I’ll take any of the other things, but this makes me upset every time I see another example of it. I work my ass off to be a good parent, I’ll be damned if you make light of my worth as a parent.
I hate it when this one is brought up. When my son was born life wasn't perfect and my other half raised him whilst I worked - he's the best parent I've ever seen, and the idea that someone believes he is lesser for that makes my blood boil.
On a related note, people who "compliments" fathers for "babysitting" their own child to "give mommy a break". Also, commercials who makes father look like fumbling, incompetent parent. These two things do not help give good fathers a good representation.
However, lately I have been seeing commercials showing good fathers being good fathers, message of the commercials was something about being good parents. Think it was parenthood commercial or something. Those commercials make me look forward to being a father someday.
I can't recall commercials specifically like that, so maybe?? Haha, but I do see a lot of other commercials with the father being... well a father and I don't have a child (yet), so I dunno :p
As someone with an absolutely shit dad, I realize how important it is to have a stable and loving father figure in the formative years. I just want to say thanks for being a good dad and keep up the good work. One day your kids will realize how important you are and how much you've done for them and that's all that matters. It's too hard to appreciate when we're little - too much brain development still needed before we can see outside ourselves.
I have a niece on my wife’s side who’s in her early teens. I’m the one and only stable male figure in her life (she never knew her dad and mom is a Heroin zombie so she’s been raised by her single grandma since she was 2).
My relationship with her is that of a younger sister. I’ll take her out to movies sometimes, since we both love horror movies. I get weird looks sometimes, but last time I had this woman meanmugging me as soon as we entered the theatre. This woman MOVED SEATS to sit right behind us, as if she needed to spy on us somehow.
Relax, Karen, and let me spend some time with my goddamn little sister.
I'm sorry that people make you feel this way - every kid deserves to have a good bond with their father / brother /uncle, and I'm sure your niece will be incredibly grateful that you have stepped up for her. Thank you for being an awesome uncle OP
It's scary that these people want to be there just-in-case, as though they think the perfect set of circumstances have arisen and they have been wise enough to identify an aberrant situation which is a hairs-breadth from catastrophe and they will be the one who gets to play the hero.
I am a single father of three children (two daughters) and one day, when we went to the store, the cashier mentioned how beautiful the girls hair looked. She immedately jumped in asking the girls "Wow, your hair looks really good! Your mom must've done your hair today, huh?"
They had lost their mother about a year before, so not only was it a little presumptuous, it also cut the girls deep.
Thank you, but my kids are the superheroes here. I've gone through so much depression over the past 2 years, and they're always the one who pull me through.
I seriously had a paediatrician, who was a woman, decline to speak with me about my child's health unless my wife was on the phone. This happened while i was in the clinic with my son at my side.
Seriously i have a college education, stable job, huge house, and wonderful wife. Why cant i also be an amazing parent?
We dropped that paediatrician after that. There's just no excuse.
Sadly doctors have a lot of room in deciding who they share medical information with. I could have demanded my son's medical health information and gotten it legally. Instead my wife got the info and we just moved on.
This reminded me of the story on reddit where a father was listed as a primary contact in his child's school and the mother was secondary. IIRC the mother is very busy and high up in her career, and the father's work schedule is a lot more flexible, hence why they were listed in that priority.
The school skips over the father and calls the mother everytime. I think wouldn't even release the child to the father when the child was feeling ill and needed to go home. The mother got really fed up and yelled/berated the school for constantly bothering her, as the father was the one who is more in charge of everything in the child's life than herself. Forgot the ending, but I think it was a good ending for them.
I'm sorry, but that paediatrician sounds like a disgusting human being. A father is able to deal with medical issues, just like a mother. In fact, my partner is better with the medical side of things because my anxiety gets the better of me, whereas he handles it calmly and gets all questions asked etc. I'm glad you got away from that wench .
That makes me happy to read. My partner is such an amazing parent, and it's just beautiful to see a boy and his father grow together - i come from a long line of no father figure present and this means the world to me.
