Stay-at-home dad and blogger John Adams was asked whether women were better parents than men. He does not think so, and this is why. What do you think?
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I could get on my high horse and tell you that it’s outrageous to suggest women are better parents than men. I’ll save you that kind of response!
As far as I’m concerned, there is a very simple response to this question. If women are better parents, then men must surely make better business leaders, politicians, academics, surgeons etc.
The only thing is, that last sentence doesn’t make for very comfortable reading, does it? I won’t pretend that women face no issues in the workplace or in public life, but over the past 150 years women have achieved a great deal and proved themselves perfectly capable in all the areas I’ve just mentioned.
That said, when it comes to being a parent, women have two advantages. Firstly, women carry and deliver the baby. Secondly, women have the ability to breastfeed.
In those very early days this is naturally going to lead to mum and baby spending more time with each other and forming a bond more quickly than with dad. From day one, however, the involved father will take turns bottle feeding baby and will have no problems doing so in the middle of the night. He will bathe his child, dress his child, change nappies, take his child out for a walk, play with them and so on. Beyond giving birth and breastfeeding, there is nothing a dad isn’t capable of doing as well as a mother.
Anecdotally, I have noticed that when a woman has a particularly hard birth, the dad often seems to become a capable, hands-on dad very quickly. If mum can’t breastfeed because she’s had a Cesarean section or can’t walk or move easily, dad has to be the one to buy and mix the formula feed. He has to be the one to get up in the middle of the night to soothe the child. It’s a personal observation of mine, but in these situations it seems that he is almost immediately on an equal footing with the child’s mother because she needs time to recover.
I am a stay at home dad with a five year old and a 22 month old. I do pretty much everything society expects a mum to do while my wife works full time in a very demanding job. I get my kids up every morning, I do the school and nursery runs, I cook my children’s evening meals, polish their shoes, shampoo their hair, organize and oversee play dates. You will see my wife’s handwriting in my eldest child’s homework record but the majority of it is mine.
I know the place in the school yard where my child is bought out to by her teacher at the end of the day. I have the telephone number for my youngest daughter’s nursery programmed into my phone. I update the family calendar hanging on the kitchen wall so I know who will be where and when and identify when there will be childcare issues. Why wouldn’t a man be capable of doing this stuff?
I have heard it said that women are naturally more compassionate and more caring by nature. It may be true, but is sounds like a convenient notion to spread so that women can be kept behind the kitchen sink, or rather make women believe childcare is their domain.
This originally appeared on Dadbloguk.com. It was written for the #ThePrompt linky. This is a linky hosted on the Mum Turned Mom blog.
Photo: Jencu/Flickr
My wife and I separated a couple of months ago. After the first 12 months of our little girls life, where I was the main provider (on an amazing PhD scholarship in Japan) and my wife the stay at home parent on maternity leave, we came back home. I was now full time stay at home Dad, trying to finish the PhD (impossible with a very active little girl), trying my best to make a home while my wife worked. My wife would like to let you think that she is equal thinking, and if questioned, will say that she… Read more »
But unfortunately my wife, deep down, had big, deep reservations against me being the home parent. I hope people’s attitudes change for the better on this. It has to start with women. It really does.
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Without that support and understanding and lack of understanding from wives, there will never, ever, be a significant number of stay at home Dads
agreed, and great post
My husband couldn’t bottle feed our DD because she was exclusivly breastfed. And as you say, at the moment, scientific breakthroughs not withstanding, women have the monopoly on that. But after she started eating and using a cup…yep he was right there. I went back to work when she was 10 months old and he took over as full time SAHD – using terry towelling washable nappies like the middle class eco concious parents we are. He is still her main carer now, 13 years on, as I work full time, and she seems pretty cool 🙂 So yeah, dads… Read more »
I wonder if most people realise that it wasn’t that long ago that MEN received custody of the kids most often in divorce , it was a femist who pushed the Tender Years Doctrine that saw the change.
I have heard it said that women are naturally more compassionate and more caring by nature. It may be true, but is sounds like a convenient notion to spread so that women can be kept behind the kitchen sink, or rather make women believe childcare is their domain.
Convincing women that they are natually more compassionate and convincing men that they are void of compassion go hand in hand with keeping women and men in places where they are deemed most useful. Useful to who? Useful to the system.
“I have heard it said that women are naturally more compassionate and more caring by nature. It may be true, but is sounds like a convenient notion to spread so that women can be kept behind the kitchen sink, or rather make women believe childcare is their domain.” Or could it be so that men are kept in the work force so that they can bust their asses so that moms can be home? But then again, although things are changing where men are seen as good care givers, men still have a long way to go in so far… Read more »
Very true.