Are mums more attached to their babies than dads?

[Animallover87]

Do mums love/get more attached to their babies than dads do?

The reason I ask is because my DH and I are expecting our first baby in August. A few weeks ago I posted asking if mumsnet thought it would be OK for me to leave baby with my mum for 2 nights and take DH to Paris for his 40th. The response was unanimously no. They said I wouldn't feel ready, it was too young etc, fair enough. Then there was the thread yesterday where the poster wanted to go on her hen do to a lodge 5 mins away from her house. Again, the response was largely - don't go, you won't feel ready.

Which got me wondering... my DH has to go back to work for long days 2 weeks after our baby is born. It may involve some overnight stays sometimes. No-one will bat an eyelid at this and obviously DH will miss us but it's not a big deal. My friends partner had to work away for 3 weeks at a time when their baby was born and again, that's just his job.

Why is it so much harder for mums to leave the babies? My baby won't be breastfed and when DH is here he will do more than his fair share. He is ecstatic about becoming a dad and I know he will love our baby more than anything.

But why am I told that I won't be ready and desperately won't want to leave them for a night or 2? Hope the question makes sense, I wonder what the difference seems to be between mums and dads and the attachment to their babies.

Are there (that’s a genuine question)?
monkey I’ve been lead to believe that early attachment in infants/young children is extremely important and that loss of a primary care giver, even, at a very young age can be very detrimental. Hence some children having attachment disorder (not sure if that is the correct term). Also there are a lot of infant adoptees quite vocal about their belief that infant/maternal separation can cause trauma for the baby (obviously it is necessary some times).

I just find it hard to believe that you could take away the one person an infant/young child knows, without there being some kind of impact.

Agree with this. My husband and I equally share all the feeds, nappies etc and baby is perfectly fine with whoever. However, I do feel she has a preference to him and he is the better one at calming her down when she is upset. Probably because during the first 2 weeks after my c section he would attend to baby when she cried as I was slow and in pain getting up.

I'm assuming that's a dig at me.
It's okay for people to have a different view to you.
I'm not denying anything I just believe that men and women are equally capable of bonding with their child and raising children.

With DH in the army, he was away more than home in the first few years. (Tours, exercises, courses...) Went away when DD1 was 2 weeks old for a few months, completely missed DD2s birth.

He's always had a very close bond with them. Maybe circumstances made him try more than taking it for granted.

I find some comments like not trusting the father to take the baby for 30mjns quite bizarre... DH loved taking them out in the pram for a bit. Added bonus is it usually caused them to nap!

I believe the bond is created when you work at it, not just occurring. But you don't need to be physically present all the time to create it.

I wouldn't say indistinguishable but yes a baby will adjust to anyone quite easily up to about the age of 2 and will form the strongest bond with their primary care giver.

Exactly. There's evidence to support this.

Equal parenting can happen, it society that isn’t set up to support it. Some of us have managed it. My DH was a SAHD as were other officers’ husbands.

No, it's nothing to do with you. I was referring to two (at least) other individuals who are very active on different sorts of threads that are about denying women's biology.

I guess your children must be adults by now then. My eldest is 13 and it was certainly the advice then.

Perhaps don't advise new mothers to do things which are widely known to increase the chance of their baby dying if your advice is 20 years out of date?

Or, you know, Google it?

I think it is a different feeling because of hormones. You see it in female animals, when their young are taken away to soon. Presumably natures way of stopping people/animals abandoning their babies. That isn’t to say that men don’t love their babies just as much, but they don’t have any physical changes when their child is born. They can be a father without even knowing about it.

We haven’t been clear, the studies some of us are referring to show that the baby bonds closets with the primary caregiver(s). They show that this is true regardless of whether the primary caregiver(s) include the baby’s mother or not.

Yes there are issues if a baby is taken away from any primary caregiver…but primary caregiver is not synonymous with mother. Primary caregiver can be any adult, or even an older sibling.

You say we can only be guided by our own experiences but then make out your own experience is fact 🤔

A baby can be equally close to either parent. That is my experience of my baby and my husband.

You are likely to feel very differently once you have given birth.

I also wanted my partner to feel like an equal parent. I was amazed by the very visceral difference in the way we felt and in the way our babies responded to us.

We had to move house when my first baby was 2 days old and he had to go and sort it out for hours. Being separated from my baby would have been truly painful and extremely distressing for me at that stage. It's difficult to describe the pain of that separation. It's like losing part of yourself.

Fathers and mothers have different, both important, roles in the early months.

I would advise you not to take specific advice from posters on this thread that might actively harm your baby.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/helping-your-baby-to-sleep/#:~:text=For%20the%20first%206%20months,(sudden%20infant%20death%20syndrome).

Have you seen film of the dads in Turkey and Syria, out of their minds with grief as dead children are pulled from the rubble? Sitting cradling their one surviving child? Can you seriously think fathers don't care. Maybe working long days in a demanding job to provide for their baby shows how much they care.

One of my babies was an EMCS, I had to have a general as there wasn't time for an epidural. By the time I woke up DH had helped bath and dress baby, was happily cuddling baby while singing a lullaby, as he knew I wanted to breast feed as soon as baby was delivered he got a very groggy me into a suitable position and managed to get baby on the breast. I think they bonded.

If you’re expecting equal parenting you’re deading for disappointment.

Don't set your bar so low.

@ancientgran
Can you seriously think fathers don't care.

