Your views on getting dads more engaged and other questions....

Others are right, the onus should definitely NOT be on women to "encourage" men to be involved and engaged. There's something about the way that sentence is phrased which is simply just reinforcing the very idea they are claiming to be questioning.

Do you feel that current policies around maternity leave, paternity leave, work, childcare etc assume, and therefore usually lead to women adopting the primary caregiver roles for children? If so, what do you think about this?
To a degree, yes. Shared parental leave is very new, and I can imagine many men not feeling comfortable in their workplace asking to take X months off. It is a start, at least. But the thing that is very hard to get over is the biological fact that if woman is breastfeeding, it is harder for her to share that parental leave.

How involved would you say your DCs' dad is in their daily lives, and how much support did he give you during pregnancy and birth? Were you happy with this level? Is more support always a good thing?
I am coming from a different perspective to many posters, probably, as DP does more 'childcare' (for lack of a better phrase) than I do most weeks.
He was a bit rubbish during pregnancy though He fell into that trap that I hear other partners on MN doing, of not quite finding it all real until the baby came. But that was a first pregnancy, I can imagine he will be much more helpful in any other pregnancies.

Why are the RCM even taking part in this? Shouldn't they be focused on delivering maternity services and looking after their members?

It's not their job to run around after the poor men who can't be bothered to look after their own children any more than it is ours.

All that these panels will achieve is that they will end up listing various spurious "perceived barriers" to men doing childcare, none of which have anything to do with the root cause, which is that men who don't do childcare see themselves as above domestic drudgery, and will palm it off on women where society lets them get away with that.

And I totally agree with cailin that the bottom line is that the status quo benefits men and so there is no real incentive for wholesale change.

Musicalia -- that's an interesting point. I didn't mention my wants because for me personally it feels obvious that equally shared parenting is a great setup, but it's true that not everyone feels that way.

I do think that even women who want to be the SAHP and primary carer must get frustrated though if their partner can't or won't take care of his own DC for more than a hour, if she can never go out or do anything because DH doesn't know how to put the kids to bed, etc. Working FT doesn't mean you can't be engaged with your DC, but I think a lot of men hide behind that to escape domestic drudgery, as they see it.

Do you know what BertieBotts? I do ALL that.

And I (when not on ML) work FT in a senior role.

And I am the (not insignificantly) higher earner.

And I am a feminist.

And I think I'm really lucky to have such an equal partner who is involved with his kids' lives and contributes to the housework. (And compared to most other men we know, he is)

Huh.

So true cailin. You see it on here all the time - even highly abusive men described as 'a fantastic dad' because they occasionally do bath time or play with Lego or take the child to the park i.e. all the fun stuff, none of the tedious stuff. All men have to do is just show their faces occasionally to get a Father of the Year award in some people's minds. And the poor mother who, as you say, may be delusional with sleep deprivation and plagued with illnesses she just can't shake because she's so run down, has to endure being told how 'lucky' she is. Like sleep deprivation and looking after somebody else's needs for every second of every day and night is no big deal for women. Ugh.

I don't think that is the general feeling. I think the general feeling is that early years parenting is hard and often thankless and you can genuinely feel as though it steals your identity a bit. I don't think it's hard to extrapolate why men are less involved as a group - historically, they have the choice and women do not. In the modern day, men still tend to make the choice and women have to pick up the slack because nobody else will do it. It's very very rare that women take a lesser role and don't do any of the involved work - reading with children, changing nappies, knowing what they are likely to eat, shopping, meal planning (or just choosing on the day), cooking. Potty training, medical appointments, taking sick days from work when children are ill, knowing which school or friend or activity events are coming up and making sure the relevant thing gets done. Noticing when behaviour may indicate different issues (and not just a behaviour issue/personality trait) and trying to get to the bottom of that. Buying new clothes, doing the laundry, arranging for new clothes when the old ones are outgrown. Deciding on an appropriate bedtime and helping that bedtime to happen. Making sure teeth and hair are brushed, cream and medications are taken, bodies are clean. Setting up and maintaining or liasing with childcare and/or education arrangements, arranging birthday parties.

Plenty of dads do these things, of course, but I've never come across a family where the dad does ALL of these things and the mum does none or hardly any, whereas I know of quite a few where the dad doesn't have a clue about most of these things and the mum does all or 80+% of them.

