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 suppose I was just hoping we were a bit more advanced along the road to equality than we seem to be.

I'm surprised you haven't noticed before that we are not!! But it sounds like you have chosen one of the vanishing few areas where women drive the dynamic to criticise which is possibly why some of the replies are a little hostile. If you want to nurture equality, going after post-natal women who want a space to recover together seems a bit of an odd choice.

It's really different from city to city, even suburb to suburb! My area is the last affordable part of town, most of the parents I know are both working full time with mums often out earning dads. Definitely see a lot of dads on the school and nursery run and the park. I have some dad friends. 2 miles from here it's more of a high earning dad/stay at home mum vibe.
Interestingly despite doing 50% of school runs my husband doesn't really know any other parents or the names of other kids in the class. I think it's another 'wifework' job - that I have proactively befriended people because I know my children wants play dates so I need to do that. Whereas it hasn't occurred to my husband the benefit of small talk and friendliness. With no family nearby, I've really needed this friends for support and backup - but I think men often see this as a woman's responsibility.

I think the whole OP comes across as quite disingenuous.

The way it's written, it's fairly obvious most people would have assumed you were a man. Most relationships resulting in a child together are man and woman so it's natural people would assume, and I think you know this. It feels a bit like you were waiting for the right time to do a 'gotcha' moment and make people feel bad about their assumptions.

If you wanted genuine responses about your individual situation, you would have included relevant information in your post, and you being a woman (who has not given birth) is relevant to how people respond to you.

Regarding the actual issue of gender divide, my experience is that it happens naturally. After giving birth I wanted to be around other women who had given birth, it really is that simple. Trying to force anything else will just make people uncomfortable, so other posters suggestions of waiting until the baby is older to try to have more mixed meetings is good advice.

[quote ParentsandParents]@ManifestDestinee Yes but I didn't say the women who have given birth couldn't talk or meet privately with no men present if that's what they want and need, and with no me present too if that's what they want / need. I get this. What I said was a bit depressing was that every parental activity, group and chat (even ones that have been set up explicitly for parents rather than mums, and for things like meeting new friends or swapping used baby stuff) is splitting along gendered lines. I hope it doesn't stay that way for ever, not least because I don't want my son thinking dads can't parent[/quote]
Riiight, so women can have those spaces, but when they arise naturally you find it depressing and unfair and gendered blah blah blah. Have you listened to yourself?

@Mummyoflittledragon

Now that I know you’re a woman, I think you’re just as utterly clueless as I was before giving birth. The women, who gave birth want to be around the other women, who just shared the same experience. You didn’t share that experience and it is rude and presumptuous to think you can be part of that group based on your biological sex. Perhaps you will if you and your dw decide to have another child. But right now, you don’t and rightly so they don’t want to include you.

If I were one of the other women in the group, I would be perplexed that you don’t get this. Being a woman, your boundaries will have frequently have been disregarded. You are taking this very personally and as pointed out, your post about feeding comes across as performative. Yes, it’s nice you’re feeding your baby so your dw can sleep. But I note you’re feeding your baby with pumped milk. That takes some effort and your dw is an absolute saint to be pumping with a newborn so that you can experience feeding.

You have been pretty forceful with your views throughout this exchange and your first post was very much talking about men and women. It’s natural for the women on this thread, who’ve given birth to presume you’re male both based on the way you discussed men and women and because you sound pretty entitled, much like men often do.

As I and others have said, you should wait a while until the babies are weaned. I suggested until the spring, which will mean your baby will be around 9 months old. This is the time, when you will see a shift, especially with a change of weather. The women will be stronger. Their hormones will not yet be balanced as that takes around 18 months. But they will be more likely to be receptive to meet ups as couples.

I'm not seeking entry to groups for women who have just given birth @Mummyoflittledragon for me or for men. I've repeatedly said that it's great that those groups exist. My wife is in one that I'm not in, despite some of the other mums actually asking her if I wanted to join and saying they'd be happy talking about bodily stuff with me there. I was just surprised to find that in groups that had been set up for all new parents to socialise, meet up in the week and occasionally at the weekend and swap parenting stuff - some women were suggesting a dads only chat for their lonely husbands to make friends. As though the idea of making friends with a woman or while a woman was also present was not an option. For the record, my wife pumps about once a week, so she can get an uninterrupted stretch of sleep for part of the night and it takes her about ten minutes to get a full feed's worth of milk, she has good supply and finds it easy. She's doing it for sleep, not so I can experience anything. Also our baby is five months old

some women were suggesting a dads only chat for their lonely husbands to make friends. As though the idea of making friends with a woman or while a woman was also present was not an option.

