I'm still haunted by the video of the father who sent his preschool-aged daughter to school in UNDERWEAR instead of proper clothing and still people were in the comments section saying, "I wish my husband would help at all; at least he's trying."
Agree completely. The one that really gets to me is work- I returned to work recently and my baby is 8 months old. Where I live, it’s common to take 12 months parental leave (but to only be paid for a few months of this). I like my job and financially needed to return to work, AND I wanted my hubby to have the chance to be primary carer and learn those skills. Yet SO many people have criticised me for going back to work before 12 months! “Oh that’s too soon! I couldn’t” etc. “oh you’ll be crying in the toilet all day!” (I wasn’t.) But not one person criticised my hubby for working all of this time??
Remind those people of what we got going on the US. Very few states have legislated any paid parental leave, a few jobs offer short term disability insurance and that can be used to receive a % of one’s pay during leave, while many hourly workers in the US have to return to work days after giving birth, even when they had a c-section because they don’t have any paid leave and are low income.
If you'd like to really chasten these people, you could say "well I know someone in the States who went back to work after 3 days". I completely do not recommend that and still feel cheated out of recovery and time with my baby; but I owned a business and had a husband who was pushing me to get back to it. Regrets--I have a few.
On this side of the pond, I support you and give you all the credit for striving for balance. And yay you for helping your husband to learn those skills. Well done!
This is so true. And it'd amazing to me how appealing the low bar is because my own husband'd parenting is so bad. A dad at school drop off? A dad with their child at the playground? I feel such a surge of desire. But I know, if they are presumably in a heterosexual relationship, their wives are probably yearning for more too.
Imagine men and women on a ladder of morality (relative goodness and badness). The man (and everyone judging him) will always look down the ladder, because there will always be a worse man lower down on the ladder. The woman (and everyone judging her) will always look up the ladder, because there will always be a better woman higher up on the ladder. Men are judged in comparison to how objectively horrible and destructive men frequently are. So a man who simply doesn’t do the most vile crimes imaginable is considered good. But because women generally don’t do the most abjectly horrible things men do, we have to earn our goodness by complying with feminine virtues of continual, silent self sacrifice and masochism in relationships with men and children.
This is 100% the prison of my ancestors and what they passed down to me. What men have institutionalized on this planet is inconceivable
I'm still haunted by the video of the father who sent his preschool-aged daughter to school in UNDERWEAR instead of proper clothing and still people were in the comments section saying, "I wish my husband would help at all; at least he's trying."
Ugh!
Agree completely. The one that really gets to me is work- I returned to work recently and my baby is 8 months old. Where I live, it’s common to take 12 months parental leave (but to only be paid for a few months of this). I like my job and financially needed to return to work, AND I wanted my hubby to have the chance to be primary carer and learn those skills. Yet SO many people have criticised me for going back to work before 12 months! “Oh that’s too soon! I couldn’t” etc. “oh you’ll be crying in the toilet all day!” (I wasn’t.) But not one person criticised my hubby for working all of this time??
Remind those people of what we got going on the US. Very few states have legislated any paid parental leave, a few jobs offer short term disability insurance and that can be used to receive a % of one’s pay during leave, while many hourly workers in the US have to return to work days after giving birth, even when they had a c-section because they don’t have any paid leave and are low income.
:( :( heartbreaking.
If you'd like to really chasten these people, you could say "well I know someone in the States who went back to work after 3 days". I completely do not recommend that and still feel cheated out of recovery and time with my baby; but I owned a business and had a husband who was pushing me to get back to it. Regrets--I have a few.
On this side of the pond, I support you and give you all the credit for striving for balance. And yay you for helping your husband to learn those skills. Well done!
Couldn't agree more. I would love to enjoy motherhood but I'm too busy, pissed off or negated for all my effort...
This is so true. And it'd amazing to me how appealing the low bar is because my own husband'd parenting is so bad. A dad at school drop off? A dad with their child at the playground? I feel such a surge of desire. But I know, if they are presumably in a heterosexual relationship, their wives are probably yearning for more too.
Imagine men and women on a ladder of morality (relative goodness and badness). The man (and everyone judging him) will always look down the ladder, because there will always be a worse man lower down on the ladder. The woman (and everyone judging her) will always look up the ladder, because there will always be a better woman higher up on the ladder. Men are judged in comparison to how objectively horrible and destructive men frequently are. So a man who simply doesn’t do the most vile crimes imaginable is considered good. But because women generally don’t do the most abjectly horrible things men do, we have to earn our goodness by complying with feminine virtues of continual, silent self sacrifice and masochism in relationships with men and children.