"We just have different parenting styles!" How men escape accountability for bad parenting

Yet another tool sexist men use to blame women for men's failings.

This is an updated post from my archives. I’ve expanded it greatly, so even if you’ve read it before, I hope you find new value in this piece!

It’s the tool everyone weaponizes against mothers who have researched extensively to be the best possible parents they can be—a weapon that instantaneously lets men off the hook, and casts blame at the feet of every mother who thinks parenting should involve more than merely reacting.

“We just have different parenting styles!”

Therapists weaponize it, too, telling mothers that they need to be on the same page with their co-parent, and suggesting that it’s somehow the mother’s responsibility to ensure this happens. At school and in extracurricular activities, educators weaponize parenting disagreements to paint mothers as hovering, anxious and incompetent, even as their foolish coparents bungle everything (in the rare event they even bother to show up).

If you’ve heard this bullshit one too many times, you’re not alone. Hundreds of readers have asked me to address this. Most of them tell me about the hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of hours they’ve spent researcher parenting, only to hear from their co-parent that this research doesn’t matter, because he has a different “opinion” (read: uninformed emotionally reactive view of parenting).

This is part of a series for paid subscribers only focusing on the weapons men use to escape accountability for their shitty, lazy, and often abusive behavior. I tackle excuses like “I’m just joking,” and “You’re never satisfied with anything!” for paid subscribers only. View the whole series here.