More likely the new mothers dont want to make friends with men, so it was a nice way of telling them to fuck off.

[quote PegasusReturns]@SarahAndQuack

I did a load of reading about same-sex parents after we had DD, and relatively few lesbians seem to feel experiences of parenthood are driven primarily by whether or not you're the birthing parent. The early days, yes. Later on, no

Yes I was really thinking of parenting in the first year.

Babies are a world away for me now and as my DC have grown I’ve been much more open to parent friendships of either sex.

However my overarching recollection of new fathers was how fucking dull they all were. And sanctimonious. Nothing worse than a snug dad who dies precisely 5 hours of “babysitting” a week playing competitive parent with you or patronising you whilst your baby screams because he “never [had] that issue with Jago, have you tried a genuine organic cotton swaddle?!”[/quote]
OMG yes.

I think because I had been on mumsnet for about a decade before DD was born, and had been pregnant several times, my jaw was on the floor when some of the dads would talk about how 'helpful' they were while also admitting they 'had' to sleep in a different room as their sleep was important, or wondering why their wives were tired.

I had just learned the cast iron rule that, if you did not give birth, for those first few months, you do not have an opinion on how hard anything is.

It is really sad, though, because you want someone to talk to who might share the worries about 'do you think my DP has PND' or 'should I let DP sleep through as she's shattered or will she be in pain when she wakes up and DD hasn't had a breastfeed' (I wish I'd had someone to talk to about that!). And you can't really talk to most men, but you also feel odd talking to other bio mums.

If the only route to equality is one where things are strictly equally split otherwise they're wrong, then that's not a society I want to live in.

Take shared parental leave. Super progressives froth at mouth because there is still little uptake from fathers, and new mothers tend to use it instead. I wouldn't have wanted to share my leave even if I could. I wanted to recover from birth, focus on breastfeeding, and spend that time with my child. Understandably, given I grew my child in my body for 9 months. My husband continued to work full time to allow us to do this, which I see as a sacrifice he made for me. To a lot of people that's NOT EQUALITY and means I'm STUCK IN THE FIFTIES and HAVEN'T PROGRESSED and my husband IS NOT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. It's so dumb and frankly insulting and devaluing of motherhood.

And op I think your experience is the result of something similar. There's plenty of women who feel like I did, therefore a lot of groups etc tended to be women because the men would be the ones to keep working - someone had to. I wasn't that interested in parenting groups, I went because it was something to do to get out etc. I wouldn't have been interested in groups at weekends as then I wanted us to spend time as a family, or get the opportunity to have some alone time and leave my baby with their father. So naturally, he didn't come along to any groups.

It's different as they get older, I still only work part time so play dates etc tend to be me, but we will also all meet up and dads get to know each other and you naturally make new friends with people who you have met because you both have children, but who you would have been friends with anyway if you'd met differently.

Sometimes groups split along sex based or other lines naturally without it being a big sign of a lack of 'progression'. I am close friends with two same sex female couples with babies and have found it fascinating that both of them, despite being very different couples and personalities, have split into traditional masculine and feminine roles depending which partner gave birth. The role of mother is a very particular thing and that's OK. Insisting things are dated if they don't equally involve men and women misses that.

Out of interest, why don't you go to the group your wife goes to where the other participants said you'd be welcome?

Well I found most baby/toddler groups were full of grandparent that nobody was my age, there were far more Grandads than Nannas. Even now the school run and preschool run is full of grandparents.

@DysmalRadius

I suppose I was just hoping we were a bit more advanced along the road to equality than we seem to be.

I'm surprised you haven't noticed before that we are not!! But it sounds like you have chosen one of the vanishing few areas where women drive the dynamic to criticise which is possibly why some of the replies are a little hostile. If you want to nurture equality, going after post-natal women who want a space to recover together seems a bit of an odd choice.

I was more having a go at the dads who want their wives to organise a group just for them, (the pub was mentioned as a possible venue so it sounds like the dads won’t be taking the babies) rather than joining the parenting group. Yes I’m a bit surprised at myself too, but a lot of the other new mums I and my wife have met also seem to have had a bit of an awakening now the lack of equality is affecting them much more directly. Quite a few have partners who despite having made progressive noises in the past, aren’t being very hands on parents and seem surprised when the women haven’t kept the house tidy and filled the fridge

@Jenala

If the only route to equality is one where things are strictly equally split otherwise they're wrong, then that's not a society I want to live in.

