Young children suffering harm from accidents/unintentional injuries when fathers in charge

[WallyHilloughby]

Been reading about yet another sad case where a child drowned in a neighbours pond whilst dad was supposed to be watching the child but was too busy doing other ‘super important’ things much more vital than watching a literal baby. This weaponised incompetence- is it another example of emotional abuse which ensures a mothers place is in charge of the kids at all times?

YABU. HTH

It depends. Do you regard situations where a mother was supposed to be supervising a child and that child came to harm as "weaponised incompetence" and therefore examples of emotional abuse, or are they terms that you reserve for men and men alone?

Nice try, So no harm comes to children in care of mothers? Really

And shock horror some women do it intentionally

Woman are the primary perpetrators of child abuse. There's loads of data out there.

I think starting a thread to suggest, with zero evidence, that a father who made the biggest possible mistake and has to live with that for the rest of his life probably did it on purpose is absolutely despicable.

Please link to that data.

Sadly parents (and grandparents) occasionally make awful mistakes. Both men and women.
It could be said whichever parent is with the child the most is less likely to make a mistake because they are "used to it", like the case of a parent not used to doing drop off who left the child in the car seat, but it's not the case that men, or women, are necessarily better or worse.

Really? Could you give proof of this?

I suspect actual fatalities from weaponised incompetence are very low - but I could believe that a couple of percent difference in overall rates could be explained by 1) some dads being unused to looking ahead and anticipating risks for the baby that aren’t immediately visible as they usually let the mum do the thinking and/or 2) men having more fatal accidents themselves than women anyway as they have a slightly differently calibrated sense of risk in some borderline cases/are more likely to assume very unlikely but very dangerous things will just turn out ok.

They are also likely to have been socialised differently to mums in their own childhood so have a different baseline of what risk was normal - being encouraged to jump off higher things, play out with friends but no adults sooner, more tolerance of ‘wrestling’ with siblings. That wouldn’t lead to a higher rate of fatalities but could definitely contribute to more broken limbs/bumped heads under the care of dads as an entire group.

We always roll our eyes and say "dad was in charge" when we hear stories about kids in accidents. I don't think its a weaponised incompetence, more a perception that dads are more likely to let their kids take risk than mums. It was certainly true in my family when I grew up, and true in mine and my husband's parenting styles now. We are farmers, so risk has probably been a little more extreme than what most families experience - think driving tractors once your feet touch the pedal, shooting as soon as you are big enough to hold a small shot gun etc.

Yanbu its like the one time dad has to drop the kids at daycare before he goes to work then he comes out of work at 5 to find them dead in their carseat.

Is that qualitatively different from when women accidentally leave their child in the back of the car, go to work, and then come out at 5 to find them dead in their carseat?

Of course is it. For obvious reasons.

How so? Does the child end up any less dead?