To get cross every time I see a woman say her husband doesn't do any night feeds because "he works"?

[TeenTitans]

I'm in a few mum groups online and I keep seeing this and it's driving me mad. Women who's husband's never do any night feeds because they work and women who think that's perfectly okay. Erm do you not think looking after the kids all day is work? My response is always "so do you!" when I see it. My partner has always helped with the nights because they're his kids as well and it's just as much his job as mine.

I'm not complaining about couples divvying up the work as they wish but the justification. YOU ALSO WORK.

Biology dictates that it’s a woman’s job to produce and feed children.

Biology doesn't dictate that they feed children beyond a certain age and even then only if they breastfeed which lets face it many women don't. Anyway, OP is not complaining about women who say that they do that night awakenings because they are breastfeeding. It is the fact that they state they do all the night feeds because their DH works and can't possibly have an unbroken nights sleep which is irritating.

Out of my three kids, DS2 would fit the pattern most describe here. He's an easy child. Sleeps, feeds, smiles, fits into whatever I'm doing. Wakes once in the night, sometimes. As he's not my eldest I didn't get to enjoy a maternity of drinking coffee and watching TV, but I suppose if your only experience of kids is DS2 then I can see why you'd be utterly confused by what some of us are saying.

Anyway, OP is not complaining about women who say that they do that night awakenings because they are breastfeeding. It is the fact that they state they do all the night feeds because their DH works and can't possibly have an unbroken nights sleep which is irritating.

Thank you lol. That's exactly what I am saying

You resent getting up to look after children. What made you decide to have kids?
Codswallop.

I resented an EMCS and having my baby taken away from me whilst everyone else cuddled theirs.

I resented months in hospital when everyone else was home with their baby.
I resent being up since 4.30 this morning because DS couldn't get back to sleep and needed my company for that.

I don't resent HIM.

Even though he's now asleep and the only way I could do that was on the bus so no hope of a nap for me.

(And had I poked DH he'd have got up. As it was I woke him at 6.30 and told him to wake me at 8 so I grabbed an hour whilst he looked after DS and got ready for work)

Not evjoying every single second of parenthood, not smiling giddily through all the shit stuff, accepting that some of it is shit doesn't make you a bad parent or mean you shouldnt have kids

I am just going to rephrase this for fun:

"Sometimes I would think that, not that we could have done much about it as ff. But then went back to work part time and I know what I would prefer to be doing after a wakeful night and it certainly wasn't going to look after a screaming non-napping non-putdownable 8-kilo baby for the whole day by myself. Tiredness is horrible but much easier to manage if you are running your own schedule and can decide when you do that day eg go for lunch/to the water cooler, see colleagues, go to the toilet alone etc. Nap on the train during your commute or relax in your car alone listening to the radio. Look as perky or as rough as you want. Close your eyes whilst sitting on the toilet alone a few mins. Nap if possible during lunch etc etc"

By the way my baby was a total velcro baby and a shocking sleeper until I night weaned at 18 months so I'm under no illusions that mat leave is all lounging, napping and coffee-drinking. I had sleep deprivation. I suffered with it. I'd still prefer full time parenting to any job I've ever done, even the good ones, and I'd still take every opportunity to be with my child once she was spending 7 hours a day in nursery away from me. I missed her. I wanted to see her. It was worth being tired.

I have struggled with the fact my partner doesn't feel the same way about her I do. I imagine there are lots of mums who feel less attachment and find their babies quite boring, and lots of dads who feel more and would rather spend more time caring for their children.

I would hope, in families where this was the case, everyone would be grown up enough to work things out to their own satisfaction. If people can't have these discussions with their partners then they have a partner problem. But if everyone is happy with the arrangements as they stand, then whether this happens to conform to a societal norm is not the point - it's the imposition of the caring role on women that is at issue. If no-one is being imposed upon, then there is no issue.

Coming at this 23 pages in so I’m sure this has been covered.

Op, ‘feminists’ like you give feminism a bad name. Looking after kids is not work in the same way as say operating heavy machinery, driving a truck or performing open heart surgery. Most jobs require a refreshed parent to keep the money coming in when family life starts.