Take shared parental leave. Super progressives froth at mouth because there is still little uptake from fathers, and new mothers tend to use it instead. I wouldn't have wanted to share my leave even if I could. I wanted to recover from birth, focus on breastfeeding, and spend that time with my child. Understandably, given I grew my child in my body for 9 months. My husband continued to work full time to allow us to do this, which I see as a sacrifice he made for me. To a lot of people that's NOT EQUALITY and means I'm STUCK IN THE FIFTIES and HAVEN'T PROGRESSED and my husband IS NOT TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. It's so dumb and frankly insulting and devaluing of motherhood.

And op I think your experience is the result of something similar. There's plenty of women who feel like I did, therefore a lot of groups etc tended to be women because the men would be the ones to keep working - someone had to. I wasn't that interested in parenting groups, I went because it was something to do to get out etc. I wouldn't have been interested in groups at weekends as then I wanted us to spend time as a family, or get the opportunity to have some alone time and leave my baby with their father. So naturally, he didn't come along to any groups.

It's different as they get older, I still only work part time so play dates etc tend to be me, but we will also all meet up and dads get to know each other and you naturally make new friends with people who you have met because you both have children, but who you would have been friends with anyway if you'd met differently.

Sometimes groups split along sex based or other lines naturally without it being a big sign of a lack of 'progression'. I am close friends with two same sex female couples with babies and have found it fascinating that both of them, despite being very different couples and personalities, have split into traditional masculine and feminine roles depending which partner gave birth. The role of mother is a very particular thing and that's OK. Insisting things are dated if they don't equally involve men and women misses that.

Out of interest, why don't you go to the group your wife goes to where the other participants said you'd be welcome?

Just because the group is mostly about organising meet ups in the week (where the body chat happens) and I’m back working at the moment. I’ve gone to their meet ups when I've had a day off and been invited and I’ve said I’ll join the group when my SPL starts and I’m around if it’s still going. One of the dads who is talking SPL too is hoping to do the same and the mums seem cool with that

@WhatWouldKalindaDo

I think the whole OP comes across as quite disingenuous.

The way it's written, it's fairly obvious most people would have assumed you were a man. Most relationships resulting in a child together are man and woman so it's natural people would assume, and I think you know this. It feels a bit like you were waiting for the right time to do a 'gotcha' moment and make people feel bad about their assumptions.

If you wanted genuine responses about your individual situation, you would have included relevant information in your post, and you being a woman (who has not given birth) is relevant to how people respond to you.

Regarding the actual issue of gender divide, my experience is that it happens naturally. After giving birth I wanted to be around other women who had given birth, it really is that simple. Trying to force anything else will just make people uncomfortable, so other posters suggestions of waiting until the baby is older to try to have more mixed meetings is good advice.

I can see why you might think that. This post wasn’t an elaborate scheme to trick people though, (who has the time!) it was just that my wife and I had been talking earlier about the ‘dad’s group’ and it was on my mind as I was waiting up to feed the baby and I dashed off a quick message. I wasn’t really seeking replies about my / our experience, or advice on how to change things now. I was more wanting to hear from parents with older children about whether their experiences were different and whether things changed naturally and more men got / stayed involved as babies got older. My wife has actually been reading these posts and replies as she was also hopping to make some new dad friends (she’s always got on a bit better with men) and was wondering if that might happen when our boy is older, or whether her parenting circle would forever be just women

I am a SAHD and have found that with a couple of exceptions most Mums were and remain opposed to the presence of men in baby groups. I tried sensory groups, baby massage, Adventure Babies storytelling, Puddleducks swimming and Baby Ballet and while the organisors/facilitators were generally quite welcoming (especially if I was paying) the other Mums ranged from totally ignoring me to overtly hostile.

Foreign Mums were brilliant, possibly because local Mums are also actually quite hostile to them too. The women from Sure Start who ran the baby massage classes were the very worst. Grandparents show intrigue, but not much else.

It was better pre-pandemic, when other Dads would occasionally tag along with the Mums. Now, nowhere allows more than one parent in.

When DS was a baby, there was a dad who was always present at our meet ups, with his partner, and he was lovely, and welcomed. When my DH was off work, he would come along too. I struggled with the all female dynamic as I’m not very feminine and while a lot of the conversation wasn’t really for me, it was helpful to know that I wasn’t the only one struggling with my newborn / baby.

