Would men just put their kids into care?

[MustdrinkmoreH2O]

Would be interested to know peoples thoughts on this.

since having my baby and going to a lot of baby groups and mixing with other mothers and reading these forums In can safely say a high proportion of men (not all of course), see child rearing as women primary responsibility.

Women tend to be the default parent in the events of splits and men having EOW or even just walking away completely.

So I was thinking, if women suddenly acted like men in this regard and literally left men holding the baby, what would honestly happen to a lot of children?

If women suddenly stopped carrying the mental load so didn’t book in any kind of medical appointment or arrange play dates or buy new clothes, what would honestly happen?

One of my friends is dating a single dad (mum walked out), but his parents practically raised the kids as he worked away. So still pretty much saw them only at weekends. However if a man leaves a woman with a baby, in normal circumstances she’d just find a new job where she didn’t work away, reduce hours of needed and use paid childcare. They wouldn’t normally hand their kids over to others to raise 80% of the time because they had to work.

So I’m really interested to see what a lot of men would do if the roles were reversed. If women literally just walked out or stopped carrying any mental load type stuff relating to the kids. Would men leave their jobs if required or go part time and claim universal credit?

Would the majority step up as women do and stop their hobbies, arrange childcare and extracurricular activities and basically fully give themselves to parenthood? Would they realise their kids need new vests, socks and tshirts or need a dental check up?

Or

Would they hand over their kids to grandparents/family members to be primarily raised or if failing that, put them into care? Would they do the bare minimum so kids are literally fed, watered and taken to school but other than that left to their own devices with no activities or medical appointments arranged or assemblies attended or well fitted clothes worn and basically be kind of neglected?

Be interested to know others thoughts on what would actually happen.

YABU - as many men as women would step up and look after their kids the same way single mothers do.

YANBU - unfortunately most men would try and shirk as much responsibility of child rearing sometimes even resulting in the care system if their were no willing people to become primary cater.

Not the same as what? I didn’t say it was the same as taking a year off.
The point still stands, I don’t know a single man to take only one week off and know several who have enhanced paternity benefits from their workplace.
Taking 1 week paternity is definitely not the norm as PP suggested.

We have 2 teenage DD’s (and 2 almost human dogs) and routinely joke that the house would grind halt within hours if not days if I walked out 🤣 - honestly no idea what would happen - sometimes think about setting up cameras and taking a unannounced lone trip to see how it all unfolds 🤣

Even my own mother has warned me that birthday cards and knowing anything about the grandkids will stop immediately after her death!

If I walked away I know for a concrete fact my dp would step up. I'm disabled and don't drive so he does the school runs and all that jazz anyway

The sexism on this thread!

The house would be messy though..

In our situation I took the full maternity leave. At that stage my maternity package left us better off than we would have been if we had split the leave. my other half took all the leave he could at the time and is very hands on. If im being honest i would have hated sharing the leave and returning to work at 6 months. We actually made the decision for me not to return to my role at that time. I didn't want to, child care costs made it not really worth while etc.

I did take on a role 12 months later which was part time and more suited to family life. I had loved my previous job but didn't feel like I could do the job and parenting good enough at the same time.

In an ideal world we both could have worked our preferred jobs part time but his employer was not able to facilitate the role part time and while my employer may have - in reality I would have ended up working longer hours to fit the work in.

Now the children are older i am struggling to re-establish my career (mostly because one of the children has high needs) but we would not change anything because we choose to have a family and we made the choices that felt right at the time.

@Shtfday

but didn't feel like I could do the job and parenting good enough at the same time.

Why do you think your oh didn't feel the same?

My stepfather raised my two younger half siblings alone, and did a wonderful job. I know my (male) partner would be a brilliant solo parent if something happened.

That normally just leads to the mother working plus doing all the housework and childcare out of work. Anyone who is going to do their share, already does it when they are home.

@antelopevalley

More fool them

They would just re-marry ASAP. Problem solved.

My mum was born in 1958 and her brother in 1962. Their dad raised them as a single parent without help when their mum walked out. My mum was 7.

Life wasn’t perfect but my grandad did his best. My mum sent him a mother and Father’s Day card until he died in 2010.

It's not either or though, is it. Many mothers work and undertake the lion's share of their children's needs. Fathers could "contribute" by adopting this balance of working and child rearing.

When my sister-in-law went into hospice and after she died, lots of women came out of the woodwork to help my poor dear brother in law with offers of free childcare and cooking. None of these women (supposedly good friends of SIL when she was alive) were this generous when she was struggling to keep it together for the family while on chemotherapy and radiation. BIL was remarried within a year, new wife is a SAHM to my nieces and to the two boys of her own she's had since then. She seems alright but she's a lot more short-tempered and less affectionate than my husband's sister was and she doesn't allow any photos of her predecessor to be displayed in the main part of the house, only in photo books in a drawer or in the girls' rooms.

