Dads and babies

I think if women are doing the majority of the care then they know the children best and if they are able to they should have the final say esp re childirth and breastfeeding. However sometimes women abuse this position, deny the father access to the dcs when they split to the detriment of their children (emotional abuse in other words) persist with parenting decisions that are adversely affecting the whole family because of their own unmet emotional needs etc. Women can and do make a lot of bad decisions about childcare and if around the childs father has a right to challenge these decisions.

Women are also sometimes their own worst enemies when it comes to childcare, they moan about their male partners not pulling their weight but totally infantalise them by not letting them partake in decision making and mocking their attempts at childcare. This is because they like to have the control and to feel superior in some way, I hear this time and time again. I certainly don't think it's a one way street, some men are quite happy to be infantalised but I do think it goes both ways and as a result these men are hapless and inept when left alone with the baby and "can't cope".

And I do think excluding men from childcare is damaging, particularly for boys. This is based on professional experience.

"Where equal parenting ought to be happening, it already is"

Amen Engelbert.

There's a whole load of excuses about "someone needs to earn the money" and yes, up to a point I sympathise and agree with that.

But in the end, it is about the choices people make and OK we all make choices in circumstances which are not of our own choosing. But a man who is determined to be fully and fairly involved with hsi children, will move mountains to do that - he will take part time work, he will negotiate flexibility, he will downshift, he will move industry to achieve it - just like women do all the time.

In the end, a man who won't do that, who is content to make excuses about the patriarchy stopping him, is a man who isn't prepared to go to enough effort to do it. I'm not condemning such a man as evil or wicked or anything - I do have massive sympathy with couples who start out intending everything to be 50 50 after the first few months and then fall into the trap of finding that a few months down the line, she is doing the lion's share - the "how the hell did we get here?" phenomenon - but I would argue that there is absolutely no reason that a man who doesn't do 50 50 childcare during a relationship, should get 50 50 custody on the ending of that relationship. There are far too many handmaidens out there who think that 50 50 should be the default position on custody, but not on childcare, housework and career sacrifice.

Agree Engelbert. Whenever a dad starts bleating in public about how unfair the custody system is for men, you know he's a total knob who doesn't really know his children. He's all about control and 'winning'. Louis de Bernieres, for example, springs to mind.

I guess I'm being influenced by some of the threads I read where the mother seems fixated on things being done a certain way and it creates friction with the husband or partner. And I usually think two things; firstly, that relationships are about compromise - in parenting as much as anything; and secondly, that she's disadvantaging herself in identifying so strongly with home and family. It closes down her opportunities to do other things.

Tbh it wouldn't have occurred to me before reading this thread that it would be a feminist position to argue for women to take on MORE childcare than they already do. I can appreciate the arguments and it's certainly making me think, but I still believe that parenting should be shared equally and that we should do what we have to do in our own families to make that happen.

Well, in this society at least one person has to earn some money. So if women want to retain the role of main child-carer the man has to go to work.

And that seems to be what we've got now.

Oh, I agree with Treats too

Interesting discussion and has gone the complete opposite way than I expected when I clicked on the link. I don't think that excluding men from childcare is damaging to children ...but think is pretty oppressive against women as a default position.

Breast feeding is in the grand scheme of life, is a short phase, my ex was pretty controlling in several ways, but when it came to childcare was perfectly capable of handling bed time hour, nursery drop offs , bringing baby to bed...and sharing those roles...and it easy a pretty AP non-routine approach..I had a pretty short maternity leave though, so maybe that had an impact.

IC was telling me how about in 18th-19th France, upper and middle class babies would be sent out to milk farms in the countryside, bundled on the back of carts and donkeys, so they wouldn't upset the (male run) household.

to get back to blingloving's query somewhat, I agree that men have to be involved and to adopt characteristics and take on responsibilities that were previously viewed as feminine. Hopefully this will help us (men) gain a greater understanding of women, and the issues confronting them/you, and thus be more supportive. Of course it has the added benefit that if men are devoting their time to childcare and other so-called "feminine" tasks, it leave more time and "space" for women to move into more traditionally male roles and spaces, should they/you choose to.

So this to happen then yes men have to be given a degree of say over childcare e.g. to be able to make autonomous decisions (re: what clothes to put on the child, whether they need a nappy change) or to be able to negotiate from a position of equality on others (e.g. nap time, bath time, etc). Where I think the woman must retain complete control is those issues that affect her physically, namely breastfeeding, but also potentially sleeping arrangements and so on.

Is that fair?

I still think - to come back to the OPs original question - that men need to share equal responsibility for childcare and this goes hand in hand with being able to make decisions about them.

I totally see that this can be a way of controlling the woman and I agree with what Dittany said about Truby King and those kinds of methods. But I think we need to recognise that being too controlling about how our children are raised can create a situation where the men are able to abdicate responsibility. Like most things, there's a balance to be struck.

I am talking about the period after the baby is about 6 months. There's a physical input from the mother in those early months that can't be substituted by the father.

Thanks SQ.

Sorry realised how WASP-centric my post sounds. By "most peopel" I mean most people in western cultures. Different practices in other cultures, but still in most places trammelled and controlled by patriarchal notions.

Enjoying your posts on this thread HerB

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.

Which isn't to say that in some households adn in some relationships, that can't happen already and in many it is happening. Where you know and trust that a man has already evolved beyond the limits of patriarchal assumptions, it works. But currently, too many haven't.

oh and meant to say that that's what has happened, when men in a patriarachy have got to have too much say in child-rearing. Men in an equal society otoh, would hopefully be as focussed on the needs of children as women are because they wouldn't have been conditioned to believe that they are the most important person in the household.

Caveat: this is not to imply that all men everywhere are raging narcisssists who see themselves as more important than babies for all the loons who want to point and say : "see - you all hate men!" Just that that whole philosophy of babies being deeply inconvenient creatures who have to be tamed and trained, can only come from a really bizarre culture. And for a while, most people, men and women believed in all that crap and many still do.

Yes I think you've got a point there Herbex (and you called it right - that kind of advice is bollocks!)

Good point hereforlife, it's one I wanted to discuss before bieng distracted by the baybees need menz too issue. Women are influenced by the patriarchy aren't they, in child rearing as in everythign else. I'm going to get shouted at there, but I always instinctively felt that all that bollocks about feeding babies on a schedule, putting them out at the end of the garden so that they could get fresh air and you couldnt' hear them cry, was all about the aptriarchy alienating women from their babies, seeing them as an inconvenient distraction rather than a symbiotic relationship. And what they are distracting from of course, si the most important person in the house - the man.

TBH if I could find a way of only doing the nice bits of childcare I'd be on it like a shot. But there isn't a way, as I'm the one who gets the mat leave and has ended up going part-time etc. If I could have a 1950s setup with a nice wife to come home to, dinner on the table, and some clean happy children ready for a quick story and sleep I'd be on it like a shot...

My point about some men being quite pleased to be absented from childcare duties wasn't to have a go at them, it's quite understandable IMO. Looking after small children is bloody hard work.