I’d suggest swimming as a good activity. That’s DH thing to do with DS on a Saturday and always has been, and there’s a really good mix of people there. I go along too and natter on the sidelines (although it’s just getting back to normal now post covid)

Also now DS is at nursery, he gets invited to parties etc and DH and I take turns to take him along and there’s usually a mix of people there too. I’d say the early days is still mainly all those who have given birth, but it does get much better as they get older.

There is nothing equal in a woman experiencing pregnancy and labour and post partum issues/recovery. That’s just biological and it does take over, so yes, some woman prefer to speak with people who have also experienced these issues even if they are not discussing that specific topic.

@SarahAndQuack

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.

Thanks @SarahAndQuack, interesting to hear from someone in the same situation. I didn’t have the baby, partly because we want to have two and my wife is a few years older so it made sense for her to go first. Partly because I got ill with something nasty and physical and needed time for my body to recover and recalibrate before putting it through pregnancy. Hopefully I’ll be able to have our next one without it ruining my health, but perhaps not. It’s a bit of a toss up and a source of worry. I’d be interested to hear how you’ve found it. 99% of the time it is just about the baby and how wonderful and overwhelming it is to have our gorgeous, sparky, clever boy being loud and throwing up on us both and for us both to be doing what we can to keep him and each other alive and thriving. But just occasionally it can be a bit of an odd box to be in - being the other mother. Especially when so much of early motherhood is defined (rightly) by pregnancy, pain, birth, hormones and feeding. I’d be interested to hear how you’ve found it.

Agree that it’s a bit disingenuous to talk about “some” women “maybe” wanting to talk about birth and physical aspects in these groups. Don’t know any postnatal meet-up I went to when DC were young where that wasn’t the main topic, and as any feminist would know, those groups across the world and throughout history are absolutely vital. It’s accessing these safe spaces that can support women through all sorts of minor and major difficulties post-birth, and pretending equality is the same as equity isn’t very helpful. In fact, it was those groups where we would have discussions about what male partners should/could be doing, to ensure we asked for things we needed and they stepped up to make parenting fair and enjoyable.

With much older DC now, my DH does most of the parties (including buying presents for their friends), and both of us have socialised with parents of both sexes since nursery. When they’re tiny babies is a totally different world.

I voted YABU because it is normal and logical that new parents groups are divided by parent that gave birth and/or parent that lactates versus those who did not have that experience. I only saw one dad, one time, at a breastfeeding group and that was because the mom needed his practical support to physically attend. (He stayed the whole time and helped the mom with whatever she needed. No one objected.) I didn't see any other couples at breastfeeding groups, regardless of gender. However, I can reassure you that this division will fade as kids grow older and/or if groups are not specific to inherently necessitated exclusionary support. For example, the slingmeets that I attended, back when my kids were younger, had both moms and dads in attendance - both as singles or couples, and every which way you'd imagine. Slingwearing is self-evidently applicable to all parents, regardless of whether they gave birth to their own child or how they feed them.

As past posters have said, it's entirely about support groups meeting the actual needs of the attendees as opposed to whether female or male parents are "better" at parenting or more deserving of support.

@ParentsandParents - that's quite similar to us. My DP had the baby because she was older, but also because I have a history of pregnancy loss. I hope you manage to get your health issues sorted!

As to how I've found it ... TBH, it was a shock. We had lots of microaggressions/ bits of homophobic treatment that added up. I do think there was a perception we were doing it 'wrong'. A weird thing I found was that, although everyone says it would be wonderful if more couples shared the care for a newborn, in practice, there is a lot of hostility or confusion. One time DP took a well-earned nap and the HV turned up to weigh DD. It was explicitly a visit for DD not DP (DD was under extra observation) and we'd checked this was so. But still, the HV was very unhappy that it was me not DP and clearly found it totally inappropriate. If she'd said she wanted to see DP to discuss breastfeeding or something that would have been fine, but we'd been specifically told she didn't!

That stuff gets a bit better once you're past the newborn stage but it doesn't actually go away. DD is 4.5 and all social groups are still basically gender split. I have got better at initiating conversation with the dads but it is always about making an effort and knowing you may get blanked/hostile responses.

The other thing DP and I both notice is that, long beyond the point where you stop talking about BF or other birth-mum-related stuff, social groups are uneasy with two mums. You mess up the dynamic by being a couple when everyone else is just on their own, or, if it's couples socialising, people don't know which of you to talk to. I find it really weird and it's clearly just social conditioning, but it is isolating.

I used to love MN, and I was on here for years before DD, but sadly I have to say it's either got a lot more homophobic, or it was always that way and I've just noticed. You will get a lot of threads where people take great pleasure in implying you're not a mum, or you are not really your child's parent. It's depressing but it's the case. There is still a lot of good support and I'm sure the majority of posters are not homophobic, but it has been a real eye-opener.

