I love my Mummy / Daddy books

[StormGlass]

DS has just received a pair of board books from a relative. They're called "I Love My Mummy" and "I Love My Daddy" (from the same publisher), and having read them, I'm annoyed.

In "I Love My Mummy", the child loves his mummy because she makes his rubber duck go "quack" in the bath, she makes him yummy food to eat, she washes his muddy teddy and his pyjamas, and because she's his mummy.

In "I Love My Daddy", the child loves his daddy because he pushes him on his bicycle, he plays catch with a ball, he pretends to be a pirate captain, he makes the cuddly toys talk, and because he's his daddy.

Mummy's doing an awful lot of housework here - bathing the child, cooking the meals, doing the washing - while daddy's playing lots of fun games. This doesn't seem fair to me. Why can't they show mummy doing fun things with the child? Or daddy doing a bit of housework? It's blatent gender stereotyping. And immensely irritating.

I guess that is just the reality in most families.

I had a good one when the DCs were little - What Mommies Do Best/What Daddies Do Best.

It's one book, if you start from one side it's what mothers do best: reading stories, making birthday cakes etc. From the other side, it's what fathers do best: reading stories, making birthday cakes - all the same things.

Obviously, that's not always true for every family (DH never made a cake in his life, as far as I know) but at least it makes the point...

Tear them up into little shreds! Ah, they are board books. Let your child read them in the bath, then tear them into shreds once they are sopping wet. Possibly not let the dc see the glint In Your eye as you do so!

Weird!

Just tonight I was reading DD this as her bedtime story and noticed that there's a scene where Mum heads off to work and Dad goes to do the shopping.

I thought it was refreshing.

The book's a bit dull.

exexpat, that looks like a much better book about mummies and daddies. Perhaps I'll try and find a copy, and then arrange for these annoying board books to have an unfortunate bath-related accident.

And NPPF, surely in most families, the daddy does something for the child other than playing fun games?

In this book, there's not even an example of him doing a typically male job for the child - they could easily have shown him fixing the bicycle for the child when the tyre goes flat without challenging any gender stereotypes...

StormGlass It didn't happen much in mine but as a result I am now divorced