"Isn't he great with the kids?" when said in reference to my husband.
I know this has probably been done to death but I've heard it three times recently (all by young women) and it makes me want to scream!
Don't misunderstand me, my husband is a perfectly adequate father and loves our children very very much - but so fucking what? Looking after his own children and engaging with them, playing with them, is surely the bare minimum of what any parent should do. Not once has anyone been in conversation with DH and looked over, seen me interacting with my kids and said "Aah, isn't Pontouf great with the kids?" Because of course they fucking wouldn't. Nobody ever says in passing that a mother is good with their own kids. Why should it be worthy of comment that my husband is a competent parent purely because he is a bloke? And why should it only be noteworthy if a woman is a crap parent?
AIBU?
Or just a bit po-faced to find this phrase infuriating!
Pontouf · 02/09/2013 13:30
A couple of weeks ago I went out boozing to a rather posh do in the afternoon and DH took our 3 DC's out. Our eldest is a boy (very relevant) age 12, his next sister down is 8 (again relevant).
So DH is trundling around our local nature reserve and gets stopped by an old couple asking him directions and apparently got onto the subject of the children.
DH gets "ooh aren't you good letting your wife go out for the day? I hope she looks after you" and you're doing so well with all of them"! 
DD1 gets "are you helping Daddy look after the baby?"
Totally bypassing the fact that the very obvious oldest is our son who is completely bloody capable of keeping an eye on both of his sisters, and was in fact holding Dd2's reins at the time!
AND I never get any bloody praise when I take all 3 out plus my 2 mindees!
YANBU, it pisses me off. That and the babysitting stuff. It's completely insulting to DH.
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