Are women better than men at childcare?

Looking after young children is mentally and physically more draining than any office job.
I know, I've done both.

Looking after kids and running a house is work, the people who are paid to do it are called nannies and housekeepers.
People who are not paid to do that are called wives/mothers/women and very occasionally SAHD's.

Society expects women to be good at housework and childcare and they get dumped with it - just like, in the USA, black men are supposed to be sporty and not intellectual and "white men can't jump" and so shouldn't do sports much.

It is a societal construction, not based on biology, or individual abilities.

Saying looking after children is a privileged is disingenuous because it enables society to tell you it is an "honour" to do all this stuff and be economically and politically side-lined, whereas it's just getting you to do tons of very dull work for nothing, be economically dependent on someone else and retire with sod all pension.

Having a job is not the only form of work.

Who said looking after your own children is a job, peggy? You said it isn't work of any kind, which implies that it involves doing nothing. Is that the case?

morethan - no people who think looking after your own children as a job are having a laugh.. having a job is completely different to looking after your own kids.

Peggy you're avin a laugh.

Or "Know what" even?

Seriously, when my DCs were small, especially the first, my husband was much better with them as little babies then I was. I could never work out what babies were for.

I did get to enjoy them a lot when they became little people with their own personalities and was glad of the early years with them.

But better at all the domestic drudgery that is part and parcel of childcare? I really don't think it is vagina-dependent. It's like wifework - something that is just expected after millennia. Men expected it and us women kept falling for it….

Most men work because that is what is expected of them.

Most women work, too. Their careers and health suffer due to childbirth and the extended household responsibility they take on in tandem with working, but most work outside the home. It's not all gin, fags, diamonds, hairdos and lunches paid for by the largesse of your long suffering husband.

I think women are better at childcare, but certainly no better than men for raising their children and parenting.
I like to separate the two as imo childcare is something done by others not the parents.

Oh peggy? So it involves doing nothing?

looking after your own children is not unpaid work - its not work of any kind.

Again though Yops, it is men who have set up the situation where they work continuously for 47 years. Because up until less than 100 years ago women couldn't even vote, never mind influence any sort of legislation or change any societal practices. Once women married they became complete non-entities, unable to own any property, or basically take any action as a person. So men have been the ones to set up the system we live with. And men can change it. But they're not changing it. It is women who are trying to change the system and to get men more involved in child rearing. That's my point. And my question is, why is that? Is it because they see that actually staying at home with children isn't that great?

I don't deny that men live shorter lives and suffer ill health due to work. It is feminists, women, who are trying to change that.

When my DCs were small I searched for the nappy changing gene, the wiping sick off my blouse gene, the sitting up half the night with screaming baby gene…

No what OP? I never found it.

If you do anything long enough you get "better" at it, whether it's building space rockets or cleaning lavatories.

Same with childcare.

Buffy, re parental leave, there is a good article on the new UK laws here;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32130481

From a skim read, it is significantly different from previous legislation, and gives far more rights to fathers. Given that this only came into effect in April 2015, it is maybe too early to say that dads are not jumping at the opportunity.

I don't get all of your reasoning, cailin, like you don't get mine. Most men work because that is what is expected of them. Forty-seven years of uninterrupted work brings stresses, depression and heart disease. Ergo, men die first. In most western countries, the gap is somewhere between 5 and 10 years. When work finishes, as Buffy says, a lot of the social networking dries up, and they quite often just drop dead.

Re worldwide deaths and childbirth, surely that's a consequence of their environment? I would imagine most of the 800 also have a higher risk of dying of malnutrition, thirst or other health issues. Could you lower birth mortality rates in isolation? I can't see how.

Re the other stuff - physical damage to their bodies, mental issues - there are male equivalents in the work environment. Asbestosis, emphysema, white finger, industrial accidents. Who was the last woman to fall into an iron-ore smelter or die in a mine collapse?

I don't want to downplay adverse effects on women, and I feel like I am 'whataboutthemenz'-ing here, but I think you are being really one-sided. Loss of desirability after childbirth - what about male patterned baldness? You could argue that a natural process diminishes male desirability. And most women can choose whether to have a baby - I can't choose not to be a slap-head. It is bollocks - I should not be judged in terms of my shagability by my hairline, but bald men are often a figure of fun.

I get the feeling I am taking centre stage here, and I don't want to. I was enjoying the discussion, and I am in 95 per cent agreement with the sentiments on here. I should probably leave it at that.