Equality does not mean men and woman always having exactly the same. If you choose to take mat leave (you can share it now) then you get all the benefits of being at home, including slobbing around in your PJs on the sofa after a tough night. Of your only conversations are with the under 5s then it doesn’t take much brain power. If a man shares that mat leave, he gets those ‘privileges’ instead. Either way, the person who can look like shit and minimise all other activities bar keeping a child fed is in my view best placed sacrifice their sleep. If workers choose to share the night wakenings, and their jobs can tolerate tiredness, knock yourself out. But don’t presume to apply that logic to everyone else.

I love my partner. I was hugely grateful that his income meant I could take full mat leave and a short career break after that. I wanted him to be as comfortable as possible with that responsibility in a job where sleep is vital. I chose to stay home and I wanted to make it as easy as possible for my partner. In the same way, he appreciated the protection that I gave him in terms of sleep. Similarly, he wanted to come home and do bath time and bedtime and cook dinner for me, he too wanted to look after his family. It was still tough but it was a shared overall responsibility with each of us thinking of the other and trying to be kind to them. It’s called teamwork. Nothing can be gained from playing ‘who’s the most tired’. And it can kill a relationship.

Feminism isn’t always about resenting the differences between the genders. It’s about having choices. You stay home with kids, that’s your choice. Just don’t resent the wage earner for it.

People like the OP continue the ‘them and us’ camps which feminism seeks to remove. I feel sorry for people like the OP and their partners because with those attitudes life mustn’t be much fun. Feminism should be liberating. It should not constrain women to another set of rules, those made by their own gender instead of men. That’s not feminism at all.

I EBF and can’t be bothered pumping most of the time so really, it’s only natural that all the night feeds have fallen to me. During DP’s paternity leave he would wake up and change his nappy then I’d feed him but as soon as he returned to work this stopped. To begin with, I was frustrated with DP and a little resentful tbh but as time went on and DS started to sleep for longer stretches I wasn’t as arsed.

If you bottle feed then I’d imagine it’s one of the bonuses, to be able to share the feeds. I would be a little upset if they never attempted to do night feeds, especially during weekends.

Also school runs aren’t taxing if you drive or walk to a school five minutes up the road. Some people don’t have this luxury and have to walk miles. Being a SAHM isn’t a walk in the park at all, I prefer being at work .

What an excellent post shitholiday2018. I wholeheartedly agree with you.

I didn't want him up at night when he had a full day of work (proper, physical hard graft) to do for 12 hours+ the next day.
However that didn't mean he wasn't able to feed the baby before he went to bed and once he got up so I could have a few hours uninterrupted sleep.
I totally agree you can't expect someone to be up every few hours at night when they have a full time job but that doesn't completely exclude them from parenting duties.

Well, you can't get sacked from the job at home.

This is a total gem: "Looking after kids is not work in the same way as say operating heavy machinery, driving a truck or performing open heart surgery."

No, of course not. Total responsibility for a tiny, helpless but very demanding human being, an actual LIVE HUMAN BEING, being a lesser responsibility than operating machinery? Yeah, lets us just dig our heads even deeper in the sand. Anything but admitting the truth of how "women's work" no matter how demanding and important it is, is always seen as less demanding and important than what men do.

I think half the trouble with this attitude is patriarchy actually - the idea that work is so wonderful and fulfilling and childcare such an unmitigated tedious slog. It's alright for a woman to love her job, and want to dedicate herself to it and excel at it, because, basically, it is an historically masculine thing to do that therefore given value. Whereas if a woman loves her baby, loves being a mother, and wants to dedicate herself to it and excel at it, she's seen as martyred, surrendered, bovine etc etc - because it is (obviously) an historically female thing to do.

