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Original poster

Are women better than men at childcare?

131 replies

charlotteabigailharris · 30/04/2015 21:25

I am currently a SAHM and have a 3yo DS and am 6 months pregnant.
I am doing an Economics degree with the open university and really could use your help for my dissertation....
I am researching whether it is accepted/not, that women are generally better than men at carrying out unpaid work - specifically childcare?
Let me know your thoughts,
Thank you.

OP posts:
Yops · 03/05/2015 19:33

Yonic - absolutely yes. And there was another article in yesterday's Times about super-alpha dads who gave up high-powered jobs to look after their kids. And as I read in I imagined the collective MN FWR hackles raising - 'ffs, this is what women have done forever !'

I think our society is in flux about stay-at-home dads. It is very slowly becoming more prevalent. From my anecdata, there is a high percentage of women on MN who's partners are stay-at-home dads. And I don't think society highlights them as suspicious, or predatory, or dodgy in the slightest. Quite the opposite - they are put on a pedestal, which is OTT.

But if you look at the wider aspect, more men in childcare would 'normalise' SAHD's even more. In fact, you might gets dads who decide that it's a worthwhile career once their own have grown up. And maybe that pushes wages in the sector up, and maybe women in that sector benefit too. There are reasons why that may not happen, but it is at least a possibility, and a positive one.

rainbowdashpony · 03/05/2015 19:39

Sorry I meant don't be ridiculous women are better than men at childcare. Some are, some aren't. My dh is better at childcate than a good sized percentage of women at childcare. It is just practice

duplodon · 03/05/2015 20:14

Oh come on, it's not "all them". It's just a product of our verbal community in which both men and women have, on a total social whim, decided that doing x means y about men and doing x means y about women.

People - men and women - tend to be very seduced by ideas of "the way things are". I know I am. There's a branch of psychology that looks at this as rule-governed behaviour: we tend to be resistant to changes to the status quo, even when they are of direct benefit to us. I know when DH first touted being at home, I certainly felt all sorts of discomfort and confusion about it. I even felt it when we looked at four day/four day weeks, because I've internalised all sorts of rules about how women should be there for their children and men aren't as capable etc.. and so has dh, but as an adult, he has broken free of it to an extent because it just so happens his peers are all sharing workload equally with their partners on four day/four day weeks.

Dh's mother was absolutely THE most damning of our shared arrangement, and I certainly was cast as the haranguing harpie in her eyes, as it was so inconceivable to her that any man would choose to stay home with the kids - it must be me "making" him do it.

I don't like it when feminist angles make it out that women are always just the products of oppressive patriarchal structures but men aren't either. Why do we assume that all men actually WANT to be career-driven with much less time in the domestic sphere unless we secretly feel that it's undesirable?

Kiwiinkits · 04/05/2015 03:17

I'm an economist so I would investigate this using an economics lens.

Value is often defined by price. What price are people prepared to pay for childcare performed by men versus performed by women? The price that's paid for childcare is the opportunity cost - the cost of not working in the next best career option for that person. If you can find in the stats that men who opt to be stay at home parents on the whole leave higher paying jobs than women who opt to be stay at home parents then you have your answer. You'd need to do the research by number of hours spent at home. you could compare your actual results to what people say they think the result would have been. Therefore providing a conclusion about whether people generally accept that women are better at it.

Kiwiinkits · 04/05/2015 03:31

What year are you in your degree? Reason I ask is that it will guide where you look in the literature. For a good basic (but dated) source check out Susan Owen's work on domestic specialization. For something that looks objectively at the marriage contract check out Richard Posner's work. One of his arguments is that a woman's domestic labour is very valuable in the early years relative to the man's labour, but over time the man's labour becomes a lot more valuable and therefore he is strongly incentivised to break the marriage contract.

rootypig · 04/05/2015 04:09

If you can find in the stats that men who opt to be stay at home parents on the whole leave higher paying jobs than women who opt to be stay at home parents then you have your answer.

