Dads and babies

"I don't think it's a womans right to completely dictate the whole families way of life after having a baby, adhering to some rigid routine is often just that and woe betide anyone who has any different ideas. "

Who does, though?

"Women DO sometimes make decisions that are to the detriment of their children, they are not the gurus, sometimes partners/grandparents/siblings may have valid suggestions that can be respected too."

I haven't seen anyone saying otherwise?

I don't think they get turned down but sometimes they can be micromanaged to the nth degree. I'm as bad myself I sometimes have to really bite my tongue just because dh isn't really doing it "my way" but there's no point nit picking about it, most of the time "his way" isn't actually doing any harm, it's just different.

I don't think it's a womans right to completely dictate the whole families way of life after having a baby, adhering to some rigid routine is often just that and woe betide anyone who has any different ideas.

I wasn't saying what caused her to be ill Dittany just that she seems to have been very ill and the aetiology of that illness may be more complex than her dad and her ex. Believe it or not I don't have a medical model view of mental illness and I do think trauma plays a big part in development of psychosis despite you thinking I'm sexist .

I wonder if this is because I dare, and dare is the right word to have a different opinion which will sometimes high-light womens flaws, in childcare, in relationships. in life. Women DO sometimes make decisions that are to the detriment of their children, they are not the gurus, sometimes partners/grandparents/siblings may have valid suggestions that can be respected too.

Exactly, SQ. The men I know who do next to nothing and complain about their wives being perfectionists etc don't really want to and they show it through their inactions. They are perfectly capable of negotiating what they want at work, so there is no reason why they can't sit down with their wives and say "Look, I'm missing out here and want to share the load with you and so want to do x,y and z and you are blocking me. What can we do so that I can be more involved?" As if that's going to be turned down!

As I said earlier, if I had someone around who I could get away with letting them do a lot of the childcare I'd take it in a flash. I am firmly of the view that the majority of men who are not hands-on with the children are that way because it is their choice.

In the couples I know where the men are not hands-on (and there's only about 2 of them) the men are from different cultures which are much more "traditional". And the reason they are not hands on is because it's not "what men do", nothing to do with bonkers wives hiding the babies from them.

With the not wanting to go back to work thing that you mention minx.

I think it is complicated.

Many women are absolutely shit scared of going back to work after even a short time out raising children, it's quite a well-recognised problem. Their skills get out of date, they get out of the loop, they are distanced from the "world of work" and it scares the pants off them. I'm not sure what that has to do with this TBH.

I also think (and this really is just a theory) that many women suffer from various problems when they have children due to the huge lifestyle changes, a lot of low-level depression, they don't feel as confident with how they look and so on. There is also the issue that if they do go back to work many will have to continue bearing the brunt of the work at home as well. So when they won't do it maybe for some it's because they are knackered already and just feel they don't have any more in the tank.

I am sure that some women behave in peculiar ways, as do men. I just find it all a bit generalising. This idea that women commonly push their DPs away (and often out the door), won't accept any help, take the piss out of their DPs and are swinging the lead refusing to work (childcare is work anyway). It's not a picture that I recognise.

minx - mm, but that can sort of be seen in the same light as dittany's 'retention of what miniscule amount of power you have left' discourse, which i sort of agree with. but still want to shake the women and say 'hand the damn baby over and let him change the nappy. and go for a walk in the park/ drink a hot cup of tea for five minutes. he is an adult.'

dittany sometimes your views about mental illness are so one dimensional you infuriate me! Are you blaming patriarchy solely for Britney Spears having what seems to be hideous bi-polar disorder? Or do you know things the rest of us don't about her life and the aetiology of her difficulties?

I do not deny for one minute that the relationships Britney had in her life were damaging, she seem to have been surrounded by toxicity from day one poor woman but her Mother was just equally part of that toxicity, she wrote some horrible book in order to promote her own celebrity.

Exactly ...loads of men take the piss and voluntarily step away from childcare...I don't see why we should accept this as it is natural for women to be the primary childcarer so it is not a problem...I do think that men and boys should be raised to understand the importance of taking responsibility for childcare and that they should want and expect to do it....that may be a bit rambly...but is very late for me...

I've seen those men too ayerobot it does seem like a piss take and undoubtedly sometimes it is but sometimes they have controlling, perfectionist domineering wives who from day one have dictated how absolutely everything should be done.

