To think people's response to Dad's caring for DC is completely different to Mum's

[Lucyfoot]

I had a hospital appointment yesterday. I was very early because you have to allow so much time to get parked so had plenty of people watching time in the waiting room.

There were several people there with children, mostly because one child had an appointment and the parent needed to take the others. Most of there parents were women, but one man.

The women, looked stressed, tired, hot and bothered, but doing a good job of having DC sit and wait nicely etc.

The man came in beaming with three beautifully behaved little boys, he was doing a good job, kept them chatting, made sure they'd all been to the loo etc. However, two older ladies told him how wonderful he was, and during his appointment a nurse (HCA?) brought the DC , who weren't being seen, out to the waiting room to get water.

None of the women were complimented or helped like this.

Omg. That is jaw-droppingly sexist. Did the mothers complain?

I had the exact same situation with my DC3.

@LadyDanburysHat
Congratulations. You did an amazing thing under really difficult circumstances. I hope you and DC are doing so well

(Great username too 😁)

Uncle to girls myself and would have the girls to give their mum a break. I loved looking after them, but saw the bias many times. Sometimes it felt very patronising and assuming. Sometimes it was very useful for both me and the moms, (usually at swimming pools and toilets) If they had boys I'd offer to take them if the mom could make sure the girls were fine, so a little bit of swapsie.
The older generation of women couldn't believe that a man could look after 3 girls for a few hours. Often it felt a very back handed compliment, but those of an older generation would tut and say things when mums doing exactly what I was doing did something they peceived as wrong. I would often give the youngest a bottle of milk (formula or breast) and burp them and you'd hear loads of them go "Oh isn't he a good dad"... I didn't mind them not realising I'm the uncle, that's completely understandable. But surely being a decent person would mean I would do that. You'd never hear a woman say that about a mum, trying to soothe a baby, you'd hear "bloody hell, can;'t they quiet the baby"....
Worst thing was it was women 99% of the time, slagging off mums or not appreciating the very difficult job. I occassionaly got a man say something like "I see she's got you well trained", but that too me was a bit of "banter", no harm said, especially as it would be a dad taking the kids to the park or something.
I've spoken to my close male colleagues/friends at work, and they (3 of them) all have experienced the same. one of them when he'd take his kids to nursery would always be told, "That's so good of you, don't worry if you are a bit late picking them up, it's difficult to balance work"... when his wonderful wife would drop them off, it was always a "You'll be here at 4.30 won't you". She was never late in picking them up. He worked 100 yards from the nursery, the wife worked 5 miles away and it took about 30 minutes to get there. They would always phone her first if there was a problem, although they had put his number in first on the contact list, and he told them every time to phone him because he could just pop across in 5 minutes.
A complete double standard.

An hour on Mumsnet will confirm that it's not just "older ladies" who are ridiculously impressed by men performing the simplest of family related tasks....

Yes, I relate to this although am happy to think times and attitudes have changed overall. I have the example of, ‘oh. Is your DH babysitting the DC?’ when was out for a very rare night out. I did reply ‘er, no he’s parenting, you know, being a dad’ and they did have the grave to look embarrassed.

And also I was always the one called first if there were any health issues when our child was ill at nursery while I was working. One time, I said,’please could you call her father about this and see his opinion’ as I had had to leave work several times already and my work has to be covered while he was wfh and didn’t have to get cover at all. The young female nursery worker was most taken aback. Of course, I care deeply about my DC but it was draining being the default parent all the time.

I have to say her junior school was a bit more enlightened and used to call DH as they knew I often could not answer calls when working.

it’s so much better than my PIL’s day though (rural France in late 70s) when a ‘real’ man would not be seen dead changing a nappy or pushing a baby in a pram etc… my dmil has told me that ad nauseum kind of implying that I have it so good now as DH occasionally changed a nappy…! lol

my then husband when i was working used to take our 2 DC too a local cafe, purely because all the little old ladies would basically take care of them for him while he had a lovely breakfast... he used to tell them that their mummy had abandoned them (obvs its not funny) but very clever of him.

Mothers need to stop being the default to deal with these types of issues. If one father in this situation can do it, why not others? Too many women make the excuse that it’s not possible for their DH to be away from work for appointments like this - rubbish!

Yep !! I decided to go to my sisters wedding alone as we live in a different country - husband decided to stay home with out 18 month old and let me go on my own so I could really enjoy myself (aka have lots of drinks and dance / stay up all night and not have to get up with my toddler in the morning!!)was one of the best nights out I’d had in years 🤣🤣

got loads of where’s your child?? Who’s with her from older relatives ! And then when I said her dad - they were like oh wow isn’t he very good to have her for you!! And had one person say he was babysitting for me 🤷‍♀️

I earn all the money and do the main running of the household and mental load, but my Partner is always getting complimented that he's such a good dad. My parents are always saying it. I just get asked to do stuff and it's normal that I do everything.

Our kids don’t have a mum, our son has twice been refused medical care by doctors who were waiting for his imaginery mum, we had one who refused to share medical results to me because “your wife will need to explain it to you”.

Oh, FUCK OFF! I would go spare. Who does it serve to assume women can be the only ones capable of caring for children???

When my DCs were at primary school I became the resident parent. The school knew this, not least because social services safeguarding team that led to me being the RP included the school's headteacher and a number of the meetings were held in the headteacher's office. The school also sent out a form every year confirming contact details etc and I always made sure I was listed first, with a note saying that I'm the emergency contact.

