I don't think anyone will be able to change my mind on this.. mums love VS dads love

[footballinterferingagain]

I honestly don't see how a dad can feel the same about a child as a mum..

You carry that child for 9 months, push them out, breast feed them, spend 24 hrs a day with them..

How can a dad possibly feel the same intensity of love for a child

(I know there are exceptions to the above and not all mums bond/ breastfeeding/ stay at home etc etc, I just mean generally) and also, my kids do have a loving dad.

Does anyone agree with me, or am I alone?

Adoptive parents are parents - your premise that mums have greater love for their children because they carried them has implications for adoptive parents. I’m not offended, I just think in the vast majority of cases parent child relationships are much more complex than you seem to think.

It feels a bit like “if mum is in a good relationship, has an easy pregnancy, an easy birth, no problems breast feeding, no post natal mental health issues, no post natal physical health issues, the opportunity of maternity leave she’ll always love her child more than the father will”. And all bets are off if you did have a family the “natural” way.

Fuckwit.

Honestly, it took a bit of time for DH to be connected. The babies were born and I knew them already. My first though with each, the moment I held them after birth, was "it's you. I know you already." The early months are an extension of that physical intimacy, and honestly, there isn't much of a person to "know" in the first 12 weeks. Hormones do a lot of the heavy lifting.

After the first weeks, my husband loves our children as much as I do. To say otherwise is cruel and absurd.

[quote gonshite]@SueEllenMishke did you miss the part of my post that said the below?

However is this because women are judged more & society expects them to do it?

I know plenty of active & involved male parents but I'm not talking about my anecdotal experience. Women have taken on the bulk of home learning during Covid & women are more likely to loose their jobs. I've not made that up.

Men are more likely to leave their children, why do so many men not pay child maintenance?
[/quote]
But the OP is talking about women loving their children more in a biological sense.

I know that women have taken on more of the home schooling and this pandemic will be catastrophic for women's careers - I'm an academic and this is my area of research. I'm really concerned about how women are being impacted and will continue to be in the future.
ALL of this is due to societal expectations and not biology.

Apologies if I missed your post as it sounds like we're in agreement.

I feel kind of sad that people could doubt their husband's love for their child just because he didn't carry the baby

I don’t doubt my dh love for our dds. I know he cares deeply for my dd1 ( not his) and he has been a fantastic father figure to her. But I know he loves his bio kids more.

@Jellycatspyjamas

Adoptive parents are parents - your premise that mums have greater love for their children because they carried them has implications for adoptive parents. I’m not offended, I just think in the vast majority of cases parent child relationships are much more complex than you seem to think.

It feels a bit like “if mum is in a good relationship, has an easy pregnancy, an easy birth, no problems breast feeding, no post natal mental health issues, no post natal physical health issues, the opportunity of maternity leave she’ll always love her child more than the father will”. And all bets are off if you did have a family the “natural” way.

Fuckwit.

Oh come on 🤣

"I don’t doubt my dh love for our dds. I know he cares deeply for my dd1 ( not his) and he has been a fantastic father figure to her. But I know he loves his bio kids more."

OK, well that's not really the point we're discussing, is it? We're discussing the biological children of both partners.

When I was with ex I would agree with you.

With DP it's totally different, he's gentler, kinder and far more patient than I am. He will get up in the middle of the night to soothe away bad dreams, he will defend my older DC (not his) when I'm annoyed with them. When my eldest was very upset about her predicted grades and wouldn't tell us what she had got as she was so upset, I later discovered he had promised he would do everything he could to support her and get her the tuition if that's what she needed or support her to take it up with her tutors, he text her as she wasn't speaking to us and his texts were so so sweet. I on the other hand was pissed off at the drama.

I actually do think if DP and I don't work out, our DC would probably prefer to be with him and I'd trust him completely to do a far better job on his own than I would.
His family are also really loving and supportive.

But then before I got together with DP I asked myself, would I trust this man with my helpless babies. And yes I completely would.

He loves our DC, with a calm and patience I don't have. He is over indulgent sometimes (but he's their dad and he can if he wants), he is the one they go to if they are upset or want cuddles. He's a good person.

I know a man who who got full custody of his son when it was not the norm, he is so close to his son and the son is a lovely well rounded man now, he also has a good relationship with his mother as friend facilitated it, he felt it would be best for his son, and it is.

Oh come on what?

You said mother’s will always love their children more.

Others says what about birth trauma, unable to feed, unable to be home with baby, adoption, surrogacy?

You said “oh I don’t mean those situations” but for the most part...

Again folk point out mother’s who have left their children, abusive mothers, disengaged mother’s

You say “oh I don’t mean them, but for the most part.

For the most part, relationships are complex and birth mother certainly don’t have a monopoly on unconditional, all consuming love for their children.

@ItWasNotOK

"I don’t doubt my dh love for our dds. I know he cares deeply for my dd1 ( not his) and he has been a fantastic father figure to her. But I know he loves his bio kids more."

OK, well that's not really the point we're discussing, is it? We're discussing the biological children of both partners.

There are adoptive people on this thread commenting too

"how clean the home is" oh ffs, now housekeeping standards are a reflection of how much you love your child? Does that only count if you do the wife work yourself or can having a cleaner be an indicator that you are a perfect martyr mother?

