Your views on getting dads more engaged and other questions....

[KatieMumsnet]

Hi there

MNHQ have been asked to join the Royal College of Midwives, on a panel at the party conferences to discuss what can be done to get dads more involved in their children's lives (always excepting those dads who do their fair share or more already, of course)

In preparation we’d love to hear your views

Do you feel that current policies around maternity leave, paternity leave, work, childcare etc assume, and therefore usually lead to women adopting the primary caregiver roles for children? If so, what do you think about this?

How involved would you say your DCs' dad is in their daily lives, and how much support did he give you during pregnancy and birth? Were you happy with this level? Is more support always a good thing?

If you think your DC's dad could do more to get involved with your DC's lives, what would make the difference and encourage him? Is this different depending on the age of your child?

If you're separated are you happy with how engaged your child's dad is?

Shared Parental Leave is introduced in April 2015? Are you likely to use this policy? What do you think of it generally?

*From 2015 parents will be eligible for Shared Parental Leave during their child’s first year. So, if parents want to, after a period of at least two weeks that has to be taken by the mother, the remaining entitlement can now be shared between parents.

The panel is primarily looking at the role of dads, but we'd welcome the perspective of any lesbian couples, either about your own relationships or how you involve the biological father, if he is around in the family's life.

Thanks in advance for your input.

MNHQ

Dad257, I hear you. I have heard mums and women who work in Children's Centres say some very unhelpful and downright sexist things about dads - 'what do dads really know anyway?', 'dads don't really have a clue', 'dads don't read with their children', that sort of thing. I always challenge it but it's very ingrained and I can see how it would send the message that dads are the less important and less skilled parent. So while I still feel its down to men to agitate for more inclusion in their children's lives, women do have a responsibility to stop the smugness and stop tolerating sexist generalisations about dads.

It's all about social pressures and expectations and what is seen as "the norm."

Time and time again we hear of women being asked who is babysitting the children while she's out, do men ever get asked that or is it just assumed their wife/partner is?

We get told how good our male partners are for babysitting so we can go out, not the same in reverse.

Men are tempted into engaging with their children (usually sons) with stereotypical masculine things, bacon, bbqs, sport, constructing and nature (camping, fishing, hunting etc) things that are seen as fun and exciting!
They're expected to talk about sports and work and cars.

Women are given a luke warm cup of tea and a slice if cake (even though it's naughty because we're watching our weight ) we get to sit on chairs while our children (both sexes) play with faded, grubby toys in the church hall, we're expected to discuss childbirth, breast feeding and all things parenting.
We're expected to enjoy the gentle pleasures of life, spas, sewing/knitting and baking (usually for the family)

Men are often seen as having a life as a singular person with a tiny extra bit that is his family.

Women are often seen as having a family as her life with maybe a tiny snippet of her as a person tacked onto the side.

None of these things are ok and it's up to men and women to change the was society thinks and behaves because it does spill into the workplace, my DP really has to be firm in saying that his family comes first so it's tough if his boss can't accept that. He's lost contracts for it in the past, but he is reliable and hardworking so luckily he does get a lot of work.

I have no idea how to change this other than personally challenging it in day to day life (as does DP) but it does need to happen.

Agree that it should be up to men to decide what would be helpful, not women to "encourage/persuade/plead/organise it all for them".

Though I can see that in a tactical sense, given the rather glaring absence of male-focused and run parenting sites, it makes sense to approach Mumsnet. Not seeing any dads on this thread yet!

I do want to take issue with this red herring of breastfeeding somehow requiring a WHOLE YEAR in order to exclusively breastfeed. Bollocks. It's not "exclusive" once you start introducing food at 6 months anyway, and only 1 percent of women are actually still exclusively breastfeeding at that stage. In fact, given that by 6 weeks the figure is already down to 23%, and after just one week (!) less than half are, it would seem that mat leave has sweet FA to do with exclusive breastfeeding rates.

(I would speculate that if fathers took a longer leave at the start and picked up more of the work, then it might actually help increase breastfeeding rates).

I am still bfing DS at age 2+, I went back at 9 months and started doing KIT days months before that, so can fairly confidently say that not taking a year didn't affect my continuing to breastfeed, and actually, given my KIT days I suspect that going back at 5 or 6 months would probably have been just fine. At 2 weeks, would probably have been tricky, but that doesn't justify taking choices away from women on the patronising and paternalistic grounds that the sweet little things need not to have the option of returning to work as otherwise they might choose something undesirable. Either you want to treat women as fully functioning adults who can make choices or you don't, End of.

I think that there have been huge improvements already to get Dads to be more active.
We have gone from men pacing the corridors with a celebratory cigar to what was later termed modern man who "helped out a bit more" to men who want to being fully equal in their care of their children.
The problem is not all couples want the man to be at home after the birth.
My friend wanted her dh out of the way during the day so she could establish a routine. He comes home from work and takes over with the dc and she rests or prepares tea etc.
For her that change is better than him being burned out because he is working and also doing too much at home.
I don't think society should put pressure on fathers as those parents who choose to do it their way are put under pressure to conform to somebody elses norm.
Give parents a choice certainly and support the families who want equal care.

