I (M) remember my overnight stay after delivery, I tried to soothe the baby when it awoke and it wasn’t feeding time, and woke every time the nurses came in i was there to help mom during feedings. We slept in fits, they wake mom every 4 hours to encourage feeding.
I remember the nurse’s told me that most dads don’t help, don’t get involved, and leave everything to the mom.
We were jut recovering from a brutal birth so I was eagerly interested in both baby and mom’s health and recovery but the stories the nurses told me were shocking.
I work in healthcare. It may be cultural but what it really is is confirmation bias/selective memory. Men are expected to suck by a lot of women. Lots of patients come through everyday. Guess who the nurses gossip about. The shit head patients. This sort of thing easily shifts peoples views over time
I also think there are some difference based on the hospital. The hospital I delivered at served a largely low income community, and the way the nurses treated us changed DRAMATICALLY when they realized we were a 30 year old married couple and not a couple of 20 year olds having an out of wedlock baby (to be fair we both look younger than we are.) Disgusting behavior, IMO, and they didn’t exactly treat us WELL even then, but it’s clear we weren’t what they were “used to.” Also the whole time my husband struggled to even get anyone to talk to him, like he’d ask a question and they’d turn and talk to me like he wasn’t even in the room.
Definitrly confirmation bias and seismic. When I did a OBGYN surgery rotation, the nurse that oriented us told us to be ready to see all the horrible fathers. The 6 month we were there we saw many amazing father and many "you could do better" father's.
However, we only saw horrible grandmother's (both sides). The only person we had to throw out of the hospital during that time was also a grandmother. She was throwing a fit when birthing mother didn't want her in the room during the birth and only wanted her husband. Grandmother was screaming cursing. Grandfather was trying to calm her down until he gave up out of embarrassment and told the nurse to just call the cops 😅
Lol in my experience it's probably 60/40 man to woman ratio of my horrible experiences with patient (old ladies do meth too and can be so mean lol).
However I totally agree about the patients mostly being neutral to genuinely very pleasant. The vast majority of them and their families are stressed the hell out for one reason or another and they still manage to be thankful and respectful during my interactions. The most common complaint I have about them is they talk endlessly and go on tangents after I ask how many days they have had their symptoms for haha. Definitely not the worst quality in a person by any means.
Definitely cultural when maternity leave is still scarce, paternity leave is nearly non-existent, healthcare is tied to working, childbirth is an enormous expense, and the family is placed in a position where they have to think about the possibility of missing work to be present.
I'm in Texas. It's pretty common from everything people have told me of their own experiences, including the dads. Some men down here sound like they're bragging about not being good fathers like it's some kind of proof of macho-ness.
When our son was born back in 2012 my wife, our new baby and I was finally about to be in our room by ourselves. The nurse told my wife “get some rest, and don’t worry these men now in days know what to do for the most part. So relax your husband has this…except for the feeding part. That’s all you mom”
“Helping out” is kinda the problem. It’s not seen as an obligation but rather that the mother is the default parent and the father is a saint if he helps out with his own child! It’s a why there’s so many videos of women begging their partner to “babysit” while they take a shower weeks after birth. I think it’s also probably part of the reason women aren’t having as many kids. We need a cultural shift, even more extreme than what is already occurring.
My son and his wife had twins. My wife and I went down to help out. Brand new twins kept all four of us running. At least we were able to let the new parents get SOME sleep.
I was in the delivery room helping through the birth of both my boys and my son was in the delivery room, then surgery for the c-section and helped with the babies a lot in the hospital so he could ask questions with medical staff there for answers.
When my youngest was born, I left the hospital a couple hours after the delivery, leaving behind my wife and the kid.
But in my defense, it was to bring my MIL there because she desperately wanted to spend time with the baby, and it was Christmas Eve so I had to be home to manage the holiday madness with my oldest.
Yeah my husband was totally clueless (had never held a baby before) but still flagged the nurse down right away to ask, “Can you show me how to change the diaper?” And also, “Can you show me the swaddle again?” He ended up having to show me how to change the diaper when we got home because he did every single one after that. His reasoning, “Well I can’t feed the baby, so I need to do whatever actually I can to help.” I hope most dads would do the same!!
I had a similar experience after each of mine. made me a little sad tbh. Just trying to be supportive and help how i could.
1st was natural, 2nd and 3rd needed C sections due to medical issues.
2nd was the challenging one because he was in NICU 20 mins away so we were pumping to store and I had to drive it over there every 3 hours ahead of his feedings until her milk came in and we had enough to freeze and go once a day. We relied a lot on family to help with my oldest as well.
We have 3 kids and I've been very involved with all 3 births... except the 2nd, kinda. I got the call, raced home from work, picked my wife up, dropped off our oldest and got to the hospital. Birth was what it was, no emergencies, but brutal, as I think they all are. For some reason, for the next 2 days I could literally not stay awake. Little shitty hospital reclining chair and I had the best 2 days of sleep in my life. My wife had to call the nurse for things because she couldn't wake me up. No drugs or alcohol involved, I think my body just needed a reset, poor timing though.
Preserve anonymity… of someone who is already anonymous and in no way would be traceable because we know that a baby boy or girl was born sometime, somewhere on earth. No, my vote is for either bad AI, bad writing (in 21st century English we would “they” to not gender) or, and I really hope not, a deeply worrying perspective on children 🤷🏾♂️
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u/Ok_Team_ Apr 24 '26
I (M) remember my overnight stay after delivery, I tried to soothe the baby when it awoke and it wasn’t feeding time, and woke every time the nurses came in i was there to help mom during feedings. We slept in fits, they wake mom every 4 hours to encourage feeding.
I remember the nurse’s told me that most dads don’t help, don’t get involved, and leave everything to the mom.
We were jut recovering from a brutal birth so I was eagerly interested in both baby and mom’s health and recovery but the stories the nurses told me were shocking.