"There are adoptive people on this thread commenting too"

What's your point?

I wasn't talking about adoptive parents.

OP. did you wake up this morning spoiling for a fight?
You seem to have offended quite a few people.

@SueEllenMishke

ALL of this is due to societal expectations and not biology.

I agree with this but also think it's quite hard to separate the two. Why are 90% of single parents women?

I know our kids better than Dh - he works very long hours. I wouldn’t be able to say who loves them more though - nor would I want to!

@maras2 haha. You would think so!

I wanted other views, but no one wanted mine 🤣

Very few women abandon or neglect their children. Ironically, it is the mother’s greater commitment to her children that allows the father to neglect them even more. Knowing the mother’s greater commitment to her children, the father can abandon them, secure in the knowledge that the mother would never do likewise, because if she did, the children would be virtually certain to die. In other words, divorced parents with children are playing a game of Chicken, and it is usually the mother who swerves. Most fathers would probably prefer to invest in their children and raise them by themselves rather than see them die, but they normally do not have to make this difficult decision, because they know that the mother would never abandon them. The mother’s greater commitment to her children ironically allows the father to have his cake and eat it too, by moving on to the next marriage and family in which to invest.

Even though there are some cases of men raising their kids, the vast majority get up and leave. The majority of women just do not do that. I’ve known adoring dads who idolise there young children only to shack up with other women leaving their children broken hearted.

Of course fathers love their children but in normal situations a mother is more committed and uniquely attached to her children

Isn't that quite offensive to adoptive mums?
It's OK, we're used to it.

I love my DCs to bits.
DH also loves them to bits.
By all accounts so did birth mum (did give birth, didn't BF).
I don't have any birth children so I can't compare but I honestly can't imagine loving a birth child more.

Like they say, love is not a pie.

I absolutely disagree with you OP. I know my Dh loves our dcs equally as much as I do, and has done right from day 1. He may not have actually given birth to them, but, to be honest I don't think that automatically guarantees that the mother will live her child at all, let alone mire than the father. Dh's mother would claim to love him, And probably would have a similar opinion to you OP. But the fact is she treats him like dirt, has never done or said anything that makes him think she loves him - in fact, much of the time the things she says make him feel that she resents him. He gets treated very differently to his siblings. Since his DF died, he has not felt loved by a parent.
Someone upthread made a comment that they think their mother loves the PPs child 'almost as much' as they loved pp and their sibling. As a grandparent, I can assure you I love my dgs as much,if not more, than my own dcs. That moment when we first met dgs, and saw our 'baby' cradling their baby in their arms was like being hit by a ten ton truck of love. It was so powerful and unexpected. And I know that was just as much the case for dh as it was for me. Even writing and remembering that moment brings tears to my eyes.
So, OP, I don't think you are wrong. I know you are.

@Codexdivinchi i completely agree

@maras2

OP. did you wake up this morning spoiling for a fight? You seem to have offended quite a few people.

Why should this offend people though

Like a PP said 90% of single parents are women - where are all the fathers at?

So my mum has Caesarean sections and didn’t breastfeed so she is a lesser mother in terms of how she feels for us. I know she’d run under a bus for me or my brother, she’d take a bullet to the head for us. When my niece was born she said the love she felt for her was stronger than she felt for us which surprised her as she wasn’t the mother. Her own mother had told her ‘I love my son and tolerate my daughter!’ My grandpa would have died for her.

My DH is an only child. His dad used to watch him sleep as a baby and read to him every night as a child. His mother loved him but both were equal in adoration. His mother is now a manipulative bitch who is only interested in using DH for whatever she can get whereas his dad was interested in his life and him through love. My dad was vaguely aware of some small people to shout at and rule with fear when he wasn’t working or in the pub.

I think attitudes like this are really harmful, both to men and women, and massively contribute to the assumption that the mother will be the primary carer/take time off to be with a sick kid/have her career take a back seat, and also mean that if a relationship breaks up, men are assumed to get EOW custody and no one really comments if they aren't involved but if a father is the RP, even if it might make more sense, the mother is hugely stigmatised.

I've seen a couple of families, btw, where the father was the RP and the mother got a huge amount of flack. In both cases, the NRP mother was still hugely involved, contributed financially, had loads of contact with the DCs, but faced huge amounts of condemnation because 'what kind of a mother could walk away from her child'. Really unhelpful for everyone.

[quote gonshite]@SueEllenMishke

ALL of this is due to societal expectations and not biology.

I agree with this but also think it's quite hard to separate the two. Why are 90% of single parents women? [/quote]
There are a whole host of reasons and biology features very low on the list.
Society still sees raising children as women's work. The world is set up for it to work that way ( my dh really struggled to find suitable changing facilities when DS was a baby as they tended to be in female toilets)
Women tend to work part time or flexibly making childcare easier.

I deliver a lecture on gender stereotyping and I ask my students to write the first words that come to mind when you hear single mum or single dad. The difference is staggering! Single dads are hailed as hero's and at least half the group say 'widow'!

It's interesting to note that the number of single father households is increasing year on year.

And single parent household doesn't mean the other parent isn't involved.

YABVVVVVVVU

My dad and my husband would be very upset by this nonsensical assertion