No one has said that. Of course good fathers love their children and vice versa.

Maybe working long days in a demanding job to provide for their baby shows how much they care.

that is exactly what i meant about fathers and mothers having different but important roles in the early days.

dads can clean, cook, shop, change bedclothes, change nappies etc. Decent men understand that their role in the early days is to support their child and partner however they can.

Babies want their mothers and vice versa when they are tiny. This is not social conditioning. It's due to the fact that they were literally part of the same body for most of the previous year.

Denying this isn't feminist and it does nothing to support women's rights and wellbeing. In fact it undermines everything that is powerful and unique in that experience.

In general, women who have just given birth, or have recently done so, find it harder to leave their newborn than new dads do. You’ve just got over the birth, and you’ve been joined together for 9 months. It’s just harder.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with leaving baby with their dad to do whatever you need to do, but I think posters are just warning that you’ll find it hard.

No, I don't think mums are more attached to their babies than dads naturally.

But it can become that way due to the pressures placed on the family. If you have to go back to work two weeks after your baby is born and are away from them five days of the week or longer than it is going to feel like you're less close to them compared to the parent who gets to be home with them all day every day.

Everyone is different. I had friends who didn't feel able to even pop to the shops without baby for literal months. I felt fine doing that within the first week, cos I trusted my husband and knew they'd be fine.

We are mammals, whatever some humans may wish to deny it. I breastfed my dd and I couldn’t, neither did I want to be away from her for any length of time. She had a preference for me, which is entirely natural as I was her primary source of comfort and sustenance.

She of course bonded with her dad and the fourth trimester is a thing and dads can be there for their dcs as well. It’s entirely normal and natural for the baby to spend the most time with the parent, who gave birth as they as generally, but not always, are the one, who cares most for them in the early months. This then naturally forms a primary bond but in the event of the mum not being available, the baby will form it with whomsoever cares for them most. If I compare it to my dogs, I spend the most time with my dogs and feed them. They also tend to prefer me even though they love my dh and dd very much. If it were my dh or dd, they’d prefer them.

Your dh just needs to spend lots of time with your baby too and the attachment will naturally form. Babies become toddlers then teens. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and there will be times along the way, where a preference is shown for one or other of the parents. Just because a baby shows the preference for their primary caregiver in the early months, it doesn’t mean this is fixed for life.

This.

I have 3 DCs who are now teens. My DH is a very engaged and involved father. But he wasn't terribly interested when they were tiny babies. I think he had absolutely no idea what to do with them. He used to say he felt more comfortable with them when they became more interactive, so at a few months.

My first baby was on NICU for 8 weeks. I didn't,'t have to work at the bond at all. It was a really visceral feeling. Dp was happy to go for lunch etc, I had to be prised away, every minute I was not with him I experienced like physical pain. I would only go to the parents room for a quick sandwich. I cried for my baby every night. He would turn toward me as I entered the ward every day. Not dp. They have a very close bond,but it was worked on. Ours was primal.

We left our child with my ils for a few days when he was little and more as he grew

We missed him like crazy but went way for a break, ILs were perfectly capable of looking after him

He goes to my parents now as we moved far away from the ils (no offence to them it is just what it is now)

I forgot to add I think when our son was baby he was close to us equally just in different ways

My husband was better at bedtime routine and settling him I did other things like food, we both changed him

Interesting debate OP. My view is that everyone (mums, dads, babies) are all different which is why there is such a mixed bag of responses here. For me, I had a elective c-section, formula fed (purely because I didn’t want to breastfeed) and did lots of things that others on this thread would find incredibly difficult, such as leaving my DS overnight with grandparents occasionally from a few weeks old and going on our honeymoon for a week leaving DS behind at 9 months. I also only managed a couple of weeks with him in our room as it was like owning a tiny velociraptor (no crying just a very noisy sleeper 😅) and so guiltily put him in his own room against recommendations for my own sanity.

When I was pregnant I didn’t really feel any bond with him at all and I found it very hard to relate to some of my friends who seemed to have the complete opposite experience during their pregnancies. Again, this continued when he was born and I certainly didn’t feel that immediate rush of love I hear other mums talk about. My DS also didn’t seem to desire me over his dad or anyone else that wanted to cuddle him. He was a very chilled baby and it’s hard to articulate my feelings when he was a newborn because I know I did love him, as did my DH but it’s nothing compared to how I feel about him now at 18 months old (complete adoration and would go to the ends of the earth for him).

As for his bond with my DH, it’s incredibly annoying as I stay at home with my DS and yet this weekend he was a little poorly and all he wanted was to cuddle with DH. They have an amazing bond but I’m pretty sure my DH would say he felt similar to me when he was first born. It takes a while for everyone to get to know each other at the start but I wouldn’t say that every mum and baby have this primal, biological bond right from the off (only based on my own experience of course).

My partner was a SAHD when my eldest was a baby - we were both off for my whole maternity leave and he quit his job soon after I went back.

My daughter was equally bonded to both of us from day1. We both got up for every night feed. There was absolutely no “primary parent” - we both did equally for the first months, then when I went to work he spent the day with her and I spent evenings with her because I had missed her.

Now we both work part time and have two kids, and again, we both parent completely equally.

The reason “baby needs mum” is because either the mum is a control freak who doesn’t let anyone - including her husband - near her baby, or because dad is lazy and doesn’t help. Speaking about wider society, not specifics.