I know people think less of me than they used to because I love being a parent and being with my child more than anything else. I have a distinction-level postgrad degree from Oxford and a professional qualification, a decent career behind me - so people think that I ought to disdain parenting a small child as a boring drudge and be all about getting back to my intellectual life and my job. Fuck that. It's all incredibly boring compared to the transformative love I have for my child and the amazing person she is. And while I APPRECIATE IT IS NOT LIKE THAT FOR EVERYONE and THAT'S OK, no-one it seems can extend me the same courtesy - the amount of GRIEF you get as an intelligent woman to 'get your life back', 'get me time', etc etc is incredibly annoying. I don't want it back. This one is better. For me.

Some people have children and are surprised by how much duller it was than they expected; some people experience the opposite. We don't all have to do it the same.

Great post shitholiday. Yes I do wonder how some women get through life, if they’re permanently making everything tit-for-tat. Personally when my kids very very little, I was too tired to care. I was at home. DH worked to facilitate that, so I just got on with it. What would be the point of him getting up in the night anyway? Just to watch me bf? No point whatsoever. It’s doesn't matter whether it’s “harder” to go to work or to be a SAHM. Who cares? It’s depends on the job and it depends on the kids, but in any case it’s not a competition. It’s just life. Get on with it.

"you can't get sacked from the job at home". You can, however, drop our baby on its head if you are too tired. (Disclamer: I am a mother who worked full time AND did night wakings AND managed not to get sacked).

@shitholiday2018.
Totally agree with you!!

You're missing the point. I'm not saying every woman who does night feeds isn't a feminist.

It's like playing patriarchy bingo. Here is another classic: "Yes I do wonder how some women get through life, if they’re permanently making everything tit-for-tat."

Of course, it's only women to do the 'tit-for-tat' thing when they start questioning the division of labour. Unlike women, most men, when asked to care for their own children, always readily step into the role, no questions asked.

To look at it another way, to be fair, I come from a family where divorce/separation is more common than people staying together; so when I had a child, it was with full appreciation of the fact I might end up having to take care of it on my own - you never can rely on anyone but yourself when it comes all the way down to it.

Maybe that attitude has something to do with me genuinely never feeling hard done by because of how much I get to look after my kid - I took that on when I chose to have her. Lucky for me I enjoy it.

I imagine others wouldn't have contemplated having a kid if they might have to do it alone, and expected 50:50 input - so they are well within their rights to be vexed if they don't get it!

Most jobs require a refreshed parent to keep the money coming in when family life starts.

...until we go back to work after mat leave, at which point many of us do not have the luxury of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night. And weirdly enough, nobody suggests then that it is essential we should be getting that sleep because we’re bringing in the money, nobody’s saying to men “you need to pay for a night nanny, you can’t expect your wife to wake up at night when she’s working!”, we just deal with it.

I had plenty of nights in the newborn months when I got 3 hours of broken sleep before waking DH to take over for an hour before he went to work. The idea that I should have given him that hour after he’d had 7 hours sleep already, so I could be on my knees with exhaustion while he didn’t have to be a little bit tired at all, is just bizarre. What kind of partnership is that?

Namestheyareachangin, I don't think anyone on this thread feels hard done by because of how much they get to look after their kids. Some of us feel hard done by the fact that our male partners feel hard done by when they get to look after their kids, especially at night. Men also decide to have children. Why on earth do they not want to look after them or think that their jobs are so much more important?

I'm loving how many men just can't possibly have a disturbed night sleep but women can somehow look after tiny humans while being sleep deprived.

@53rdway

I think it goes without saying if the mother isn['t happy to do it, it shouldn't be done. But the OP seems to have a beef with mothers who say they are doing it, for a reason that makes sense to them, and they are happy with it. Not saying what anyone else ought to be doing. So what's up with that?

YABU and super judgy.

OH is a doctor, currently working in intensive care.

You bet your ass when our baby arrives I’ll be doing all of the night feeds, because I won’t be at work the following day and can afford to be tired/drowsy while doing things like childcare and housework, if he goes into work in that state he could kill someone.

Even if he worked in Asda I’d say the same, if one person is able to stay home with the baby and the other is going out to work the one who isn’t at paid employment the next day does the night feeds unless both agree otherwise.

@PissedOffProf

Those are shite men, Prof. If your partner is putting all the childcare on you and you're not happy to do it, they're a shit partner. Surely nobody's disputing that?