The bottom line is that somebody has to look after children and unless you earn enough and have space for a live in nanny, that has to be one or both of the parents, even when both parents work.

If it is a simple choice then why is it so weighted? There's nothing wrong with that choice but if it was as simple as that then surely we'd see equal numbers of families with a working mother and SAHF?

Plus it's very very possible for parents to be involved while they are working. It's about the things that they do with their children when not working, not about choosing to be the primary carer.

My DH is very involved in our DCs lives but only because I've undone a lifetime's worth of conditioning that told him childrearing was women's work that was beneath him and nothing must interfere with him being Important in his Important Real Job.

Both men and women honestly believe that it is acceptable for the mother never to have a single full night of sleep because she is on maternity leave. So, once she becomes a mother, the woman forfeits her right to a basic human need - sleep - while the man who is Oh So Important gets his Important sleep so he can do Important things because clearly all the woman does is sit on her arse - babies don't need any looking after do they? When you have that level of disregard for a person's needs then deeper questions need to be asked than just "how can we get them to play more?"

The fact is, the status quo benefits men hugely. In order to have children all they have to do is have an orgasm in the right place at the right time. Society has it structured so that from there on in the result is the woman's problem. The man can carry on with no physical disadvantages, no affect on his career, no sleepless nights, and still be considered fantastic if he happens to go to Tesco or the park with their child in tow now and again. He gets all the advantages of a family with none of the disadvantages - why change that?

Dreamingbohemian - your post is really interesting, as it says an awful lot about what your DH wants/wanted - but nothing about what you want. Are your views the same as his?

Generally, the feeeling on here is that men aren't as involved as they could be due to social barriers/prejudices/recalcitrant employers. But in many, many cases their involvement is less than that of their (female) partner because they both want it that way. For every couple who would like to share childcare and earn the same as one another, there is a couple where both parties are happy for the woman to look after the children (and earn nothing) while the man earns the salary. I think that's a major factor in any discussion about why fathers are (often) less involved as parents than mothers are.

I also think it's not something women can fix on behalf of men.

DP is self employed so shared parental leave would have been ruinous if we'd taken it but, obviously, for couples with a self employed mother and employed father it would be good if leave could be shared.

When I went on my first maternity leave I was very naive. I had no idea how much it would fuck up my career and the biggest obstacle to getting back on track was the cost of childcare. If childcare costs hadn't eclipsed my salary (I have a small gap between my eldest 2) then I would have gone back to work much earlier and DP would have taken up some of the slack.

It's such an easy trap to fall into. One of you has to give up work for a bit, and it may as well be the woman as she is pg and earns less anyway (usually) and before you know it you have the choice of being a SAHM or working but being finically worse off due to childcare costs and you are doing everything for the dcs because your DP works and you don't then yu are blamed for his lack of 'engagement'

Equal pay would be nice, then we could get rid of the 'DP earned more' argument.

Agree with other posters that ultimately this is for the men to sort out. I work in Children's Centre and fathers are identified as a 'most excluded group'. And yes, there have been talk of bacon sandwiches and football sessions on a Saturday morning - stereotypes ahoy! I do find it sad that so many fathers don't seem to want to get involved in what their children are enjoying and learning so much from.

I'm firmly in favour of increasing parental leave but I don't think it will happen until fathers start demanding it. Like so much to do with the home and children, this is seen as yet another women's issue to sort out.

I think shared leave is rubbish. The woman ought to have the full maternity leave, she is recovering from birth etc.

Dads ought to have a period of time in addition to the mum's maternity leave.

And I echo pps in asking why is it up to women to encourage dads to engage?

As an example -- my DH is absolutely equally engaged in our DC's life, he's a terrific dad. We are completely equal when it comes to parenting, in terms of time spent and capabilities, etc.

The only real explanation for this is that he wants it to be this way.

We do not have any special advantages -- we are low income, our jobs are often inflexible and so on. It's turned out this way purely because DH wanted it to.

So while there are definitely reforms that would help, what you really need to do is talk to men and try to find out what sort of social/mental barriers there are.

I agree that you should be asking men why they don't want to help more. But I think there are several things which would help - workplaces should assume that anyone who is a parent may well request flexible working/require short notice leave for emergencies etc. Managers need to ensure they set a good example, so ensuring male colleagues know they are allowed to do this, and by also setting a good example. For example I am a senior manager, when DS is ill we split the time evenly (at great cost to DH who is a company director and the business suffers when he's not there as it's small). When, on the 2nd day of illness people say 'oh he's better then' I say, no it's DH's turn to look after him today. I think for some families it doesn't even enter their heads that they could spread the load a bit more evenly.

