There have been a lot of articles written (here and here for example, or here from the lovely Harpies) about how fathers are celebrated for parenting in a way mothers never are. You mean your husband can actually care for a child? He can feed it and change it and make sure it stays alive for hours at a time? Stop the presses! Now I’m experiencing this first hand. I’ve already been asked by several people “Oh is Daddy babysitting?”- cashiers who knew I was expecting, acquaintances I run into while picking up milk, pregnant women asking my opinion on strollers at Babies R Us. So far I’ve just said “Yes” since “No, he’s just parenting the child he was 50% responsible for creating and therefor understands he’s 50% responsible for caring for, stupid” seems unnecessarily wordy and combative for polite conversation.
Strangely, this phenomenon doesn’t stop if I happen to be present. When E wears the baby in the sling people stare. When we were making daily trips to the hospital for lab work the nurses cooed and fawned over E simply for holding the baby when he had his heel pricked. At the event we went to on Friday people were shocked that I was in charge of fetching the drinks and cake while E was in charge of baby duty. They joked that I had definitely gotten the better end of that deal – because clearly holding a sleeping child should have been my job.
For the record, I would still give E a Great Dad Medal if such a thing existed. I’m pretty sure that to date he’s changed double the number of diapers I have. He’s definitely been thrown up on just as much. I think there’s a line between wishing society as a whole would stop treating dads like heroes for participating in their own child’s care and personally showing and telling my husband how much I appreciate him.
Bonjour! No I'm not French, it just sounded fancy. Sorry for the confusion. I'm Suzanne and the star of the show is Little Evan, who is now sharing top billing with Caroline, born December 19, 2010. I love hearing from you so if you have questions, stories or ideas to share, email me at bebehblog at gmail dot com.
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Yes, apparently we fathers are supposed to take care of our own children until they are much older. It pretty much sucks — I had fun taking care of my daughter, and I even find myself nostalgic for it occasionally, especially carrying her around in her Snugli, sitting there on my chest, seeing everything as we walked along.
Wow, I didn’t realize that this was going to happen!!! I’m suddenly really pissed off about it and it hasn’t even happened to me yet.
Congrats on nabbing yourself a good man who understands his duties as a parent. The rest of the world doesn’t get it, but if men like E. keep doing their thang in public they’ll figure it out one of these days. I bet you are teaching them without saying a word.