DH and I have 3 kids. We both work part time and share the childcare and housework. The issues that DH has faced are:

a) lack of flexibility around returning to work full time for a short time which he wanted to do during my maternity leaves for DC2&3
b) a boss who is married to a SAHM who doesn't really get why DH might have to leave at short notice if one of the DC is sick (DH and I alternate who takes days leave when the kids are sick). In comparison my boss (whose wife is very senior at work and always worked when their kids were small) is completely understanding about it.
c) when DD1 was tiny he found it was harder for him as a man to be friendly with the other Mums at kiddy activities without it feeling a bit awkward.
d) he didn't get paid paternity leave whereas I did get paid maternity pay (are companies going to be asked to equalise maternity and paternity pay now that there's shared paternity leave?).
e) a minor thing but his season ticket (for the train, not football!) is now a much greater part of his salary than it was when he was full time. The only way he can change that is to move job but of course working part time that becomes much harder (As we all know).

I do think though that some men make up excuses for not doing their fair share. My employer is very enlightened about part time work and lots of men and women at work take advantage of it (not just mothers). But I still know several men at work that claim they are so indispensable that they can't possibly work part time (even when they work alongside other people who do) . Not a lot anyone can do about men like that except refuse to breed with them. DH thinks some men hate the thought of spending the day (literally) crawling around on the floor, there's a lot of drudgery involved in looking after small children and lots of men can and do get away with not doing it.

Oh, and socially I really think we (and by that I mean all parents) have to challenge this idea that only Mum can bring up the baby, DH is fab father who parents in a different way to me and the kids are richer for it. I also think it is essential that our children see men and women caring for them, at home, in nurseries and schools (more male primary teachers are desperately needed). Otherwise how will life change, men have to challenge the stereotypes if they don't want to spend their lives as wage slaves supporting a family they never see.

MNHQ I think you've phrased your OP quite strangely. I've just looked and the conference panels are going to be about dads in vulnerable families, aren't they? Why are you phrasing this as asking for general thoughts about men's role in childcare?

This adds a totally new dimension to the topic, and I'm sure many posters would have given different responses if they had known this.

I love my career and I started realising in my twenties that I didn't want to be under pressure to give it up when I married and had kids. So when I was deciding what "marriage material" meant for me, part of that included the willingness to support me being the main breadwinner. It wasn't a clinical process it was just something in the back of my mind. DH isn't a doormat by any stretch, but he is comfortable with strong women and he is not at all bothered by me being the one who works while he is primary caregiver for DD. I think equality is something we need to take, not something we should wait to be given.

You know what - I knew I would get that reaction for mentioning breastfeeding, but I know so many people and have read so many threads from women saying 'help I have to go back to work and the baby won't take a bottle!' you can manage that if your baby is 9-12mths. And yes this is personal to me because I had 2 bottle refusers despite trying absolutely everything suggested, one of my dc point blank would not have any fluids at all bar breastmilk from the breast until he was almost 12mths. Again you can manage going back to work when they're almost one, but really feeding through the night to make up the day feeds they've missed is a totally crap solution that places no value on the mother's need to sleep.

But when you're talking about shared leave, trying to 'manage' a bottle refusing 6mo (or younger) is a totally different challenge.

Which is why although I am generally supportive of shared leave it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable too. I suspect there will be elements of this that become another stick to beat women with 'you mean you didn't get your child on the bottle so your husband can get his turn? How selfish of you!'

I have quite generous contractual maternity pay but am not allowed to share this with dh even though we work for the same (public sector) employer. Also you have to take shared parental leave in chunks. It would have been more attractive to us if it enabled us both to go part time for a while. In fact dh did go part time for 6 months but came under quite a lot of pressure to go full time again. I can't help but think his boss might have been more understanding if he was a woman, but then he probably would have discriminated against a woman in other ways

I needed to repeat this from titsalina

"Men are tempted into engaging with their children (usually sons) with stereotypical masculine things, bacon, bbqs, sport, constructing and nature (camping, fishing, hunting etc) things that are seen as fun and exciting!
They're expected to talk about sports and work and cars.

Women are given a luke warm cup of tea and a slice if cake (even though it's naughty because we're watching our weight ) we get to sit on chairs while our children (both sexes) play with faded, grubby toys in the church hall, we're expected to discuss childbirth, breast feeding and all things parenting.
We're expected to enjoy the gentle pleasures of life, spas, sewing/knitting and baking (usually for the family)"

So, so true, even now!
My son's school had a "Dad's Day" where Dads were asked to come and play football, and build dens, and do survival skills FFS, in order to get them more involved.
Aside from the fact that some kids don't have a Dad in the picture, I was incensed by the blatant stereotyping, as was my (Mum) friend who runs outward bound courses!
And the nearest most of these suburban Dads have been to having to use survival skills is negotiating the rush hour traffic in the people carrier.
The gender stereotyping starts at birth and doesn't let up, so it's no wonder child rearing is still seen as women's work.
You STILL get debates on the subject of "women having it all", and you will get a small business employer saying how she doesn't like to employ women, because they might have children.
Until it is a universally recognised fact then men have children too we will get nowhere.

FairePhyllis that's very interesting. I probably would have responded differently yes, but I think it will get lost in a sea of other stuff.

Hi there

Thanks for all your thoughts. Very helpful. Just to say, FairPhyllis, yes the title of the panel is about what might work for vulnerable families but I think in trying to answer that it's really helpful and interesting to know what all families think and what has worked (and hasn't for them).

The panel isn't just Mumsnet, there's lots of people taking part, but Mumsnet is one way to find out what women are thinking on this issue.

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know, Katie is at the Labour List conference now. We'd love it if you joined in on the debate with us on twitter.