them. By "the system" I mean established work norms, and both conscious and unconscious bias.

But, policy does eventually influence culture, and vice versa. Progress on any front can slowly chip away at the problem. It's a shame that it's moving so slowly but it is moving.

I think it's because most employers have terrible policies, rather than dad's not wanting it. DH can take 1 week at full pay, 1 week statutory pay and anything more than that us unpaid. Whereas I get 8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half pay plus smp, then 13 weeks smp. I'll then be returning to work and Dh applying for a month's unpaid parental leave as I'm the higher earner so it make more sense for him to be off in the unpaid bit. Baby will then start nursery at 10 months. I also intend on breastfeeding so need to be off longer and we don't see the point in being off together beyond those first 2 weeks as thats then just more time paying for childcare rather than one of us doing it.