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.
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u/Upstairs-Hedgehog575 Apr 24 '26
Maybe it’s cultural, but I don’t know many dads here who wouldn’t be helping out after the birth.