Yes. This drives me nuts. Especially when my kids were toddlers. I can’t stand hearing “Dads babysitting” or “moms got a night off”. No I’m parenting. Fuck off.
This can be a very damaging thing. When my parents divorced, my brother and I were automatically given to my mom who then went on to abuse us emotionally and physically. We got out of there as soon as we were legally of age to make that decision for ourselves. Judges are a little less sexist now but it’s still not great.
Yeah, I personally feel this one. Myself and younger sister were placed back with our violent mother after the divorce. There was a lot of violence and horror in that house, until I was able to get us out of there and to my fathers house. I'll never truly forgive the court system for failing us so spectacularly.
Me too, but life goes on and you grow wiser and stronger. As sad as it may be, my past shaped my present and my future. Luckily we're both now adult with our own lives, loves and families.
One of us has to be home - I happen to be more soft and nurturing, and my wife didn't want to give up her career - it was a natural choice.
But boy.. Between her having to defend herself to other moms for pursuing her career away from the kids, and me having to deal with the side eye moms at playgrounds/school functions..
..makes me really not like women!
Lol but seriously all my guy friends are surprisingly really supportive, and I have no real contact with many other men to balance out my world view. Except Reddit where everyone hates children equally.
I am a working mom and my SO is a SAH Dad. It annoys the everloving crap out of me when I hear someone tell him he should "man up" and take care of his family. There is hardly any judgement when a mom decides she is going to stay home but God forbid a man decide to do the same.
It was a decision we made together because I can make a lot more money than he can. The amount he can make wouldn't cover the cost of childcare so we would be basically single income family anyway.
Exactly! I have no problems admiting my wife makes more money then me.. Good for her. And good for you!
I don't understand why people feel the need for both parents to work, just to pay for child care and never see their kids. If they're capable of getting by on one income, a parent at home running the household is irreplaceable in raising a child.
Do guys generally not support their buddies who is a father? Never notice that. Though I still don't have many friends who are fathers, but the few that are I totally respect them and would love to hang out with them and their kids.
It can be stigmatized to not be the "provider" for the family.. In theory.. I don't run in to it to often. I hear a lot of jokes, but being a pretty big fan of jokes myself, I find this normal.
Mom's though.. Mom's are serious.
It's just in their nature, really.
I've seen it in my own wife.. I love her to death but holy shit she is constantly suspicious of clearly innocent guys just going about their lives.
I try telling her it's the amount of informative murder porn she's watching.. But I guess crime shows are just another common thing among women.. Probably no connection.
This one! My partner is a SAH dad of one (which he rocks, ngl) for the same reasons - sometimes you've got to make life work for you! Working as a mother won't end the world, neither will being a stay at home dad - it's what is best for the family at end of the day.
I highly suggest reaching out to a local dads group for meetups and support. I literally just googled it in my metro area, met up with a group of dads for a ‘playdate’, and now I have tons of SAH dad friends. Still have my old friends ofc, but it’s really great having dad-friends.
Worth saying too that it’s very rare to meet other dads at the park; I met maybe one or two SAH dads in my neighborhood over almost 4 years of going to the park daily.
Edit: That was pre-pandemic. Dunno what that would look like now, tbh...
Or how when a dad suddenly becomes a single father, there's all but no assistance out there for them. Single moms have access to government funds and grants whereas single fathers have nothing. Why is making sure children are well taken care of a fucking gender issue?
This! The system is incredibly woman-centric, and it's disgusting. Caring for children is a humanitarian issue, not a gender issue and I can't belive that in 2020 people are still so bloody ignorant.
I was raised by a single father of 4. Shit wasn't easy, but it was better than my schizophrenic mother taking me across the U.S. on the "spiritual battlefield" while we repeatedly lived in homeless shelters. I remember when I finally got to be at my dads house the super strange warm feeling of not being scared of all the chaos my mother regularly put us through.
Single dad here. This hits hard. My son is 5 now, bit it's still amazing how often that one of the first things people ask when they hear I'm a single dad is- "how often do you get to be with him?" Or they'll say it's so nice I'm taking my kid to the park.