Re excluding from childcare I didn't mean not deciding what goes in the sandwiches etc I meant not being attached/bonded/nurturing towards the child due to lack of involvement/ambivalence/ being absent.

"Their husbands want to take a more active role but by their own actions they are blocking it." minxofmancunia, do you mean the women are blocking it or that the men are?

i've never accepted any of that nonsense. women who do make me want to shake them.

I've seen plenty of men acting as if they've lost all their mental faculties when it comes to things like nappy-changing or dressing a child. Those men are somehow capable of holding down quite important jobs too, like those involving complex decision making about things like building bridges and skyscrapers. Either they are really dangerous in their paid work and should resign right now, or else they are taking the piss. I wonder which it is.

HerBeX I can see what you're saying, there are lots of parents of both sexes unfortunately who aren't able or won't care for their children properly. Re Britney Spears, I think very sadly (and this is just my opinion) she's pretty ill, not mentally unstable or a bit flaky but suffering from a mental disorder that was exacerbated by having her children and the resultant meltdwon rendered her unable to care for them.

I just don't always think women have the monopoly when it comes to making decisions re childcare, nor should they. The mothers I know (for the most part) who choose not to work do it because they want to, in some cases their husbands would like them to work but they are adamant they won't. In some cases they are panicking about their youngest starting school as this may force the issue a bit. Their husbands want to take a more active role but by their own actions they are blocking it.

um. i don't think we actually made any decisions as such, either of us, when dd1 was born. we sort of worked it all out as we went along. dh rescued me a few times before i broke her, i bfed because it worked. i expressed and he fed her ebm. we didn't ever once sit down and discuss how it was going to work out, who was going to do what, who was in charge.

we just got on with it.

eleven years and three kids later - still happens. not sure we've ever sat down and made a child-rearing decision in our lives. he gets up half an hour before me and makes all the packed lunches, wakes the kids up and gets their breakfast, then goes off to work. i get them to school, then go to work. we share the after school activities driving, and like as not he cooks dinner.

they all seem to be doing ok. our marriage is intact, and there isn't really a 'masc' or 'fem' role in the house.

the only time we've ever pondered aloud was when dd2 was born brain damaged, then we had a brief peiod where dh buried his head in the sand, and i researched and physioed and feeding therapied like a loon, but that was more to do with how we dealt with potential life long disability/ grief than any sort of power struggle. and not really gender-based.

who should make childcare decisions? parents. but they are my boobs. even if it wasn't something i really thought about much at the time.

I think the difficulty I am having is trying to visualise a situation where the dad is gagging to get stuck in and the mum basically tells him to piss off and won't let him so much as puree a carrot or purchase a baby wipe.

I've just never met anyone like that.

LOL SQ.

Everyone born in the nineteen fifities is irreperably damaged then.

Oh well actually....

Is there really a serious argument that if mum always decides what the children have for tea and what clothes they wear and how they have their hair done, the children will be irreparably damaged by this?

I mean, really?

I've just realised that while we share the work out equally, I tend to make most final decisions, including to do with the children. That is the dynamic of our relationship - I am more decisive than DH. It has not occurred to me before that this might be damaging the children

Funny isn't it, I don't know any women who won't allow their partners a say in parenting decisions. I have seen it said on here but before I came on here I had no idea that people behaved like that in real life.

Is it really the case that children with a male parent who is not doing much primary childcare are damaged? I know some men who work long hours and I just don't know about that. Is it the same if the mother works long hours out of the home and the father is at home more - does this also damage children?

Given how our society is structured - a lot of people working a lot of hours to get by - that leads to an awful lot of damaged children.

I'm not sure I buy it TBH.

But minxofmancunia, why is the solution to the fact that there are mad women out there who make bad parenting decisions, to let men make bad parenting decisions instead?

Why assume that because a mother makes shit parenting decisions, the father will make less shit ones? Look at Britney Spears - i don't know the ins and outs of the case because I don't read Heat magazine, but as far as I'm aware, she made some shit parenting decisions. So they handed her children over to their father, who, er... made some shit parenting decisions. But were his parenting decisions less shit than her's? (Genuine question, I don't know, I jsut got the impression that he was as flaky as she was, but being male, not challenged so much on his flakiness. I'm prepared to be told I'm wrong in this case, but it is an example of what is more and more the attitude of professionals - the assumption that if mothers make bad decisions, the men they're with will necessarily make good ones. Which may be true in some cases, but it's a mistake to take it as a default position IMO.)