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At first glance, there seems to be parts of parenting, especially for the infant/toddler years, that women are just better at. Is that because they’re naturally more nurturing and instinctually know more about babies than men? We need to remember that there is an enormous learning curve for most new fathers—and the older they become fathers, the steeper that is. How do we break this cycle?
Who wins with this dynamic? Like most things in the patriarchy, we all lose. Men get called inept and told they are second-class parents. They lose out on getting to be the emotionally connected fathers they may want to be. Women are given an enormous burden to be the primary provider for a child with the sense that if they are doubting themselves or not doing it perfectly then they are somehow lacking and a “bad mother.” The child loses out on the ability to equally connect with the two people who will play an enormous part in their life.
So if it’s unhelpful and biologically untrue, why does this myth of the natural mother and the secondary father prevail?
Well, like most things when we take a closer look at gender there is a major social construction that we are all a part of, and it starts very young.
The Journey to Learn to Parent Takes Different Routes
A regular progression for a young girl is to be given dolls and she becomes the “mom” to that doll very quickly, practicing nurturing and taking care of the baby—and often she’s getting good modeling for this from her mother. If a second child enters the family, the young girl is encouraged to take care of her little sibling: holding, feeding, being often present in the taking care of this baby.
As she grows up, she will likely be asked to watch the neighbors’ kids, going into adolescence she may even have a number of official babysitting jobs. In her early 20s she’s going to be expected to gravitate toward friends and family with kids and to be excited at the (often) female-only baby showers. She’s going to know about all the important products and devices needed for when a baby comes into someone’s home. She may be at the birth of a friend or family member’s child and be holding, changing, bathing, feeding that baby to help her friend.
At some point if and when she has her own baby and, while scared and worried, she will have years to pull from for how to do some basic, and not so basic tasks. Instinct is actually a bunch of experience.
A regular progression for a young man is to never even hold a baby until his female partner gives birth and he’s got a nurse handing him a minutes old child.
Is that simplistic? Sure, and it certainly isn’t everyone’s experience. However, when I talk to women who complain their male partner doesn’t know anything and they have to double check everything he does—which makes every frustrating task even longer and more difficult—they don’t always remember that his learning curve is incredibly steeper than hers. He often gets told enough times that he “can’t do anything right” and he stops trying. Now our self-fulfilling dynamic is that he really is not doing anything and she’s burdened by it all. But so much of the traditional way of parenting has a ready answer for this: Well, it’s your job, Mom. Dad’s got other things to do.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but we have to stop pretending there are biological reasons for why women do certain things and men do certain things. It just gets in the way of you and your partner creating the family you want—and it robs the baby of a palette of modeling and a shared co-parented experience.
One of the simplest methods for changing this dynamic is to include our sons in caregiving. Have them help out with all you’re doing with their younger siblings, cousins, and friends’ kids. It’s wonderful if this is being modeled for them by a male caregiver in the home, but even if it’s not, include them in the nurturing in which you might more regularly include their sister. If that’s bringing up some challenging feelings in you, then think about the kind of man you want your child to become: one who will also feel those shaming, emasculated feelings, or one who is open to a kind of masculinity you are trying to allow for yourself, but have all those hurdles to unlearn. You can do the unlearning for him now.
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Photo credit: Pixabay