Dads and babies

and chance, not change. i appear to have fetched up in the land of the typo, rendering everything i'm attempting to say utter garbage.

www.brainchildmag.com/essays/spring2011_niesslein.asp

there you go.

share, not hare...

sq - but it does. it brings up your children to see what childraising looks like, and they will in turn raise their own children in a similar manner. their friends who come round will say to their dad 'why don't you cook dinner like mr sq, daddy?' (hopefully in earshot of their mother). your dh will of course hare his equal child-rearing capacity in the same manner as suggested by mric above 'what do you mean, you've never bathed your baby?' and pass on handy tips to co-workers or friends with newborns.

in fact, there is an article in Brain, Child this week about just such peer pressure causing change for the good (as well as the bad) but i've left it in the house and can't get hold of it. i'll try and dig it up via the website.

there is every change that by modelling equal parenting, you can cause huge change.

This is such a tricky topic, I agree with lots of different posters even when what they are saying is not in total agreement!

Bling I agree with your post 19.43 as well. But then I also agree with people who say they see lots of men not wanting to step up, and women taking everything on. I agree that individual women need to expect more from their partners but also that society works in such a way to discourage women from doing that. I also would never deprive DH from time with children out of fear of him getting them if we split up. But I also understand the concerns about the legal system giving men more credit than women for the same amount of childcare. I also believe that when it comes to poor domestic situations the mother is usually the one who is blamed, even when they are not the only adult.

I don't know, it's all terribly complex.

I think that a multi-pronged approach is probably the only way - given how deeply entrenched this stuff is. Legislation + individuals modelling equal relationships + trying to gender stereotype less in daily life etc etc etc.

Sorry that's a bit of a ramble.

I suppose my point is that DH and I can do being equal til the cows come home, but that doesn't change anything, does it.

That's fine Bling :), but you don't need to state that here. It's your business and you don't need to invite anyone else into your decision.

engelbert - I currently work in an area of deprivation in a nursery and I have seen every boy play with dolls. I have worked in many other nurseries and the boys have played with dolls. Many have had their own dolls and brought them in as well as their own buggies, especially common if they had recently had a sibling. I dont think there is anything shocking about having a baby doll if your a boy in this day and age.

I do agree with sardinequeen about what you have grown up with. I never cooked, used a washing machine, iron, hoover etc until I was living with my husband and engaged so I dont see it as my role to be entirely responsible for those things as I didnt have to growing up. It is been extremely hard for me to learn how to do it all. Its by far the hardest thing I have ever done.

"My husband recently met a woman who was 30 and was pregnant and had never even changed a babies nappy! That women is going to have a much harder learning curve than men/boys who are used to having a hands on childcare role from much younge "

I got to 40 without ever changing a nappy and don't feel my learning curve was any steeper than other people.

DH can change nappies and do baths but he's not here for 8-9 hours a day. He can't feed our baby and it makes no sense for him to get up 3 times each night to sit with me while I feed if he has work at 8am in the morning. When I go back to work I will have done 10 months where the bulk of 'seeing to the baby' fell on my shoulders and although I want the parenting to be 50/50 eventually I am pretty sure it won't happen that way.

I think I've come full circle on this

Interesting point IC and PA about socialisation, and that with the current situation we have women are socialised to being caring empathetic types and men to be in charge giving orders types.

Talking across society here and ignoring all of the many people and couples who buck this trend.

So is it any wonder that when a couple suddenly have a "caring" task in the form of a baby, it falls to the woman. So maybe women do have a "head start" on this stuff.

I mean my DH is lovely and very involved etc but he still doesn't do lots of things automatically that I would. eg he'll have the children all day and that's fine but he won't think to put a wash on. That type of stuff. That's all down to gender roles being so deeply ingrained that even the ones with their hearts in the right places take a long time to learn how to do it. While women have been raised to do it.

it's all a bit depressing.

^""Look my whole point has been on this thread that you can't have it both ways. You can't have men do a fair share of the childcare/domestic work (which they should be doing) yet at the same time deny them equal decision making rights."