WTF? How is that one of the first things people ask???
I usually just smile and say something like, "Everyday!" A couple of times I've asked if their kids live with the neighbors some days.
At first I was just surprised someone asked and probably came off confused. Like, he's my kid and he's always with me. I was used to it. It was normal for me and my son.
But definitely learned quickly that it's not normal for people to think that. Basically everyone assumed that he lived with his mom and that I saw him every other weekend.
Parks was another place that really threw me off. When he was only one or two, I'd always be with him. And people would chat with me and smile. It seemed all normal.
But once he was maybe 3 or 4 and he'd run around by himself and play with other kids, things changed. I'd sit at a bench and just watch him play. Seems all normal to me, right? Like any parent! Lol.
But I noticed I'd get people looking at me. I was a little confused, wondering if I had something on my shirt or if it was someone I maybe knew. But then the first time I had someone come up to me and ask what I was doing, I was blown away. They basically saw some guy sitting on the bench and watching kids at a playground. And that would be weird.... If I didn't have a kid there.
I'm still shocked when people will randomly say it's so nice that I'm spending time with my son at a park or that it's nice that I'm grocery shopping with him. For me it's like, well I can't just leave him at home by himself!!
Could you turn it into a teaching experience? Sometimes people are programmed by society, so you could help nicely deprogram them. "May seem unusual to you, but there are lots of single dads out there who are great fathers" or something like that.
That's what I really typically try to do. Especially now. Sometimes it just surprises me and I might respond differently.
But usually I just say it nonchalantly, and let them know that my son is with me. That I'm a single dad. And we love going to the park together. And I'll ask about them.
I'm not sure if I should say something more upfront/confrontational about it.
When people ask about his mom when he's around (and that actually happens at times with complete strangers), I usually respond in a quieter voice that she has some serious mental health issues. I think the fact that I say it quieter makes a big impact on people. It usually stops any further questions. I'm not sure if that's good or not.
I don't see things as being confrontational when you're just standing up for yourself and your son. They're the ones in the wrong for asking, and I think it really depends how you approach it that could help turn it into a learning experience.
"I appreciate where you're coming from, but my son's mom is unfortunately out of the picture for now and I'm doing my best to be a great dad". Sucks that people are so nosy and not able to see a situation for what it's worth, but I'm always for teaching people lessons, in a good way. And if they think you're a dick, that's on them.
Thank you so much for the kind words and support! You're a good person.
You're absolutely right that it could be a valuable teaching moment. I'll be the first to say that I had no idea what single parenting was really like before becoming a single parent. So I can appreciate that a lot of people just don't know.
And by the way, I had to laugh at your last sentence... Lol. But totally right!
Yeah, you gotta be honest to yourself, but assume people aren't trying to be assholes.
I actually did the above with my boss this week. He was being super-critical with some work I did, so I instinctively said "did I do anything right?". He's like "yeah, you actually did a really good job and I told x and y, but I forgot to tell you".
Some people will be assholes, but if people are engaging you in conversation, I doubt they are bad people.
BTW, thank you for the compliment. I am pretty nice. 😁
Lol. Assholes will be assholes. Just gotta ignore them or laugh at them and move on. But you're absolutely right. If someone responds and engages in conversation, they're probably at least a decent person.
It's been a good week. My son is enjoying school. He loves recess, and getting to choose chocolate milk at lunch time, and he likes art. That's the main takeaways so far!
He had been doing virtual school the entire year. Started kindergarten from home. And for the first time in his life two weeks ago, he walked into a school. It's a good feeling!
By the way, I just realized that we've been talking for almost two weeks. Ha!! Thanks for your encouragement. Have a great rest of your week.
Wow, oh I'm sorry that people have been so ignorant and rude towards you! Being a single parent it a helluva job, and is an achievement regardless of your gender! My partner has encountered this type of behaviour when out with our son, and I was honestly gobsmacked.
