Free bacon butties for the dads - wtf!!

[PlumPudd]

Someone posted this to a community WhatsApp group near me. What the hell?!? I thought it was a joke but apparently it’s a national initiative and happens in playgroups and churches all over the country!!

Free bacon butties for dads to incentivise aka bribe them into spending some of the weekend playing with their own kids!

Firstly, why should they be rewarded / bribed with bacon butties. It’s basic 101 parenting - looking after your own child who you helped to create at the weekend - nobody is giving mums anything to get them to spend the rest of the weekend with the kids.

Secondly, bacon butties for blokes?!?!? What sexist nonsense is this, is bacon too manly for women to handle? Is it the Yorkie bar of sandwich fillings. I bet if they were going to bribe / incentivise mums they wouldn’t give them bacon, they’d give them fondant fancies or face masks or something.

Lighthearted rant over… I know it’s good to encourage equal parenting etc but talk about setting a low bar

Egg probably.

its dads club
we had that when mine, now in their 20s, were young.
went on trips, organised via sure start.

Bacon butties and newspapers sounds like a nice rest too! Bet there are lots of lovely female volunteers to entertain the kids 🙄

You smell like a bacon butty

there is a mens shed near me, now having a ladies event
how do you like that?

There has been a move towards more dad groups, which is a good thing. I don’t see what is sexist about bacon butties. Strange thing to get worked up over..

I have been to this charity (with work) they are fabulous, it is a space that dads, grandads etc can bring their kids to and get support if they are struggling with mh issues or need advice. They do give free bacon sandwiches but also run a foodbank and give free fruit they collect from local supermarkets.

If this church is going to do this, there should be the same expectations on dads to look after and interact with their kids, as there are on mums. We rarely get away with leaving our kids to play while we read a paper or chat.

So men are wrong to invade women's spaces. And wrong to have their own spaces?

Free bacon butties for dads to incentivise aka bribe them into spending some of the weekend playing with their own kids!

What is the difference between this and free tea/coffee biscuits and squash at plenty of mid week playgroups? The only issue is food gendering, but then having spent a lot of time at playgroups/ stay and plays etc it is clear encouragement is needed for dads to feel like they can attend.

Many stay and plays around here aim themselves at dads on weekend mornings, often bacon sandwiches and coffee too. I've no problem with it in the slightest.

"ButWhatAboutTheBees · Today 09:04"

Men are not "wrong" anywhere.
I actually think it is incredibly short sighted of anyone on this thread to say don't have mens groups because they offer baconbutties/because they offer newspapers/because women are not invited(not true but I admit that part of the appeal is that it is a male space).

As I've said above, it is not the venue's sole job to change people's attitudes especially not in the preachy kind of way being suggested by some on this thread (lets bin the poster in the original OP and replace it with "Men, are you not looking after your children? You are a disgrace! By the way, this building is shut and locked to you"

Change happens incrementally for human beings in most cases. It happens because someone tries something, finds they can do it and finds it is not as bad as they thought it would be before they did it so they try it again.
This is how a man who has become a father for the first time and has literally never held a newborn baby gets the confidence to start to take the initiative to look after their own child. If that means they decide it is not that bad because they get to go to a local church or whereever on a Saturday morning and moan to Bob down the road about sleepless nights - then so be it!
Its far more likely that this man, having gain the confidence to take his very new child out on a regular basis in the first few years, is going to be the kind of Dad who takes his kids out regularly to care for them and do stuff in years to come - compared with the Dad who is secretly terrified at his brand new offspring and makes an excuse from the get go that he has something to do on a Saturday and cannot look after the newborn.

And I say that as a woman. I realise my experience is not the same as everyones but I do think it is ridiculous for mums to say "what about me" on a thread about the idea that they serve bacon butties on a Saturday to Dads who decide to take their kids out for an hour or two.

There's a bit of the old St. George in retirement syndrome here with the cry of sexism. I wouldn't say the dragon is completely slayed but offering a bacon sandwich at an event targeted at dads is not the time to draw the sword and attack.

It is notoriously difficult to involve men in social groupings. Our female Vicar tried to set up a Mens Breakfast Group one Saturday morning per week.
I went along once, there were 12-15 blokes. Only one spoke to me. No one introduced themselves, I saw one man who goes to early spoken service. Some knew one or two other people already, lived same street.
No conversation hardly, Quiet. No one interested where in the parish I lived.
When I told DW about it she said how different it would have been with women. Chatter, names, kid's ages. Where lived before?
You can't bribe them. If it is not football men don't join in so much
No religious chat at all, not even Grace.

What I've observed is that men tend to require activities for socialising - it'll always be based around doing something, whereas women will socialise as an activity in itself.

Whether it's playing sport, fixing cars, being in bands etc...men will tend to treat that as their social activity, and any meaningful conversations will happen on the side of it.

It's not a bad thing, just two different approaches to the same end.

Absolutely true: See Mens Sheds organisation.

But you don’t have to eat the bacon butty.

It is actually about the social contact and company

DH doesn’t drink. He still goes to ‘drinks’ at pub etc.

At the one at my local church they have an option bit in one of the other parts of the church hall with someone giving a talk (the last one was about rugby by some ex player and the world cup).
In the summer for the fathers who are still coming along they have a bbq in the back yard. I don't think there are any women involved although I assume (not having gone myself) that there is some process where kids of the fathers who are cooking the food in the yard are being watched by somebody else😆

I can see it now…the latest scent from Chanel!

I imagine it having the Lynx effect. It’ll be a major turn on for my husband and every bloke in sniff distance will go wild over me.

I think I’ll stick to No.5.

Some nasty posts on here, particularly the assumptions that there must be women cooking and looking after the kids while the dads sit around being 'rewarded' with bacon bloody sandwiches.

My DH (vegetarian atheist) started going to one of these and then ended up taking over running it for a time, along with another dad.

Although it was organised and advertised by the church and they provided the hall for free, there was no religion involved, although I think they might have advertised the mens christian group that they ran.

Each session, DH and the others got up early to get into the hall to set the toys etc. up and they used to stay on afterwards to clean up and clear everything away. There was also the admin to do.

One man used do the shopping the night before and did all the cooking. Toast and jam were provided for non meat eaters. If the cook was away, or ill, one of the others had to step up (I remember one week DH having to run off to the shops late one friday night to buy huge quantities of babs, bacon etc.)

Apart from the free room hire, as far as I know, it wasn't subsidised, it cost a few quid to go, which I presume covered the food and drinks, but I could be wrong.

There were men there struggling with all sorts of parenting and other issues and this gave them a space to meet and support each other, while their kids played. How anyone could refer to them as wankers for providing this, is beyond me. If bacon sandwiches are that important to you, ask at your local play group if you can organise providing them.

That’s what you got from it? vegetarian and Muslim men should be pandered to before women. What about mums? What do they get?

@Ggttl What about mums? What do they get?

Are you genuinely suggesting there aren't enough mum & baby classes or groups already?

They get many more of their own events at a different time.

It's catering (ha) to a real need, as a pp said - dads may be struggling and have few friends inside or outside of work, they may be NRPs on a contact weekend and need some structure, the fact that there's a routine event for resident dads May just make it more likely they will "relieve" mum that morning.

Yes in an ideal world we wouldn't need such a group but we live in a far from ideal world.

Were I running such a group I'd make it clear in the promo that there were alternatives to bacon!

What do mums get? Really?

99% of baby classes/toddler groups are filled with mums. Weekly too, not just monthly.

All the ones in our area are parent and baby classes. If they offer refreshments, they are for both sexes. I am surprised that is not the case everywhere.