How do you get your partner to share the parenting?

[Blondeinlondon]

How can I get my partner to take an active part in parenting our child?

DS is 9 mths.
Unless I leave explicit instructions when I go out then he does not get fed etc. I went out yesterday and said he needs his lunch and then dinner by 5.
Called home at 5.15 to hear the sound of crying.
By the time I was back DS had cried himself to sleep. Neither lunch nor dinner had been provided. When he woke I did the dinner etc, bath, bedtime.

How can I get DH to do his share?

dinosaur - lots of friendly midwives in the hospital.

I think there is a bit of collective mums amnesia here about the depths of our initial ignorance.
I didnt understand the whole concept of nappies until a midwife showed me how to put one on dd. oh, sorry, according to some of you, I should just have "known" because its so obvious, eh?

Don't be daft, they didn't teach you how to open a jar and spoonfeed him/her!

I think there is a difference between 'my partner and co-parent doesn't do as much parenting as I do, and when s/he does, it isn't exactly the way I'd do it' and 'my partner and co-parent isn't doing any childcare'. I am in the first group. I wish I wasn't, but I know that the amount (if not the style) is something to be worked on.

BIL is in the second group. And I'm genuinely finding it hard to understand why a full-grown man needs 'training' in, er, feeding a baby.

It's patronising to assume men aren't capable, I agree, but not patronising to do the training if it turns out it's needed. The issue here is what exactly is needed - and I doubt it's how to open a jar - it's an arse-kicking lesson in what the word responsibility means.

Just a guess, but I wonder if he leaves all the shopping/light-bulb-changing/laundry/bill-paying to BiL too? (If he does do some of that stuff, then there's light at the end of the tunnel.)

expat - from where Im standing, they both look the same sort of skill level.
But if someone had never done anything with a car, they might assume that changing the wheel was harder.
Or if theyd never touched a baby, they might think that changing the wheel was easier.

Im not talking about how the world should be. Im talking about how it is. Ive already said this several times, but the important thing is how willing/quick they are to learn - not where they start from.

I didn't know diddlysquat till I had a baby...and the midwives showed DP how to change her nappy

(DP is bloke, btw)

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't have much experience with babies before ds1 came along. I'd never given one a bottle or even changed a nappy but if I hadn't learned by the time he was 9 months old (as BIL's ds is) then I think I would thoroughly deserve the kind of comments that BIL's dp is getting on this thread.

Okay, nightynight - so let's accept for the sake of argument that BiL's partner needed to be shown how to give the baby his lunch and dinner. He must have realised that if she was going to be out all day, then this tiny human being for whom he had sole responsibility might have a few needs.

Then why on earth didn't he ask a few simple questions of BiL before she went out - like "What do I give him for lunch?" and "What do I give him for dinner?"?

dinosaur - if youre talking about solid feeding, I read books/magazine articles/packets in the supermarket before a spoon ever got near dd's mouth.

Sorry, but I think its patronising to assume that babycare is so easy that anyone can get it right first time.
What BiL asked in her original post, was how to get her dp to change quickly. We are all in agreement, surely, that what he did was totally unacceptable, and that as a father he has a duty to educate himself pdq.

Did your DS have a clean nappy or any kind of communication from computer-playing-man the rest of the day?

Sorry, but I think its patronising to assume that babycare is so easy that anyone can get it right first time.

Get it 'right' v. not be bothered to try it at all.

Once again, MAJOR difference between the two.

How to change a tire? Well, I read about it in a book. Then I muddled through it. Feed a baby? Well, I read about it leaflets, online, MNet, etc. Then muddled through. NOT rocket science.

OK, even if I'm being really charitable and making allowances for the fact that men automatically assume the woman they're with is responsible for kids, I agree with all those who are saying that neglect and just not doing it right, are different.

I began to hate my xp when I found he was neglecting our child. I think you have to get this man trained up quickly, BiL, otherwise you will seriously start to loathe him and find yourself unable to carry on living with him.

And apart from this, when your DS starts walking around, it will become dangerous to leave him in the care of his father unless his father has decided to become an adult by then.

I'm sorry but I find it ard to believe that a bloke who neglects his child like that was ever a reasonable, equal share partner in the first place!
All these women complaining about how little their husband does with the kids when he did bugger all before so why expect different now?

Sure, he has more responsibilities now, but why did you ever put up with it in the first place? Why did you wait til you had to leave him with your child? Why marry them, procreate with them then complain?

Sort it out! (rant over)

Amen, homemama!

For God's sake, he is the child's FATHER!!!!! Not some random stranger picked off the street and dumped with a baby for the first time in his life! He has had 9 effing months to work out something so basic a 6 year old who has lived with a baby for 9 months knows it.

If a baby is crying, try feeding it! My friend's 3 year old boy knows this, it is not a knowledge that only comes with a vagina. It is completely unacceptable to leave a baby hungry while you fuck about on a computer. If he wqas a woman, if this was a lesbian partnership, we would be crucifying the partner by now!!

Why why why do we expect less of someone because they have a penis? We are doing ourselves no favours, our daughters no favours, and quite frankly we are underselling our sons if we expect them to be useless once they hit puberty.

dont give your dh nothing to eat and see if he likes it

Colditz, I think I love you.

changed my mind, go no strike girl

Couldn't have put it better myself, colditz. Bravo!

Well said Colditz

I was expecting to see that he had left a big mess, or fed the wrong food or given him junk food but to just not feed him at all. Poor baby.

And all this shite about maybe he didnt know how - BOLLOX

Homemama, you'd be surprised.

It's so easy to be smug about other people's experiences isn't it?

My XP was a total paid up member of the new man persuasion. He was a SAHD for 18 months. Everyone who knew him said how wonderful he was with our baby. For about 6 months after I'd gone back to work, I thought he was a wonderful SAHD as well.

But then he started to neglect our baby, for all sorts of reasons too complex to go into now, because I've got to go and collect DS from school.

I had no prior warning that this would happen. There were no clues.

For the same reason that many women do not get subjected to domestic violence, until they are pregnant, men don't behave badly until you've had children with them - because at that stage, it's not so easy to split with them.

That's probably true Caligula.

But I still think all this crap about 'he needs teaching because he's a man' is insulting. If I left DS with my single, childless brother I'd still expect him to be fed.
It's got nothing to do with the fact that he's a man. It's because he's a lazy useless fecker!

totally agree.

Even my barking uncle who believes that child-rearing is solely women's work, if left alone with a child, would accost an unknown woman in the street to ask for direction on what to do with it, rather than leave it crying.

It's about taking responsibility, I think.

Okay everyone progress update...
DH fed DS his breakfast this morning with minimal input from me
He has promised to look after him tomorrow lunchtime, to give him lunch and to also offer extra milk if he cries.

He is basically lazy. He doesn't usually do any childcare in the week as he is at work. He then tries to avoid doing any at the weekend.

What about the housework? Who does that?