To think that men just actually don’t want to do that much after their OH gives birth?

[ShesNotACowShesAFox]

So I had my DC before Shared Parental Leave became a thing. I remember other mums saying how paternity leave is crap and it needs to be better (my own DH owns a business so took a week off each time then had to get back to work, no paternity entitlement). There was a real feel that “If only the men could be off work more they’d be able to do more to help!”. As many experience the first year or so can be a war between knackered mums who’ve been with baby all day and knackered dads who’ve worked all day. I’ve heard lots of men say things like “I WISH I could stay at home with the baby” or “If I only I had more time to help.” SPL was the beacon of “Dads can finally help out like they’ve said they want to for years”.

So we know after so much fighting and moaning for it, shared parental leave has had shockingly low uptake (5% of eligible men) . Not so popular when offered it apparently.

There’s always so many threads on MN about men who basically treat paternity leave like time off, use it to go on their “head wetting” with mates etc, and how women still have to do the housework shortly after they’ve given birth. There seems to be no push whatsoever to pressure men into doing more. When people talk about helping women postnatally they often mean other women coming over to cook, clean, let the mum nap etc. Similarly 1 in 10 women experience PND, a huge symptom of which is loneliness and feeling the mental load. Men could utilise SPL if they actually cared about all this, but so few do.

AIBU to think that for all the years they’ve spent saying “I WISH I could be at home with the baby” and blaming having to work on their lack of input, men actually don’t want ’help’ at all?

This ^. My husband absolutely did a lot to share the load when I (we) had babies. And still does now they’re teens. He also happily spent one day a week at home with our eldest between my first two maternity leaves. SPL wasn’t a thing back then but I don’t know whether we’d have taken it because I wanted maximum time at home with the baby (and he would have been ok with that, for my sake). So I don’t think the low uptake is necessarily because dads are shying away from doing their bit.

My BIL has been off for 3 months for pat leave and is hands on with the baby and very involved/nurturing.

I think actually having to be involved due to pat leave encourages the effort and helps to reinforce the father child relationship. So they are not just the part time person who pops in of an evening.

if you spend the early years as a visitor to family life that informs who you are as a parent

Having a newborn isn't that hard
This is a ridiculous thing to say. Maybe it wasn’t hard FOR YOU, but it’s an incredibly hard time for many, especially the first time and/or if there are problems with feeding, reflux, etc.

I agree really thoughtless and unhelpful comment.

This "having a newborn isn't hard" schtick drives me nuts.

You are totally responsible for keeping alive and nurturing a tiny new human who can't talk, is utterly helpless and needs to feed every 3 hours if lucky or every 1.5 if not. This new human doesn't care if you are exhausted or in pain or can't have a proper bowel movement without screaming. Oh and you need to love them and bond with them and talk to them and be close to them. Of course it is hard. It is the hardest most valuable thing most people (women) will do. Saying "having a newborn isn't hard" is just another way of completely devaluing and disrespecting the contribution women make.

My DH couldn’t take paternity leave because of the gender pay gap. We both work in the same industry and because he earns so much more than me, we couldn’t survive on my salary + his reduced paternity pay. It wasn’t a case of him not wanting to, it was a case of unequal pay forcing the decision for us.

My DH took 2 weeks annual leave , DC were born before paid paternity leave was a thing.
He was keen to get back to work and have some normality - if I'm honest and he found adjusting to parenthood hard.
I hope if DS becomes a father he does better and is more supportive, I think he will be.
Society is changing but tbh none of the new fathers in my largish workplace seem to take more than 2 weeks paternity leave.
However most threads like these are overwhelming filled with posters saying how brilliant and hands on supportive their partners are, this wasn't generally the case when my DC were born, 17-25 years ago when me and my friends overwhelmingly did the majority of the childcare and household tasks and our careers took a massive hit so it's really encouraging things are changing.
I do still think however most mothers do put their DC first and make sacrifices that fathers just aren't willing to.

Agreed @Dutchhouse14

I think if we are honest, adjusting to parenting IS hard - definitely found it so.

But hey you're the Mum they hand it back to you at the end of the day when it starts crying as I found at the hospital (and if there is any issue ever since...)

The 5% uptake statistic says it all really. 5%...

Really hope all the wonderful men who do help out manage to increase the percentage at some point.

I think it's because most employers have terrible policies, rather than dad's not wanting it. DH can take 1 week at full pay, 1 week statutory pay and anything more than that us unpaid. Whereas I get 8 weeks full pay, 18 weeks half pay plus smp, then 13 weeks smp. I'll then be returning to work and Dh applying for a month's unpaid parental leave as I'm the higher earner so it make more sense for him to be off in the unpaid bit. Baby will then start nursery at 10 months. I also intend on breastfeeding so need to be off longer and we don't see the point in being off together beyond those first 2 weeks as thats then just more time paying for childcare rather than one of us doing it.

This is spot on. A policy change doesn't undo generations of culture that still assumes the ideal worker is a man with a wife at home taking care of everything in the domestic sphere. When anyone deviates from that, the system punishes them. By "the system" I mean established work norms, and both conscious and unconscious bias.

But, policy does eventually influence culture, and vice versa. Progress on any front can slowly chip away at the problem. It's a shame that it's moving so slowly but it is moving.

Also some men misunderstand what parental leave is. When I worked in London in finance one of the directors was talking about all the rounds of golf he’ll play while on parental leave…not sure who was supposed to take care of his baby while he was at the golf course.

2/4 of my newborns were not massively difficult. But that’s a BAD dickhead comment.

My DP did want to 'help', fortunately he works for himself so it was possible. He did about a third of the school runs / tea / homework when they were little. No nightimes due to bf. The whole distribution of DC related tasks was tough. I'm glad we're past it.