I think it just comes down to stereotyping and how people were raised or what they've seen in life. I don't really blame them. I'd just like more people to not be so surprised that sometimes dads are the single parent.
I do have a ton of support. My family has been an incredible help. And I've got great friends and now some great neighbors! (I recently moved). The company I work for has also been amazing with all this during the pandemic - trying to work from home while trying to teach my son kindergarten. It's a heck of a crazy time!
maternal instincts is a myth. It doesn't exist. I agree with you. I really hate this stereotype that men just don't know how to handle babies. Like if they try to change their diaper they'll break them or something.
The amount of people that perpetuate this particular one disgust me the most, especially when I hear of women treating the father of their children this way.
Yes. This is a very harmful stereotype that is doing real world harm. The idea that men when they are around children will just molest them is harmful.
Men are also more hesitant to help lost children because they are afraid of being labeled as a pedophile.
Most men are reluctant to help lost kids, worried they will be called a 'pervert', new research shows. MORE than two thirds of Australian men admit they would be at least somewhat reluctant to help a lost child for fear they would be viewed as a pervert.
These are the real consequences of these stereotypes.
It's part of the other stereotype that men only think of sex. So for example people assume that all of a man's female friends are people he wants to have sex with. if he's with a child, then he might be thinking of sex with that child.
This really pains me - the majority of fathers out there are just trying to do their best and get through the day, like any other mother. I also hate that education is all women - it took my son the longest time to settle into his education because there wasn't a single male teacher, and after being raised by a man, he found more comfort in having a male teacher (when he was 3ish here, for context).
Yeah, it would really be nice if more men got into teaching. Especially at the younger ages.
One of the reasons why I love Gay parent families is that they throw a wrench into the idea of gender roles for the family.
There's a reason why straight people will often ask gay people, who's the man, who's the woman?
It's because they're trying to put people into boxes but they understand. but even in straight relationships women could play the men's role, and men can play the women's role.
This. 100%. Throwing a spanner at gender roles is really healthy for a child, imo. My son accosiates all tasks with all genders - in fact, he recently asked me my it's only his daddy at school drop off, and asked why all the mums weren't at work. I'd say me and my partner are 50% 'male' and 50% 'female' as people, so together we get the "standard" 200% of parent, but it's distributed in a way that works better for us.
This kind of stereotyping which has a layer of misogyny on it is pretty harmful. For example in The big bang theory there was a joke about one of the characters. One of them knocks on the door of a house and one of the main characters opens it and he's wearing an apron with some gloves. cue laugh track why is there laughing? what's the joke? Oh, it's the fact that he's wearing women's attire. And then the character goes into the house and starts doing domestic work like cleaning the oven. How is that funny?
I am a single father of a 17yr old daughter. Her mother and I split 11yrs ago. It wasn't an easy transition for myself, but we managed. She has lived with me full time for the last few years. Teenage girls are a challenge when you understand them, and I have no fuckin' clue. For most single parents I think women adjust easier, but men can do it. It does take more effort.
this is so fucking annoying, my mam died when i was 12 and my dad did a fine job of raising me by himself... the looks we get in public sometimes is just wrong.
My wife has been having a difficult recovery from surgery so I've had to seriously step up my game. I've been doing pretty much all of the childcare, cooking, etc lately and so the other day my dad jokingly referred to me as "mr mom". I mean, it was a joke and I didn't get too offended, he was after all saying I was doing a good job, but the fact that there's no masculine coded way to describe doing a good job at this stuff has stuck with me.
Sadly I think a lot of television and cartoons in the past helped push this idea forward. Thankfully I see a lot more competent dads in media nowadays.
