Who has it worse? Moms or dads?
Historically, moms carry more of the mental load of childcare, more moms left careers during Covid to take care of kids, and have you ever tried to shave around your knee? That’s rough.
Dads have 3x higher suicide rates, are more isolated, and have back hair. Have you ever dealt with back hair? It’s not pleasant. At times I feel like nothing more than a civilized Bigfoot.
So, who has it worse? Moms or dads?
That’s the question that we keep asking each other, and then we back it up with proof. Studies that make our point. Statistics that pinpoint the moment that our side got screwed. It’s a battle of numbers that are ushered onto the battlefield so we can say “See, my parenting experience is worse than yours!”
It’s the exact wrong thing we should be doing. Face it, we all suck.
The Right Question
Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution stated that we can acknowledge the problems on one side while also acknowledging the problems on the other. It is not a zero-sum game.
But that is the way that moms and dads often treat it in the parenting world, or at least in the parenting writing world. We scoreboard each other over and over again to prove that our experience has been more difficult and more worthy of change.
What we fail to do is to be each other’s cheerleaders. We fail to acknowledge that moms and dads have issues that are unique to them, and both have merit. Both are worthy of our time and attention. We need to find solutions, not more problems. But it doesn’t seem that we can get past one-upping each other.
We fall into our competitive natures, and what we are competing for this time is who is more miserable. When I write that out, it just reads so absurd to me. Or maybe this is the American way? We brag about how little sleep we get and how many hours we worked in a week. We do this like it’s some sort of badge of honor rather than seeing it as detrimental to our lives.
So, what question should we be asking?
How can we help? That’s the question we should be screaming at the top of our lungs in the parenting world.
Recognizing the troubles of the other does not negate our own.
This is something that my wife and I have argued about over the years. And we are both guilty of pushing our side over the others. Every time I have complained about being shunned at the park or ridiculed for being an at-home dad, she has come back with every time someone at the office has tried to give her an awkward hug or asked when she is going to go home with the babies.
The thing is, both have happened, and both shouldn’t. Yes, as a dad there are things that I have dealt with that my wife cannot experience. In general, my life has been ruled by competition, isolation, and constant questioning if I have worth.
From what my wife tells me, hers has been constantly being told what she can’t or shouldn’t do, to be meek and not assertive, or to be a good little quiet girl.
The thing is, both those are true, and both need to change. My experiences do not negate hers and vice-versa. But we just seem to ignore this. We just can’t let that happen anymore. I need to be screaming for change for her. I need to fight alongside her, and not against her.
And on my wife’s side, she needs to be furious that dad isolation is a major problem in the parenting world. When she sees dads portrayed as idiots, it needs to bother her. I need her in my corner.
Luckily, I have an amazing wife and those things do get her upset. The same way I get upset when I hear about some of the absolute garbage she puts up with. But even within our own marriage, which now spans decades, we still scoreboard each other at times.
“It’s never you vs your wife vs the problem. It’s you and your wife vs the problem.” It’s an adage that has kept my marriage a singular unit to take on the world. It’s how my wife and I have overcome so many issues, and it’s what I hope we do when it comes to the overall parenting world.
Moms get a raw deal in general. They take on too much for too little credit. They have societal pressures that I will never understand. Dads need help and support and to be treated with respect when it comes to caring for their children.
Both those things are true and independent of each other. And if we stop score boarding, we can start to fix them.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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