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giantg2 2 hours ago

"The number of mums who say their partner is not involved really at all in their child's care is so sad."

While that can be true, I wonder how much of it is true. It's pretty common in therapy to hear partners saying the other one doesn't contribute, but further investigation can often turn up observation biases.

david-gpu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Without proper statistics we can't know. But I do wonder why is it that if you spend any time on parenting websites you find lots of mothers complaining about deadbeat husbands, and so few fathers complaining about deadbeat wives. Purely anecdotal, but it is very lopsided, and it has made me wonder why is it.

I am a dad, FWIW.

mc3301 35 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm a dad, too. The lopsidedness could come from many places: mothers being drawn to parenting websites (marketing), women feeling more compelled to voice complaints online (if they are stay-at-home-moms, they don't have coworkers to chat with), women actually getting treated unfairly (very true... patriarchy), etc.

I've heard this from many moms, "My husband does so little in terms of housework, childcare, play and mental load, that it is actually easier when he is out of the house; when he is home, I essentially have to take care of an additional child." I even know some moms that organize playdates for their husband, as in ONLY the husbands, so that that the husbands are out of the house.

On the other hand, I know of two separate marriages that fell apart because the husband worked, did all the child care and housework, while the mom stayed home and doomscrolled. After a few years of no improvement, divorce. Of course many things could be at play here... screen addiction, post-partum depression, etc.

Raising kids is complex, time-consuming, hard, and amazing. It takes a lot of energy, people, and love. I always try to assume people are doing their best, though sometimes even that's tough.

giantg2 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Being a deadbeat is defined as not paying. It's not about caregiving. These roles may not be equally distributed by gender, but then why is there not as much complaining by men about women not being equal partners financially? It's has to do with bias.

You can also find that much of the research about household duties is biased against the type of work that men have traditionally done (eg excluding yard work, maintenance, etc).

david-gpu 19 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Being a deadbeat is defined as not paying. It's not about caregiving

Merriam-Webster disagrees [0][1][2].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deadbeat

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loafer

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idler

Re. your other points, I don't entirely disagree with them, but they are at best tangential to the article we are discussing.

brewdad an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It depends on the site but when I was a SAHD, I found many of those parenting sites were not welcoming to dads, even dads doing the exact same work as the moms. Moms there wanted a place to vent about their husbands and men who were pulling their fair share or were handling most of the parent duties simply weren't allowed.

giantg2 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This, it's well known that women want to vent and men want to fix the issue. This difference in communication and perspective has been supported in various research.

mc3301 34 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

one of the better places I found found was Daddit on reddit, though I haven't been in a while.

david-gpu 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

I found that /r/daddit was full of pictures of dads with infants.

On the other hand, /r/parenting was full of moms desperate because their partners didn't to their part.

It really paints a picture, if you think about it.

geodel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If someone is saying on Facebook it must be true.