Not all men, my bil was a single dad, also worked so we helped with childcare. my father tho without a doubt after he beat the shit out of us of course though wouldn't put my brother into care as he was only 1 he never beat the shit out of, he just hates us for being girls

I said something that echoes this to my husband a few weeks ago, if I died there would be women folk falling over themselves to help support you with our child and running the home, enabling you to work and probably encouraging you to date a find a replacement wifey. If you died, I’d be fucked because men evoke a level of hands on sympathetic help when their wives abandon them or die, women are seen as capable of running everything even in the absence of a partner/husband because a lot of women do so much of caring/cooking/organising in most families they aren’t seen as being thrown in at the deep end and needing others to pick up the slack.

I think some men would step up but a lot wouldn’t. If they were socialised differently though and we didn’t see children as womens’ primary responsibility though, it would be different I think

I don't know any young widows, I only know a young widower of a popular mutual friend. Yes (my social group) rallied round him. It was a tragic early death not a relationship breakdown, though. And I was very happy when he found love again.

We also rallied round friend who kicked out her cheating husband, friend had an amazing social life as "single mum", lots of support. Not sure how her dating has gone, but no lack of opportunities pursued.

No matter how many hours a man works, it is never OK to sit back and say "I contribute to the family financially and so I don't need to do anything else".

I don't know a single woman who works full-time and thinks that this exonerates her from doing any chores and childcare during evenings and weekends. To be fair, I don't know all that many men who will admit to thinking this either (although this rarely seems to translate into sharing the burden equally). I know quite a few women who work full-time and seem to do most stuff at home as well.

Loving the idea that financially contributing to your children and doing nothing else makes you a responsible parent. As pp say, how does that work in single parent families or families with 2 working parents? Do these children just take care of themselves or something?

I think it is really tricky to generalise in this way. My DH would absolutely step up and do it all by himself. Our children are his first priority.

Some other men I know would be cowardly twats and walk away.

These are all just anecdotes, anyway. I'd like to think that most men actually care enough about their children to look after them properly. I'll continue to believe this until I see some proper, data based evidence to the contrary

I think the other side of the coin is that we socialize women generally to think of men as the financial providers (although this is changing).

How many women post on mn expecting their dh to bear the entire responsibility of the finances and this is often supported by many posters. Also all the threads about marrying someone financially secure or indeed marrying at all for “financial protection” (obviously you would have to marry a higher earner or more wealthy man for that to be any use.

traditional gender roles hold women back imo but also they do benefit some women in some circumstances. However they are damaging to women as a class. Time to drop them imo and challenge them. But some women are definitely resistant to that as they do like the idea of having a man provide for them.

I don't buy that women in general still think that men should be the sole financial providers. Maybe some do, but something like 72% of women work compared to around 78% of men. More women than men work part-time though (around 38% compared to 13%).

So if women do view men as the sole financial providers, then men on the whole aren't that great at it, given their overall employment rates aren't that much higher than the rates for women. What is true is that many women take pay cuts or reduce their hours to fit in their caring responsibilities.

Honestly I can't think of a single family in my entire circle where the Dad would even contemplate care as an option if they lost their partner or they ran off. I think most would find it tough but I think that very much applies for BOTH partners.

The sexism on this thread!
Nothing new!

My dad was as much a carer figure to me as my mum. My ex was raised by his dad after his mum left. Dad was only 24. He did am amazing job.

My boss who is an executive level took 6 months off to look after his son after his wife went back to work. He didn't look overly excited to be back.

Re the parental leave comments upthread

My (entirely anecdotal) experience of shared parental leave was that I found DHs bit much harder than he did (he took 3 months, I took 9). We decided on the split before DD was born and I was adamant that I wasnt going to be the 'default' parent. However when she arrived I was surprised by how strong my urge was to take care of her and when it was my turn to go back to work I was gutted. DH did an amazing job, she ate healthy meals cooked from scratch, went to baby groups, was always dressed appropriately and loved and well taken care of buy my god did I wish it was still me doing it all. If we had another I'd do everything the same though as the time meant the world to my DH and I'm glad he had the chance to bond with her and prove what a cracking parent he is. But I can see why so many women are resistant to the idea. And my experience was that most women don't want to share their mat leave even if it is an option, I got told on many occasions that I was crazy for 'letting' him have some of 'my' leave and they'd never entertain the idea.

Obviously I know there are plenty of useless twatty men out there who cant get far enough away from their kids but I also think there are loads who would bite your hand off to get the chance to take more paternity leave/go part time.