to think most women are still doing the majority of parenting?

[cardycard]

Been on a flight recently. In front of me was a mother and two children. The dad was sat on the opposite aisle reading a book. She was feeding both of them their meal. Then one of them was sick. She was trying to help the child who had been sick and keeping an eye on the other one. The dad just looked over to the child was sick and said are you ok, then carried on his reading his book while she struggled to deal with both of them.

I see this everywhere. It will be women changing the nappies even when the dad is around, or taking toddlers to the toilet. In service stations, the women will be feeding the children while dad is on his phone.

At work, it is mostly women leaving early to pick up or if children are ill. Women are adjusting their work hours. in my organisation the majority of men do not even take their full paternity leave even though it is fully paid.

For the people who can't read, I am not saying this is the case for everyone. I am sure there are wonderful fathers around.

I mean it’s not an opinion - data shows most women are the default parent.

But from what I see that’s how most women seem to want it.

I work in a business which gives all parents fully paid parental leave for 6 months. Regardless of their gender.

it has good take up.

dads do want to be more involved.

If that is how most women want it, why are so many upset about the heavy burden being them? Virtually every day there is a thread on here about women being at breaking point because of having to do it all.

Sadly a lot of women set things up this way from day one. They want to be the default parent and criticise their partner's parenting. Some women choose to ebf because it's an excuse to have the baby on or near them 24/7. I've seen people say they refused to try a bottle because they don't want the baby's father to 'take over' feeding. New dads are often told 'your job isn't to care for the baby, it's to care for the baby's mother, so she can care for the baby'. Early dynamics around infant feeding can really embed this and the breast can become tangled up with comforting and soothing and even putting the baby to sleep, so the father becomes even more useless. It's one of the reasons I advocate for combo feeding from the start, so both parents can play an active part in all aspects of parenting their shared child.

A colleague of mine (male) wanted him and his wife to go down to four days each so they could share the load of financially providing (equal salaries) and parenting equally, she wouldn't allow it because she didn't want to lose those two weekdays with her child. Though it was okay for him to only be there on weekends.

Some people create this situation themselves by telling themselves only they can soothe the baby and therefore can't be away, that DH does it all wrong and therefore she can't possible leave him with the kid/s, because he's 'useless'. Instead of buggering off for a bit and trusting that the person she was so keen to procreate with, who she was happy to have as father to her children, will find his own way.

There are crap uninvolved disengaged parents too, it's interesting though how when you see families where one parent is awful and they have more than one kid and you ask about it, it turns out the crap parent was rubbish with the first but they all cracked on producing further children regardless, making life harder for themselves and saddling another kid or kids with a rubbish parent.

We've been equal from day one and wouldn't have it any other way. I can't honestly imagine how horrific it would be to have access to two grown adults to parent the child they equally produced, and only one take on the burden of all of the care.

Lots of cultural messaging reinforces it, how dads don't bond until the baby arrives, or actually they don't have any interest in babies, but once they're a toddler they get a bit better cos they can play and chase them around. Absolute nonsense to think it has to be or should be that way. Plenty of dads are besotted from the moment they find out their partner is pregnant, and want to do everything for their baby.

No idea. But from what I see while most women want greater input from their partner, most are happy / want to be the primary parent.

If they are so happy to be the primary parent they would not be wanting greater input from their partners.

Well it's very true for me, big reason why I only had 1 child and also why one day we'll split up.

Yep. I used to wonder out loud when we would travel to Spain (which we did twice a year as my parents lived there) why I got both kids in a row of three and he got one across the aisle (back before you could buy a specific seat). It was never him and the two kids!
Any couple I know with both parents working full time and it’s still the mum who arranges the play dates, knows when it’s parent/teacher night and when the kids clubs are. Sure there are exceptions but generally works that way. She’s also the one who calls a plumber when needed, arranges their social calendar and books the holidays.

I think this is part of the issue. For some reason many women think their view is the default, correct position and men need to follow their instructions. Be that how to clean or how to look after the kids. If you're constantly criticised for doing things, you stop doing them.

Because they don't connect the good bits of being the default parent (being with their baby more, control over the manner of parenting) with the bad bits down the line (doing it all themselves).

Same with dating - they don't connect the good bits of "traditional gender roles" (generous man treats you all the time and sees himself as a provider) with the bad bits down the line (he sees you as a domestic nurturer only).

That's just what I observe from threads on here, anyway - in real life almost all women I know were savvy enough not to fall for either of those dynamics.