Is it going to be just mums and just dads forever now?

[ParentsandParents]

My wife has just had our first baby and well as splitting the load as much as possible I've been trying to join in with the community of new parents and be an active and equal participant. It's tough though. Partly because all the parenting classes, activities and meet ups are held during the week and I'm working at the moment, though I'll be doing three months of SPL later in the year. And partly because every new parents group, chat or meet up I join seems to either just be the women who've given birth and nobody else, or to quickly split into separate groups, meet ups and chats for 'mums' and 'dads' with the 'mums' often initiating this. Even when the point of meeting up or chatting is nothing to do with being a man or woman, and everything to do with being a new parent and / or meeting new people. It hasn't been like this so far in my life, I've always been in and seen mixed groups at work, in friendships and in activities. Is it unreasonable to have expected that new parents would want to spend time with other new parents, or that men and women could talk about our kids and be friends, or does something about new parenthood send everyone spiraling back to the 50's with the men in the pub talking about craft ale and what football team their kids will support and the women in the park talking about books and feeding? Will this change when our kid(s) are older or is this the way it's always going to be now we have a kid.

I'm slightly disturbed by the tone of some of these replies. It seems really hostile to the OP to suggest she is trying to invade women's 'safe spaces' or to say she 'admits' she hasn't given birth.

You know women in same-sex relationships experience infertility and pregnancy loss just like other women, right?

I have no idea why the OP did not give birth to her child, but surely it must cross your mind to recognise that may not have been a choice she made, and there could be sad reasons why she's not swapping stories about cracked nipples with the other mums?

Even if she is completely happy and thrilled never to have had to be pregnant or give birth (and obviously I hope very much she falls into this camp), it seems unnecessarily mean to imply she's making other women feel unsafe simply by asking questions about gender dynamics.

The group i went to (30 years ago) was mainly women but we had two dads who always attended and others who did when they could. I don't remember anyone talking about cracked nipples or anything intimate, we talked about babies/toddlers and tips about buying stuff, toys they liked etc.

Are we going backwards?

I'd rather socialise with women and wouldn't ask a man (dad) from a stay and play group for their number to arrange a play date / coffee at mine....
It's easier, more relaxed for me if it is another woman. Not to mention safer.

One of my best friends is male and I'm female. We both shoulder the vast majority of the parenting burden and we work and that's the experience we bond over and what led us to be good friends and have a good laugh. We feel comfortable bitching about our lot in life. As a pp said I think that it's the shared experience that helps. I don't have a great deal of time for hobbies or following football etc and the friends I get on best with are the same. I look forward to parties, sports classes etc because that's when we catch up.

A lot of the gender-segregation happens because men self-select themselves out of parenting equally. It's unlikely to be an ongoing issue for you once the 'giving birth' aspect of parenting becomes less important since you intend to be an equal parent and I'm sure won't think that your 'important job' and hobbies should be given a higher priority than doing your share of caring for your child.

@BrilliantBetty

I'd rather socialise with women and wouldn't ask a man (dad) from a stay and play group for their number to arrange a play date / coffee at mine.... It's easier, more relaxed for me if it is another woman. Not to mention safer.

I'd never thought about it in that way but I think I'm the opposite to you. I'm thinking of the times I sat at swimming lessons/gym club/karate lessons etc and generally the people I struck up friendships with were the dads.

@ManifestDestinee

Yes I get why some women would want to talk to other people who had gone through the very unique physical experience of having a baby and feeding one. Especially in the few months after birth. But the experience of parenting a young child isn't unique to women, or it shouldn't be. And I just find it a bit depressing that parents are splitting along these lines and that some of the splitting is being instigated by women

The experience of birth is unique to women. The experience of breastfeeding is unique to women, the experience of maternity leave is unique to women.

Women are allowed to want to talk to other women, without random men horning their way in, it's not a 50's stereotype and they don't want to consider your feelings. Sometimes single sex spaces are warranted, and this is one of them.

I echo this

If you want to be a hands on Dad, be a hands on Dad. Baby/toddler groups aren't the be all & end all of parenting. I'm quite introverted and didn't attend many when the dc were small (i was lucky to be in a group of friends who had babies & young children around the same time, so they were our regular meet ups). My dcs Dad was very involved with them from the word go - when not working we shared all the care. When they reached playgroup age he was the one who took on doing the drop offs/pick ups most days & helped out at the group regularly, chairing the committee at one point.

Give it time. Along with it being natural that women & men tend to gravitate towards others who've recently shared their specific experiences, in those first months after birth many people are just too knackered and caught up in their new arrival & to be interested in getting too involved with others beyond a brew & a chat once a week.

@NotDavidTennant

Many (most?) straight women don't want their male partners developing close friendships with other women and vice versa, because of the percieved risk of infidelitey. Having predominantely same sex social circles is a way to guard against this.