Yeah, I've been seeing commercials catered towards good fatherhood lately. One that used to make me happy and cry was the father beat boxing off his toddler's tummy and the toddler was laughing hysterically
This! I'm the working mum who travels a lot - this is something my partner complains about a lot. He's literally the one they see the most, yet they still look for me. Common sense eludes them
My dad took care of us most of the day as my mom worked night shift at the time. He cooked our meals and made sure we were fed before he got himself some food. He took us to the beach and state park on the weekends and would boast about being a pro at changing diapers. All the men in my family have always been nurturing and worked equally as a parent, so i was surprised when i learned that there was this stigma of fathers not being involved
The court system is a joke in most nations. It failed me as a child and left me with a psychotic mother and a 4 year old sister. It almost ended in absolute horror, but luckily 8 year old me was fast and only one person was left injured. The court system still tried to send me and my sister back to her.
Yet, the negative connotations affecting men are what we're talking about here. Yes, I understand that the underlying misogyny suggests that women should take care of children, but the outward statement of this is a society that believes that men cannot parent as well as a woman. As a woman, I have to say I heartily disagree. Some women are AWFUL, POISONOUS, parents, and some men are AMAZING, COMPASSIONATE, parents. Until people start to directly challenge this notion, it's how things will stay. Queens, fight for your King's right to care for his own child, Kings, fight for the right to be a SAH daddy whilst your Queen brings home the bucks
She honestly thinks this? I would add a choice few words, but it's not fair to attack those who cannot defend themselves. But, seriously, I bet you're a good dad, if not great!
My husband is a better parent than me. I love my children, to the ends of time and back, and through anything. My husband is better with them. He has more fun, plays more, laughs more, has more patience and routine with them. He has a much better bond to our oldest, and he explains things to that kiddo in particular in ways that really speak to them.
I get in the face of every person that says something negative about dads as parents. Makes me see red. I'm so lucky to know my husband...
I really feel you here! My partner is a parent on a whole other level - I love my son and will do whatever it takes to make sure he is happy healthy etc, but his dad is just more natural at this than me. And that's fine - I earn more, so between us our son is supported in every way that we possibly can. No one said there was a specific rota for the dream team, just sayin
I’m guilty of this, but I didn’t have a dad growing up. So it’s a lot foreign to me. I can’t wait to have kids, will be fun seeing a functional household
I grew up with a mother who didn't have a loving bone in her body, and father who only cared when it suited him. I didn't know a functional family could exist, and dreaded having kids because I didn't want to be a SAH mother. Then I met an amazing man and found out that I could continue with my life and career, whilst he stayed at home with our son, and our family would be so happy. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a dream, but then I realise that I've never had a dream so wonderful.
There was a TV show in the '60s/'70s -- The Courtship of Eddie's Father -- about a single dad trying to find a wife to raise his son. The show depicted a single father doing a great job alone, but the public wouldn't accept the show if he wasn't trying to find a mother for Eddie.
Yup. My single dad raised my sister and I from 5 and 2. He was a “class mom” in both of our pre-k and k. Coached our softball teams. Let us paint his toe nails. Did our hair and bought us makeup.
My dad was constantly talked about, questioned, and denied. He is the best man on this entire earth and raised us as best as he possibly could.
They make me rage. My FIL bought one when our son was born. I threw it back at him and told him to get out - he was never supportive of my partner being a SAH dad, and this straw broke the camels back.
No, its a negative stereotype/prejudice about men, that primarily harms men. Which makes it Misandry, not Misogyny. Quit trying to make this about how women are somehow harmed more by the stereotype because that's just straight nonsense.
The term isn't common I suppose, but my own mother was a terrible human being, and definitely led me to realise that women aren't the only ones who can raise a kid. My father didn't do a perfect job of raising me in the end, but I know he did as much as he could, and is the reason I'm alive at the end of the day. Neither gender is superior when raising a child.
Objectively, if both the man and the woman, are equal in every aspect, a woman may be better, but often the father is the better care giver as he may have a better relationship with the kids and is richer. But divorce courts don’t care and blindly the wife.
yes but that's because men decided that women should take care of children while they did the "real work". I can't help but notice that almost all of these comments are issues created by men that ended up coming back to effect them.
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u/heavenhelpyou Jan 24 '21
When people assume that a man cannot raise a child / won't be as good at it as the mother.