Assuming that men and women have equal pay and equal career opportunities. Don't forget that most children have one male and one female parent and the choice is between who will stay at home, i.e. not made solely on the merits of the individual's situation but the comparative situations. With women underpaid and concentrated in less well paid professions, this is deeply important.

purplemurple1 · 04/05/2015 04:46

Me and my partner both worked 50% from 2 days aftet birth and looked after the babies 50/50. Unsuprisingly we are similar in how well we can parent.
With our first we got a lot of shocked and how will he cope comments when i travelled away for work for a few days at 3 months pp. And OH would often get people treating him like he was on holiday and being shocked that he couldnt do things as he had the baby and i was at work.
But after a couple of months no one cared or found it weird anymore as its obvious we are equally good/bad at parenting.

We earn similar amounts and neither of us wants to be a shap and are agreed in no uncertain terms that going to the office is easier.

slugseatlettuce · 04/05/2015 07:52

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

messyisthenewtidy · 04/05/2015 10:01

Bit of a tangent but I think the real issue is housework not childcare. I have known so many women who work full time but still perform the lion's share of the housework.
That is soul-destroying.

I've also known of husbands who have stayed at home to look after the children whilst the wife works full time. Each time I have expressed my happiness that things are changing, only to be disappointed that he doesn't actually do any laundry, cleaning, or anything beyond the immediate looking after of the children.

Looking after children may be easy, a privilege even, but it is the mental and physical work that goes with them that is hard.

rainbowdashpony · 04/05/2015 10:42

That is their own fault messy for letting that happen.

Trills · 04/05/2015 10:53

Choices are not made in a vacuum

AskBasil · 04/05/2015 11:11

What is whose own fault rainbowdashpony?

rainbowdashpony · 04/05/2015 11:12

So they are able go against the grain and have the woman as breadwinner and then don't for housework and cooking. Right Hmm

AskBasil · 04/05/2015 11:20

Sorry, didn't understand that.

I'm not sure what you're saying is whose fault.

(Eh? What did she say? Wossat? Grin)

rainbowdashpony · 04/05/2015 11:22

Messy saying women working full time with sahds and then doing all housework. Ridiculous.

BuffyNeverBreaks · 04/05/2015 11:47

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Yops · 04/05/2015 12:04

'Only'? Isn't it more likely that it varies across different cases?

BuffyNeverBreaks · 04/05/2015 12:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Yops · 04/05/2015 13:44

Ah, okay. Yes, everybody is responsible for their own actions. I got the wrong end of the stick.

messyisthenewtidy · 07/05/2015 07:30

Of course it's not the the wife's fault. It makes my friend nuts (not to mention exhausted) but it's not as simple as her asking and him doing. How naïve!

scallopsrgreat · 07/05/2015 09:17

No it isn't that simple. She shouldn't really have to ask should she? He should bear equal responsibility for the household chores as he lives there too.

AskBasil · 07/05/2015 09:37

Forcing someone to ask you to do something you should be doing anyway, is passive aggressive behaviour IMO.

scallopsrgreat · 07/05/2015 09:47

Agreed.

purplemurple1 · 07/05/2015 17:38

To be honest it is me that does less jobs overall as we have so many 'husband' jobs. by which I mean cutting down tress, using the chainsaw to cut wood, choping wood, heavy building maintenace/repairs, tractor repairs etc. My OH often does these when the kids are in bed, or in his holidays.

I wonder if a lot of the imbalance nowadays is because most men dont have this work and most have no concept that this is the 'husband' work they would have been doing in the past so dont realise how easy they have it when all that is left to do is share what use to be the wifes jobs.

BarbarianMum · 07/05/2015 20:11

There are very good genetic reasons why female mammals are (on average) more strongly biologically programmed to care for their young than males. Whether this translates into women being (on average) 'better' at childcare then men, I don't know. I suspect they are (on average) more intrinsically motivated but it may be quite a weak effect and certainly couldn't be reduced to 'women are better at changing nappies' or 'men are worse at playing with their children.