Not sure why mention life expectancy - why not highlight the stress, pressure, long hours, shit commutes, etc. that comes with working a paid job.
There are certainly a few cliques of "ladies who lunch" or "full time mums" at our school.
Like everything involving people, people are different.
Career types, home types, etc.
Employers will hopefully be (forced to be) more amenable to the idea of extended child rearing career breaks for men.
Just like women could be sacked for becoming pregnant, men have until recently been unable to take these breaks (apart from quitting, then looking for another job later).

Again I'm a bit confused Yops. Men don't sit back, look at the life expectancy of men and women and then choose the path that other men take, assuming that that will lead them to premature death. In fact that premature death thing is a total red herring, as far as I can see.

My point about men in power is that, if men are so disadvantaged by working, why have they chosen that path for themselves? I know most men aren't in power, but most people in power are men. So is it the case that men have benevolently chosen the hard path of working and kindly allowed women the break and rest of looking after children?

I think it's ironic actually that you choose life expectancy as the disadvantage men have when it comes to the labour divide. You do realise that across the world 800 women a day die due to childbirth? Rates of death in the UK are low, but rates of injury due to complications are high. Women don't just lose their careers, they lose their health (often their mental health also, as your wife experienced), the strength and fitness of their bodies, their status as desirable women (which society tells them is important) their identity, their income, their ability to just eat or go to the toilet on their own, a whole lot more than just careers.

Firstly, cailin, yes it makes no sense - brain ahead of fingers with that statement. My point was that men were deliberately taking the option of lifestyle A (working full time, minimal childcare) instead of option B (prioritise childcare, fit work in accordingly) just because it was the most fun, why do they choose the path of premature death? Is it a die young, stay pretty option? Are we all wannabe James Deans?

Buffy/cailin, my reference to leisurely lunches and golf was stuff to do after the childcare has ended, not during.

Buffy, I haven't been a SAHP. I would have done, but it wasn't an option for us. And re beliefs underpinning statements, I don't believe for a second that being a SAHP is all pixie dust and laughter. But equally, just because you found it unfulfilling, doesn't mean that everyone would. Obviously, academia and PhDs are your thing. But not every man and every woman would find SAH parenting as tough or demanding as you did. There are plenty of women on here who will tell you that their partners thrive on it. Horses for courses.

Finally, I think there is a lack of distinction between those in power - and yes, mostly men - who are really very few, and those who are just small cogs in enormous fuck-off wheels, who find the daily grind about as interesting as changing nappies and extracting peas from toddlers ears.

I am in agreement with most of what people are saying here. It's not women's job to bring up kids, it a parent's job, and being a man does not excuse you from nappies, sick and 3am feeds, nor GCSE revision, nor attending your umpteenth nativity play. What got my dander up was the suggestion that men deliberately choose a path of all work and no parenting and that this somehow leads to a life of pleasure and no responsibility. We all have our shit to bear, all have our pressures and expectations, and we all pay the price, whether its a loss of career enhancement (which by the way for the vast majority of jobs amounts to the square root of fuck all - chief bin man, head miner, top road-sweeper or ditch-digger?) or dropping dead within 6 months of retirement.

How many women actually spend 18 years at home going for long leisurely lunches??

What actually happens, and what all the research confirms, is that men carry on in their careers, while women stay at home for between 2 and 10 years looking after small, dependent children, before having to try to get back into the workforce at a much lower level than they were before while still doing all of the housework and childcare.

Yops this statement makes no sense: If work was all it is cracked up to be in here, why don't us men take the other option and hand it over to the women?

Surely if working is so bad and staying at home with children is so great, men would be clamouring to do it? But clearly they're not. Why is that? Men are the ones who have run the world for hundreds of years - so why have they set up a situation that you claim disadvantages them so much? Seeing as the people in power are mostly men, why don't those men change things to suit them? Women would love men to step up and do more childcare, we are constantly calling for it. So what's stopping men from doing it?

Yops, most women work and bring up kids. And always have. My mother worked, teaching and running a small business and bringing up four kids. My grandmother worked, typing in an office as well as bringing up a dozen kids in a 3 bed council house. My great grandmother worked, sewing leather straps in a mill with her children beside her on piecing. And her mother worked, cutting peat and hauling ash, with her children strapped to her back.

Most women work because most women are working class because most people are working class. Women do most of the work. Women do almost all of the childcare. And women of course bear all of the children. It's not a case of one or the other, for most women.

Buffy - my wife had PND after our second child. I know how awful it can be and I would never minimise it's impact. I was trying to make a point about the downside of the life of riley that us men are leading. Maybe there are biological differences that make men more susceptible to early death, but I am not sure that such differences are something feminism gives credence to, given where that conversation can lead.