Guess who the school's admin assistant called when my DD fell over and hit her head?

Maddening. And it’s this shit that forces women to shoulder more of the burden. As a society we shouldn’t even blink at fathers being caregivers. It should be standard.

My home life isn’t as equitable as I’d like it to be, but we’re gradually getting better. Interestingly, it was the pandemic that evened things up, as we were both at home. But it bugs the hell out of me that it was seen as noteworthy that my husband took a month parental leave at the end of my last maternity leave (to help smoothe my return to work and because I didn’t want to risk undoing the evening up that happened during Covid). Or the look of shock I see when I explain I have very little idea what holiday clubs my elder son is attending each week as I delegated all that to my husband as he’s better at that stuff.

Fathers shouldn’t need to be praised for simply being fathers, but mothers shouldn’t be judged for stepping back and letting them (or insisting) do their fair share. In our household, the phrase often bandied about is ‘Does it require a vagina or penis to do this?’ For pretty much everything, your genitalia is irrelevant.

Yes it's so odd how many people are so reluctant to let go of the sexist stereotypes, even if it is made as easy for them as possible. Like take DC's basketball club - dads are very active in the club, they do most of the carpool driving, they are there to watch the games. Who are added to club's whatsapp groups? Only mothers. Every year I tell them to remove me and add DH, other mothers follow suit. Next year - only mothers again.

Fathers shouldn’t need to be praised for simply being fathers, but mothers shouldn’t be judged for stepping back and letting them (or insisting) do their fair share.

Absolutely.

I have an autistic child but one that, and I hate this term but most people will know what I mean "doesn't look autistic' (whatever the fuck that's meant to look like anyway....)

So when shit goes off in public places and it often does, I get tutted at, I've been told my child just needs a good smack, I've been 'for fucks sakes' at, been subjected to horrified stares, whispering of women behind their hands with loaded side eyes etc. Any mum of a SEN kid will know this stuff well. Conversely when my DH deals with exactly the same stuff, people tend to look on with concern or will try and find what the problem is and if they can help, act like he's a really good dad dealing with such challenging behaviour. Yet I'm seen as a shit mum for my child displaying challenging behaviour.

I rarely take my child out now because the level of cuntery from the general public makes me so anxious I actually can't deal with the behaviour as well as I'd like anymore or as well as I used to. I've lost my confidence that I'm a good mum doing my best with a difficult situation.

DH takes our child out alone mostly, my presence in the arena means a sour flow from onlookers if I am letting DH deal with things because two of us trying to fix/sort usually escalates stuff and sometimes I will get attacked/hit/clawed. Of course at times I do the dealing with it but once the pearls start getting clutched around us, I don't cope as well as he can.

This means actually right now he is a better parent than me, does step up more than me to do all parenting that happens outside the house. So maybe he deserves all the praise? I don't know. But it was the shaming that kept me in and forced him out more. I'd love to spend more outside time with my child but I'm just too burnt out currently to deal with the negativity when I know if I was a Dad, people would show me some fucking kindness or just a little more patience and less judgement.

It doesn’t help boys or girls when they see and hear adults pulling that shit, it just causes yet another generation of girls who think they have to do all the parenting and should be thankful for ‘help’.

People say weird things, I had a poster on here say they felt sorry for whoever I employed to do my ‘wife work’ when I was a lone Dad, er, I did it myself.

School was frustrating, I had my female cousin as my sons second contact at school, I had to remove her as a contact as they would call her first any time he was ill and they even kept sending her letters etc via email instead of me despite her being clearly listed as priority 2 on sims. I changed her to his uncle as a second contact, when I did that his teacher asked me at pick up who they should contact if he was ill, erm me you know his Dad. His UK primary school on a little careers week assigned jobs to children and they had little hats etc to show what they were, took a photo and put it on social media, the boys were doctors, firefighters, police officers etc, the girls were nurses, teachers, hairdressers and mummies, I mean ffs.

Doctors having their mind blown that I’m at an appointment, when we adopted our daughter her adoption order was before her first birthday, we couldn’t register at the GP surgery as babies have to be registered at the same place as their mum. So she didn’t have a GP until she was 12 months old, despite both social services and the health visitors writing to the GP asking to register her they still said no as did my husbands GP surgery.

The sort of people who are nosey enough to say something will either treat you like some sort of god, or assume you’re completely incompetent and will 100% kill or maim your child. Our son used to be quite awkwardly funny if someone said to me things like “oh dear where’s mummy” “oh is daddy babysitting for mummy” etc he would shout “I don’t have a mummy daddy looks after me” or worse and not at all true “mummies dead” it shut them up though.

Things are a bit more equal where we now live, its completely normal for a toddler and baby group to be 50/50 mums and dads, completely normal for dads to be at playdates, for a group of dads and children to meet for coffee etc, which is what children need to be seeing more. Even our son who was eight at the time, and isn’t the most observent would point out that here other daddies look after their babies and children, not just mummies. It’s worrying that the divide is so huge even an eight year old has figured it out.

If it was older women complimenting, I honestly think that's a generational thing. Saying that, my mum always comments my husband is "well trained" when does basic things like loads the dishwasher. And is always commenting on how we have both reduced our work hours to do an equal amount of childcare, like it's totally mad.

I'm so sorry for you and your hubby. Both trying their best, and opinionated fools affecting your family dynamics. You both should praise each other for helping your child and that's the only praise which counts for anything.