But who is arguing for that?

As Engelhardt said eons ago, where equal parenting is appropriate, it's already happening."^

Right, agreed but.....

"In other words, we need to make sure that men and women are equal and that the default psychological assumption isn't that men are the most important person in the household, before we hand over "power" (although as Dittany says, it's a moot point as to whether it's power) about childrearing to them."

I'm saying you if you wait for this, you'll be waiting forever (or at least another couple of generations) - you've got to hand over (some of) the control over childrearing now in order to get the ball rolling. You've got to give a bit to get a bit - it's not an all or nothing situation. You never going to get to a point where the lights flash and the man announces "ha ha! I have an epiphany! we're all equal! Now hand me my list of childcare responsibilities and I'll get the apron on." Change is going to be gradual, but we can start the ball rolling by putting equality in law - parental leave, etc.

So yes basically we agree (hurrah!) - the above was only to clarify why I was posting here in the first place. (as, in an unwritten rule of family mumsnet etiquette I usually try to avoid threads my wife is posting on).

right, back to the kitchen

It's a tricky one. His family on the whole can't read people and I know I've always been better at it than most. I also think in society that females learn to read people better anyway, men can get away with just dominating a situation and therefore often don't need empathy, plus society encourages this 'masculine' behaviour. So a combination I think. Females often to have work quite subtlety and cleverly to get what they want.

Interesting point about the "lack of empathy", PA, despite your DH being SAHD and therefore spending more time with your DD than you. Do you think that's specific to his and your situation, or do you think it's related to his being the father and you the mother more generally?

noodle to be fair, some men are control freaks and/or abusive and with the best will in the world, many women get sucked into these toxic relationships and end up in so deep, it's hard to get out. It's easy to say "she shouldn't put up with it" if you're an assertive type with a reasonable partner, but it's not always that simple.

A few people made the point upthread that there are men who would or do use "the childcare powerbase" (if you will) as another excuse to undermine their partner or control her in some way.

I will say that I still do most of the thinking in our relationship, especially regards to DD.

This is despite me working and DH being a SAHD. Try as he might he seems to lack the empathy to be able to read her, so often when I get up (because I always get the lie in as I can't sleep early at night) I'll observe that she's tired and he'll be completely surprised about this fact.

When I was on mat leave and he was working, I did take the stance that over a lot of things I do best. However that came from experience as I was the one caring/battling with her during the day. If he got her really overtired, I would be the one to pay the price for that the next day. I did get him involved, he's always done the bedtime routine and put her to sleep. He trusts that I have the knowledge regarding BF and has never questioned anything I've said, just believed it from the get go.

What surprised me that mothers I met through NCT, was that all of them basically got/expected the mother to do everything because they were working. No helping with night wakings, going out and playing cricket all day sunday expecting mother and baby to tag along. I didn't realise how unusual our situation was.

anyway as usual these are random ramblings but I hope there are some coherent points in there

We love parallel arguing, PA!

I know women that do horrible things to men to. I think they are also mugs for putting up with it. Its obviously the fault of the man or woman who is taking the person for the ride, but the woman/man who puts up with it is also at fault for not leaving/putting their foot down. Some people are obviously selfish and losers but I dont have to be friends/relationships with them. You cant change them and its their loss at the end of the day.

I dont care about societal expectations. I care about my expectations and I wont put up with anything less. I wouldnt go into parenthood blind and just see how it goes. I would discuss in length what I will do and what I wont do before children, set the precedence before kids and make sure he knew if he took the piss in any area of our relationship I would be burning all his clothes on the front lawn

actually I've only read first and last pages so better read the inbetween for adding my comments

noodle I'm not sure what you're getting at.

Do you think that there is a problem in society with different expectations on fathers and mothers, or not?

You seem to be saying that differing expectations are rare, and that the norm is that men and women take equal responsibility, but where relationships are uneven, it is the fault of the woman?

Noodle69 when you ask yourself why women do it to themselves, do you also ask yourself why men do it to them?

Just a thought.