You’re joking? Right? 😂😂😂😂😂😂 You do know we have mixed work spaces etc don’t you? Do none of my male colleagues spouses know they spend most of their day, and some evenings, with lots of women? And yes, I met my DH at work. And yes I’m completely comfortable with him socialising with women 😁

Other posters have given some really good explanations of why women very naturally gravitate towards one another in the first few months after having a baby. After that I think it’s just a question of finding the right people. There are quite a few women who just don’t really do friendships with men (and vice versa) so you will inevitably run into a bit of that too. That was, for me, one of the problems with my NCT group. It was a very ‘girly’ crowd, and The Husbands were kept strongly in the background. Fair enough, that was how the others liked it and I don’t want to suggest that traditionally ‘girly’ chat or ways of interacting are somehow inferior (I use that word, by the way, because there was a lot of talk of ‘girls’ nights out’ and ‘girly film evenings’) but it’s really not my scene so I drifted away from the group. Conversely I have a couple of pretty good dad playground pals now because I’ve found it easier to get talking to them than a lot of the mums. So I think there’s a bit of backsliding into traditional gender roles going on, especially while the memory of birth is still so strong, but mostly it’s just that the people you meet at baby groups are people with whom you may have nothing in common other than the fact of a baby, so it’s always going to be pretty hit and miss socially, and for men that’s further complicated by the reality that a lot of people of both sexes naturally gravitate towards single sex friendship groups, which makes it harder for men in a strongly female dominated environment.

I totally agree with you OP. I've never been terribly happy in all-female company (girls' school was not ideal!), and I hate the fact that I now find I can only access male company through 'couples' evenings (ie via mum circles having a get together where husbands are invited too) rather than getting to know men as friends in their own right. It does get a bit better later on - I've found that social events at secondary school are attended by dads almost as much as mums - but throughout babyhood and primary school it was incredibly mum focused.

I agree and being asked for your number by a Dad to organise playdates is not the pathway to infidelity. I,shock horror, go to the pub garden with my DD's friend's Dad, the park with another. We all work from home and the Mum's in these scenarios don't, if my DD wants to socialise with her friends then I have to get over the fact they are men!

[quote ParentsandParents]@ManifestDestinee I'm a woman, in a same sex relationship, with another woman who is the one who gave birth to our baby. It's entirely irrelevant to this conversation whether I'm a man or a woman. I wasn't talking about me, as a woman (or a man) wanting to force myself into groups of women talking about discharge and cracked nipples, or groups of men talking about ale and power tools. I was just expressing 1. my general shock and disappointment at how bloody gendered new parenting seems to be, 2. my worry about what this is going to mean for future friendship groups and 3. my worry that new parenting being so gendered is going to fuck over women and men who want equality[/quote]
I agree personally. I'm a woman who was in a hetero relationship when I had a newborn, and still I felt that the groups I attended gently but irrevocably favoured a certain kind of interaction and conformity. I stayed away.

Genuine question, to those who (thinking I was a straight man) told me that women who have given birth need women only spaces to talk about the female experience of giving birth and that I shouldn't try to push into these spaces, (not that I was suggesting this, I was just expressing disappointment that there weren't spaces for parents as well as the spaces for birthing women).

Now you know I'm a gay woman, what do you think?

This wasn't what I came here to ask about btw, but so many people thought I was a man and suggested that my wish to be seen as a parent (rather than a man or a woman) and disappointment that parenting was so gendered was akin to me trying to displace women from their spaces, that I'm curious to know what you think now

@ancientgran

The group i went to (30 years ago) was mainly women but we had two dads who always attended and others who did when they could. I don't remember anyone talking about cracked nipples or anything intimate, we talked about babies/toddlers and tips about buying stuff, toys they liked etc.

Are we going backwards?

How would be able to bring up intimate issues be going backwards?

Getting support for the physical and emotional struggles of physically carrying a baby is going backwards?

30 years ago, women were as open about this side of giving birth. And we weren't better for it.

[quote ParentsandParents]@ManifestDestinee I'm a woman, in a same sex relationship, with another woman who is the one who gave birth to our baby. It's entirely irrelevant to this conversation whether I'm a man or a woman. I wasn't talking about me, as a woman (or a man) wanting to force myself into groups of women talking about discharge and cracked nipples, or groups of men talking about ale and power tools. I was just expressing 1. my general shock and disappointment at how bloody gendered new parenting seems to be, 2. my worry about what this is going to mean for future friendship groups and 3. my worry that new parenting being so gendered is going to fuck over women and men who want equality[/quote]
it has been the same for years, and will continue while people show the same attitudes as shown on this thread.

Equal paternity/maternity leave would help even it out, but while the gender pay gap persists, even that won't help.

Very interested in your perspective OP, most interesting discussion

Yes I thought you were a straight man. It did shift things a bit for me. I think I'm self conscious in front of men and women who say they dislike women-only groups, because I am a very ordinary mum who found the experience of making lots of female friends and being able to talk about the physicality of pregnancy, birth, feeding and new parenthood really wonderful. My closest friends are still those women. But I know that those intimacies aren't valued by a lot of people. I have made friends with other parents over a much longer timescale, mainly around school and being on the governing body for a bit. Then people knew my name and my child also was quite recognisable so connections happened that way.

Essentially just as nothing lasts forever with babies, nothing lasts forever with parenting.