I think as well, education about parental responsibility needs to start at school - teach boys and girls about the implications of being a parent, and their responsibilities - financial, emotional etc. and lay it on that a child is 50% of both people's responsibility.

So the panel contains MN and the Royal College of Midwives? Are any dad's groups or predominantly male organisations being asked? What about Fathers4Justice?

If not then this panel will just reinforce that childcare is Women's Work and we should be encouraging men to help out. Rather than men taking some responsibility.

A big barrier for men I think is the fact that paternity leave (and Shared Parental Leave? I'm not sure) is only paid at the statutory minimum for most of them. This means that many families don't take it because of the financial hit. We need men to take this leave though, to start changing the culture around who is responsible for childcare. Unfortunately, unless employers start giving similar benefits to men that they give to women (e.g. 8 weeks full pay maternity leave in the NHS), this won't change.

There are quite a few dads on mumsnet - would their views not be useful here?

I think it's a bit weird to ask women how to fix men's behavior.

DH has always saved his holiday to have an extra week of paternity which is good, but he does that because he wants to.

I think 6 weeks paternity would be better to give women more time to get breastfeeding properly established, but I don't think it should be knocked off women's entitlement. It's a year so women can exclusively breastfeed and we either recognize that nd is an important thing that only mothers can do or we don't. Men need to work out how they can be involved themselves without chipping away at things women have fought for their own health and that of their babies.

I would also like to know why we are being asked about this.

How to get men involved? Well, it's sort of up to them, isn't it? To choose whether or not they're involved?

Children's centres seem to like the idea of enticing them with bacon sandwiches. I don't know how much it works in reality. I tend to think that if a man doesn't want to be involved, you can't force him to be, and if he does want to be involved then he kind of already can be. I'm not really seeing barriers, TBH - perhaps we could ask men what they perceive the barriers to be? I think that would be much better than us guessing at them.

That said, I love the idea of shared parental leave and we will probably use it (I live in Germany and it's already law here). Taking it in turns so that DH gets some time to be a SAHD. Musicalia as I understand it the shared leave means that if the family wish, the man can take all of the leave (aside from 2 weeks which is about recovery from birth, so he could take the leave at the same time) so it doesn't have to be about shared care, it could be about single care too but just with the man doing it rather than the mother.

Custody (residency, no such thing as custody in this context in the UK) is already equal - it goes on whoever was the main carer. It comes out as unequal because women are overwhelmingly in that position. Having two parents working doesn't mean one parent isn't still the main carer. Things like learning to swim and ride a bike is inconsequential - the main carer is the one doing bedtimes, mealtimes, homework, remembering birthday parties, non uniform days, taking days off for doctors' appointments, etc.

I think that shared parental leave is a great improvement, because if men take shared responsibility from the start they will likely be more engaged going forward. None of this 'but I don't know how to' give a bath/change a nappy/feed the baby etc.

But I completely agree that nothing will change significantly until men want it to happen so you need to have real incentives.

In Germany I think you get an extra month of paid parental leave if both parents share the leave equally. Also childcare is virtually free so you don't have this scenario where women can't go back to work unless they can cover childcare costs.

Mind you,there are plenty of men's forums saying that it's all the fault of women that men don't have their rights, and it's up to women to sort it out...............

And also imagine how offensive it would be if you went on to a predominantly male forum to ask them how to change the behaviour of the wee women!?!
Patronising, sexist and offensive...to both genders.

Agree with PPs. Why are women being asked about this.
Ask men what would encourage them to get involved.
It isn't our job to cajole, manage and mother grown up men.

Men are pretty good at making things they want to happen, happen. Men not getting involved in childcare is largely down to men not wanting to do it.

You shouldn't be asking women how to fix this. You should be asking men why they don't want to do it. And looking for the real reasons they don't want to do it, not just the socially acceptable excuses usually given in surveys about this kind of thing.

I also think that paid paternity leave should be longer (4-6 weeks).

We are fortunate in that we've both been able to work 4 day weeks, so each spend a day at home with our child. But the majority I know have been refused flexible working - the "right to request" is a joke as companies can easily turn it down for fabricated reasons.