I suppose the thing that gets me is the casualness of it all - eg., DP and I recently did some legal paperwork and one of the questions was who lived in the house. We said our daughter. He wanted to know who DD's biological parents were - it's totally irrelevant! Or, recently, when DD started at school, we found I was getting emails and not DP, and when DP said could they pop her on the mailing list, the reply was 'we usually contact mum' (which is, of course, sexist as well, but it's hurtful to be constantly treated as if 'mum' is someone who isn't you).

DP and I have tried to socialise with other groups of same-sex parents, although covid has made it hard. I really don't think the issues go away after babyhood, though. I wish they did. But I think what actually happens is you get a tougher skin about people insisting you can't possibly be mum, or your partner must be a man, or whatever. Sorry!

I can't speak about the experience of socialising in parenting spaces but as someone who's child-free what is depressing is that a lot of my parent friends in their late 30s have regressed to gender-segregated socialising almost all the time.

These are people in a large mixed-gender social group going back nearly two decades and never was it ever based around horrific "girls' nights" or "lads' nights". Until they became parents. It actually started with the hen/stag nights, continued with the baby showers and suddenly almost all socialising is arranged between the women or between the men. It's fucking boring, is what it is. Weirdly as a child-free woman who still likes to party properly I seem to have been put more in the "honorary lad" box which is a headfuck because there never used to be a men/women delineation at ALL. As for DP, he used to be fairly close to one of the women in our group (platonically) and is a bit put out that he only gets to see her husband these days.

It's also had the effect of sidelining some of our gay and lesbian friends, unfortunately, though the social circles they're now prioritising are frankly much more fun than enduring the weird gender segregation.

@SarahAndQuack I’m sorry you’ve experienced all this, that’s awful. Wherever you are, there’s no excuse for it, but please know it’s not like that everywhere. Lots of family shapes and types here, and two mums/two dads/single parents/hetero couples all muddle in and socialise together.

And that’s particularly rubbish with the school - even just with blended families, to make an assumption about one woman being the sole caretaker is archaic. Worth formally writing to school to request a change in policy? (We both get the emails, but my DH does all the school paperwork/forms as I’m shit at it.)

@Smarshian

In my experience women want support from women in those early days so that they can comfortably discuss THEIR issues as new parents, which are often vastly different to men’s, ie changes to their bodies, breastfeeding, contact napping, loss of identity due to being away from work etc. If you want to organise something for a mixed group I don’t see why you can’t though.

Yep this

My DH was a SAHD for some of the time when our kids were small. Our arrangement which suited us. Even at school age some mothers will exclude SAHDs (and their kids) from events, playdates etc. My DH found this really hard and isolating. Women who would happily work with men in the workplace felt uncomfortable having a man in their house, and did not think "they would have anything to talk about". It is different outside the UK, where a more even balance of childcare starts with better and even paternity arrangements. For me this is a great example of women unconsciously reinforcing patriarchy and actively discouraging equality.

@Ghislainedefeligonde

Sometimes women just want to spend time with other women. Esp if feeling vulnerable for any reason which is very common after having a baby. Women are less likely to open up with some bloke sitting there. There are hardly any spaces for just women any more so perhaps that’s why groups split by sex given the opportunity

Think about how this post is going to make the OP feel. He is not just ‘some bloke’ he is a new parent looking for support and a community to help him settle into looking after his new child. No wonder he feels like he is unwelcome clearly if some women are like you, he actually IS unwelcome.

If some women are looking for a single sex space maybe they should organise that, and not sit around at toddler groups feeling resentful to any new dad there because they feel ‘they can’t open up’ .

FWIW I never used to feel uncomfortable if some of the new parents at the toddler groups I went to happened to be the dad and not the mum. OP Please don’t be put off taking your child to these groups. You and your child have a right to be there!

Sorry OP I’ve just seen you are female. As the non birthing parent most of what I’ve said above still counts. You and your child have a right to be there.

For all poster banging on about women wanting to use these spaces to talk about their birth experiences etc. Please bare in mind that the actual purpose of baby and toddler groups is to give new parents a chance to socialise and a rest, and for their children to socialise too. They are not group therapy sessions. By all means talk to the people there about whatever you wish (birth in all its glory included) but please don’t think that other people aren’t entitled to be there because they are making you feel uncomfortable talking about your cracked nipples and partially healed episiotomy scar…