The reason it's so "gendered" in those early months is down to men & women have different experiences of the whole thing. As I said in my earlier post it's natural to gravitate towards people who've shared your own experiences. I also think many women need a female space to discuss the physical side of childbirth, esp if they had a difficult birth, and get to grips with breastfeeding. My local breastfeeding group is strictly female attendees only.

A couple of close friends are a (female) gay couple, and have children they adopted as babies. I didn't know them at that time but i'm going to ask how they got on in those early days and what/if any groups they went to.

@PermanentTemporary

Yes I thought you were a straight man. It did shift things a bit for me. I think I'm self conscious in front of men and women who say they dislike women-only groups, because I am a very ordinary mum who found the experience of making lots of female friends and being able to talk about the physicality of pregnancy, birth, feeding and new parenthood really wonderful. My closest friends are still those women. But I know that those intimacies aren't valued by a lot of people. I have made friends with other parents over a much longer timescale, mainly around school and being on the governing body for a bit. Then people knew my name and my child also was quite recognisable so connections happened that way.

Essentially just as nothing lasts forever with babies, nothing lasts forever with parenting.

I'm not surprised you were thinking that way, as this was in the OP's original post:

Is it unreasonable to have expected that new parents would want to spend time with other new parents, or that men and women could talk about our kids and be friends

I think you need to start a Dad's group. Dads are every bit as important as mums when it comes
to child rearing but they don't breast feed, haven't pushed a small human out and often don't wake up when the baby cries (perhaps this is in my experience but I do think the mother is more wired to hear a fuss in the night). Women tend to bond very quickly as new mothers and I found
myself discussing the innermost details of the birth with a fellow new mum who I met for the first time in costa coffee. We have become firm friends.

I have seen Dad's at baby groups, quite often actually! They are always made very welcome and some have formed friendships with the mums. My husband has made new Dad friends through the children. They tend to bond over children, beer, sports, work etc but you don't often catch them discussing birth experiences in the same detail as their partners do (not to say they avoid the topic).

I also found it easier to talk about our daughter’s birth with some men than some women. I had a difficult birth - back to back, forceps, episiotomy, 3b tear, PPH, went home with a catheter and leg bag and no one could tell me at that point if the incontinence was going to get better. My experience was on a different planet from my (otherwise lovely) friend who turned up at the NCT reunion patting herself on the back about how she gave birth without a scratch thanks to hypnobirthing. I found some male friends much more respectful and sympathetic to my experience than she was. By contrast I found the newborn stage relatively easy whereas other friends struggled. There is such a variety of experiences out there - of birth, parenting etc - that I do not find that giving birth to a child guarantees understanding or sympathy from a fellow mother. In fact, quite the opposite at times.

@SpindleWhorl not sure that implies I'm a man. I meant that I had hoped that men and women in general could talk about their kids and be friends in general. I also talked about parenting groups largely being "just women who had given birth or quickly splitting into mums and dads." Which implies I'm a woman, just not one that has given birth. I wasn't trying to trick anyone, I'm was just writing from my own perspective where being a woman and having a wife is normal and not something I need to specifically announce unless it's directly relevant.

[quote ParentsandParents]@SpindleWhorl not sure that implies I'm a man. I meant that I had hoped that men and women in general could talk about their kids and be friends in general. I also talked about parenting groups largely being "just women who had given birth or quickly splitting into mums and dads." Which implies I'm a woman, just not one that has given birth. I wasn't trying to trick anyone, I'm was just writing from my own perspective where being a woman and having a wife is normal and not something I need to specifically announce unless it's directly relevant.[/quote]
Maybe don't start a Dads group then!

Apologies that I made assumptions, I'm quite shocked with myself! As someone who went through IVF I do know that there are many ways to make a happy family and I am absolutely for all of them......

[quote ParentsandParents]@SpindleWhorl not sure that implies I'm a man. I meant that I had hoped that men and women in general could talk about their kids and be friends in general. I also talked about parenting groups largely being "just women who had given birth or quickly splitting into mums and dads." Which implies I'm a woman, just not one that has given birth. I wasn't trying to trick anyone, I'm was just writing from my own perspective where being a woman and having a wife is normal and not something I need to specifically announce unless it's directly relevant.[/quote]
Realise this could come across as me calling out people who assumed I was a man. Not my intention. I get it. People make assumptions based on general norms - and I'm not the norm. But I am the norm for me

Also, not everyone particularly wants to talk about those experiences. In (rare) mixed groups when the kids were young, I would tend to gravitate towards the men, precisely because they weren't talking about cracked nipples and episiotomies. I had a bloody awful time with birth and breastfeeding, and had no desire to spend much time talking about it. I found it was far better for my wellbeing to spend half an hour talking about sport or politics or books or TV, or just having a laugh about universal aspects of parenting, rather than talking about the very specifically female business of childbirth and feeding. But then to be honest I feel the same way now if the talk in my largely female office turns towards periods and menopause and relationship issues - I'm much happier getting that sort of 'support' from my GP or the internet, and prefer my actual social interactions to centre on less gendered things.

Anyway, this has been interesting. I'm off to do the next feed (pumped) so my wife can get a bit more sleep. Hope all the dads and other mums out there are doing the same. Sleep tight