Are there any more SAHDs here ?

[beardydad]

I am, kind of!
Dinner is (normally) ready when DW gets home and I clean and wash up but never never iron.
Any other unshaven men around ?

BeckLaxton - just discovered your post in the 'death zone' that is Dadsnet.

Maybe you should post again in CHAT as you would get more answers.

To be honest it did annoy me intensely how I was excluded and ignored all the time by ante natal and post natal children services, midwives and even at the IVF clinic!

Basically I used to sit there while the Dr/nurse/midwife sat talking to DW. Not addressing me once. Going to ante natal classes was impossible as they were always on when I was at work. Sometimes, during consultations I used to start gently rocking my body side to side moving myself in and out of the Doctors line of sight - they got the message. The IVF clinic did apologise when I complained about the way they treated men and said they were reviewing their policy and procedures as they acknowledged they were 'all about the woman'.

I come on MN because it is really just not socially feasible for in RL to start engaging school gate Mums in childcare parenting chats or go to coffee mornings. DW can and does do that and has a school gate Mum network but she quite openly says women will not feel comfortable with a man turning up at those events or even walking up to him and talking to him most of the time.

Often am the only man in the room on MN and elsewhere in RL. I get used to it but still modify my behaviour and what I say and avoid certain social situations in RL that I do not feel are appropriate for men to be at. For example there was a 'get to know you night out' at school for parents in our DSs class that was clearly just for Mums though not explicitly stated.

Good luck with your new job - sorely needed in my view.

Answer to your question is: yes talk to them.

I like toddler groups, but too many people there are atomised anyway, at least in London.

You can see that Dads are kind of shunned in a variety of situations, intentionally or not, so more interaction is necessary.

Here's another SAHD with full time care of 11 year old son.

It's been a nightmare experience - not the looking after child bit, more all the peculiar add-on experiences in a world geared up entirely for mums and to exclude fathers and single parents in general at every turn.

As some of the previous posts consistently show, our main problem is finding various useful avenues of communication difficult or missing, pushing all single parents into isolation and single dads more than single mums.

With all the single parents, male and female, around, I am stunned by the culture of miserable isolation when all our lives would improve immeasurably if we all got together as a mutual aid society - particularly with that thorny child-care problem.

Just imagine how much better all out lives could be if we all helped each other out a bit more ?

Please can someone compile a glossary of all these acronyms which, apart from SAHD (which is actually misleading anyway) I just cant work out the others. DS, DD, DW etc are.

Or better still not use them at all. I've got a thing about journalists latching onto inscrutable acronyms in the media and it really ps me off.

Rocketone,

at the very top of the Mumsnet board, there's a tab called "acronyms". Hope that helps - if you see this reply!