Even on this thread, men who are doing what women do daily with babies are ''helping'', ''hands on'' etc when really, they are just parenting as they should be.

It is really ingrained when a man parenting is ''helping'' because it implies that ultimately, childcare is the woman's responsibility.

YANBU

I'd like to see some rigorous research into pnd and I'd like to interview women who decide to divorce when their children are young to examine the impact of men's appalling post natal behaviour on the decision to call a halt to the relationship.

I have several friends who have been divorced since their children were young. All of them had their moments of utter disbelief and disgust when they came home from the hospital with their babies, some after a CS.

They saw behaviour that they said they could never unsee - one husband taking off for a weekend of golf leaving his wife one week post CS with the toddler and baby to fend for themselves, one husband sulking about being expected to entertain his own toddler and prepare simple toddler meals for two days in a row (one day was the straw that almost broke the camel's back apparently), one husband who ignored the shopping list his wife had prepared for him (diddums didn't know what was in the fridge, freezer, or pantry or what anyone liked or needed to eat) and bought a 24 pack of beer, three packets of hot dogs and a steak instead, for a family of toddler twins, himself, and his wife. The list had included items like yogurt, bread, apples, cheese, mince, pasta, cans of tomatoes, sliced meats, lettuce, peas, eggs... Then gave her flak for picking up the phone and ordering food for them all to eat.

Even friends who decided their husbands could be forgiven for atrocious failures post partum (and not after their first babies, so there was no excuse) had stories to tell of older children who hadn't been dressed for days and hadn't been fed anything but breakfast cereal while mom was in hospital, their hair untouched, laundry festering. Absolutely disgraceful conduct by grown men capable of holding down responsible jobs who simply didn't care enough to engage their brains and do simple parenting and adulting.

To those objecting to the generalizing here - it is a verifiable fact that domestic violence is more likely to appear in a relationship when the woman is pregnant or in the post partum period. That's behaviour of the worst kind and it happens far too often. Those ringing the praises of their husbands or partners here need to realise how lucky and perhaps also how unusual they are.

You've slightly misunderstood how the scheme works.

You can both be on shared parental leave at the same time, and he could have taken it at any point in the first year.

If you have annual leave that needs using, for instance, you could switch to annual leave for the last 4 weeks of the year and that frees up 4 weeks of SPL for him to take at any point.

I don’t respect her opinion at all, as she has no concept that others might not have found it that way, when you’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid to boot to not realise many women find newborns hard.

Almost all the men I know who.have become dads in the past few years have taken 6-7 months parental leave, but that's in Scandinavia. Although at a national level men still take only about 1/3 of parental leave, it's frowned upon in probably most social circles (definitely in my circle /workplace) if a dad doesn't take at least a few months parental leave.

There are lots of rules around it to stop fathers from using it just to play golf make sure it serves its purpose. There are 90 days that can't be transferred. If dad doesn't use them, you lose them. And only 60 days can be taken by both parents at the same time, so no playing golf or going on long bike rides while the mum is doing the actual childcare.

My husband only got 2 weeks' paid paternity leave. Isn't that still the case in England?

I agree OP - DH is amazing in many ways but there will always be a little part of me that feels so let down with how he was on paternity leave.

He viewed it as a 2 week holiday which meant playing golf, going to the gym and running lots of personal errands. All accompanied by lots of moaning about being tired and having to do all the cooking (reheating the batch cooking I did pre baby!!). I’d had a c section was basically house bound while he disappeared for hours every day.

I think the paternity leave is a great idea to try to reset the balance for working parents plus bonding opportunities.

Dh got 1 week leave and took a week holiday. He was brilliant but when he went to back to work there was an expectation that he worked and I did home without the understanding that home was 24 hours a day. We got there in the end but it took time for us to reach a fair compromise

I actually think a lot of the time the generalisation is perpetuated by people who are older and lived their life with much stricter gender roles and so continue to push the idea that fathers have no role with newborns and don’t do anything until the baby is about one but I think those sorts of relationships are going further into the minority.
I have young babies at the minute and I know several friends where the husband took months off to care for their child either at the same time or separately to their wife. I also met a good amount of dads at baby classes this time.
I certainly know a single father who played golf on paternity leave.
While more of the running of the household falls on women I don’t actually think it’s all that rare for a father to be involved in the care of his infant anymore.
The “mental load” stuff will gradually change, but sometimes we forget both the wife and the husband most likely grew up in a household where the mother put her career on hold to care for children and lead the running of the house so the built in norm of who does what needs to be constantly challenged in a society where both parents work.

How do you continue a marriage with a man who left you alone with a baby, to recover from major surgery while he fucked off for hours every day?
I genuinely don’t know anyone having babies right now who would think they was acceptable, man or woman.

Personally I just give back the same energy I get.
They're just company until they've shown otherwise consistently over time.

I don't think every relationship, in terms of men, has to be meaningful or, meaningful in a fixed, certain kind of way.

I have no interest in 'settling' in order to fulfil some dream of family life. Because that dream just isn't relevant unless you meet the perfect person for you in that capacity. And, most people, if they are honest with themselves, won't. Because it's a bloody hard thing to meet someone compatible with similar lifestyle wishes, sane, good, who likes you as much as you like them. And for that to remain consistent long enough to marry and as you raise kids. Highly unlikely, let's be honest.

I think people make a mistake of pursuing the dream and fixating and end up settling to try to obtain it. It's like dreaming of being a billionaire. And missing out on actual life, twisting yourself in knots trying to be rich.

Find other dreams. Treat men as you would anyone else with regards to how they treat you. Speak your mind whenever you feel like it but don't chase after crap people. Live your life. Find new dreams that don't involve other people to obtain.