As a guy who was never married, has no kids, works from home, and does all the cooking and cleaning while my girlfriend on her days off sleeps and scrolls reddit endlessly on the couch, I'm fairly tired of being underappreciated as well. Marriage and kids aren't the only form of emotional responsibility. But I think that everyone's free to make their own decisions, and I'm pretty sure we make a positive decision to stay together every day or else we don't.
Is some of that a "take it or leave it" attitude? Yes, but both people have that in every relationship, or else they should.
I think if you're in a relationship that's primarily defined by what you don't want to do, you should get out of it as quickly as possible.
If this resentment has persisted for a long time and communication hasn’t improved the situation why stay in the relationship? It seems like your advise applies to you as well as GP.
Sure, I mean, I'm only writing to say that we all have stuff we do for people and it's not always picture perfect, it's a balance. In my situation, she's also my best friend, the sex is great, and we like going to a lot of concerts.
If I ever find myself writing extended essays about why I'd love to have a wife like me, and I truly hated making her breakfast, I would bail.
Here’s a thesis: the feminism of the 70s was a reaction specifically to the trends of the 60s. You can see this here in 2 places: the double standard and easy acceptance of male infidelity; and attitudes to divorce.
The trope of society praising male promiscuity is largely an invention of the 20th century.
Biblical and Hebrew texts all encourage punishment of both man and woman in instances of adultery.
As a man I don’t like promiscuous men because they’re competition. I don’t want to introduce my female friends to them because they’re not relationship material, and I don’t find them trustworthy as a wingman. Call it jealousy, but I think the same dynamic applies to the other gender.
that double standard exists for a rather obvious reason -- male infidelity biologically cannot result into their cuckolded partner unwittingly raising someone else's child, while female infidelity often results into that to this very day. the state will, in fact, force the victim to provide for the child if he doesn't immediately realize the child isn't his.
The essay there weaponizes sarcasm + the emotional experience of that reality to hit the reader over the head with, in an attempt to break their script and force them to a change in perspective.
This - evidently - worked and works, but there are trade-offs to it.
Specifically, it is zero-sum, which eventually led to the gender war we have now.
Since the defenses have been (for the most part) broken down, a modern pivot would likely move towards more unification again, I guess.
The social mechanics to decouple woman permanently from reproduction are already in the making. Incubators and AI educators and people can have children with a company, the rest of the social problems (the social network harem effect) then go out the window. If you need to be a millionaire to have a conventional family, tradition is out, corporate cloning is in. The working alternative to religious fundamentalism.
This comment was dead on arrival, but I've vouched for it, because I believe it's interesting.
I do not believe the conspiracy part, but I do also believe that this decoupling will happen eventually.
It seems like the logical conclusion of the trajectory we're on. Leaving biological reality behind in the pursuit of individualism.
It might be a good thing, but we might also find that we were not ready for the total freedom from said biological reality.
But that is to be said about a lot of things, SV is pushing towards.
But maybe we will also see stuff crashing down in the near-ish future, and then, pondering about the "end of biological reality" will seem like unreal hallucinations.
___
Hmm.
The LLM I've been feeding this comment section pointed me at the Universe 25 Experiment. I've never heard of that before.
While I support equality between biological sexes this had some ill effects.
Giving birth is a woman job. Breastfeeding is a woman's job. Replacing breast milk with something else might be one of the causes of allergies and other ill effects (I'm guessing).
To me it looks like women want to be compensated for the unpaid work of birthing children and taking care of them during their upbringing.
No one fucking likes unpaid work. It's not right.
For me this if the current feminism and I do support it.
The fact that everything in life is compared to monetary value is the problem. There abstraction of paternalism to the state is another. For the state you are a number for your family and friends you have a name
There is an element of this essay that seems a bit short on the whole rights-and-responsibilities concept that should be highlighted.
On the one hand, she's right that most people would want a wife and she gives a reasonable overview of why. That is why men generally want wives. The wives bring a lot to the table.
If you do the same exercise for husbands, generally most people would also want husbands. The men also bring a lot to the table. Relationships happen when everyone benefits.
Now if she's coming at this from a place of mutual joy and satisfaction then this essay is a pretty good summary of what men are probably looking for in a wife. But I see "instant classic ... [in a] feminist magazine" get the impression that it is probably being interpreted as wives shouldn't have to bring all the things men want to a relationship.
Yeah sure. I can agree with that. They shouldn't have to. Indeed, they don't. As we've discovered in the 1970s-2025 window they can renegotiate the social contract to a large extent. But I'm not really on board with what contribution the essay is supposed to have had beyond highlighting things what men like in women.
As a single guy living by myself and have no intention of getting married or having kids, the day to day tasks are much simpler. Also it becomes more simple if you have money to afford help like having someone once a week clean up the whole apartment.
So it seems like what you want is not a wife, but money
In a similar vein to this essay, I want to be a father so badly. I love being a woman, and am satisfied with the machinery I have been given.
But having to be the incubator means I am saddle with the full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born. I go from woman to mother. And with it comes judgement and duties, and goes freedom and care-free living.
I want to be a father so I can raise a kid, provide, teach and impart to a little slice of my own genes. And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.
But alas I was born with a womb, a sexual attraction to men, and the drive for a high-impact career. The three seem incompatible.
I just love how you assume being a father is easy. Grass is always greener and what not.
Being a father comes with its own responsibilities and subjection to judgment by the community. The phrase "deadbeat dad" is in the common vernacular, but you rarely hear about "deadbeat moms" (trust me, they exist).
> full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born
This is simply not true. If this were true, child support laws and requirements would not exist.
You actually don't have full responsibility once the child is born. Even then, you can give the child up for adoption.
You do have something that men don't have, which is full control over whether a birth happens in the first place. Men don't have this.
Deadbeat mums definitely exist. I was married to one. A woman who wanted to be a traditional housewife and flat out refused to work gradually did less and less and eventually we divorced leaving me a single dad.
I think a broader problem is that women assume that as men do not have the problems women do, we are better off and lack the empathy to realise men have different problems. Its pretty evident in things such as the higher suicide rate for young men in many countries.
I'm a father, have had sole custody of my five children for 8 nearly 9 years.
Both parents have the same responsibility to their kids, to do the absolute best for them, and we should fight back against outdated cultural norms that assume that mothers are the default parent, and that fathers "babysit" their own children.
> we should fight back against outdated cultural norms that assume that mothers are the default parent
Its changing very slowly. Its very deeply ingrained which is self-reinforcing (schools phoning the mother when a child is sick is an example that came up in a previous discussion). Its assumed by the law in many countries (virtually no paternity leave here in the UK, for example).
This can be resolved by choosing a better man as a partner, one that is supportive and willing to be an equal partner. I understand finding someone that fulfills that as well as this person also being someone you're attracted to and compatible with socially is challenging, but I have seen relationships like this before so I know it's possible.
This cannot be resolved, you will not be an equal parent or even close to it the first few months, maybe even over a year. Breast feeding and various dependencies that develop (like that the kid wants to fall asleep at the breast) mean that most of the effort of parenting early falls on the mother.
And then there's the fact of life that other stuff needs to be taken care of. Trash still needs to be taken out, groceries bought, etc further pushing you towards the stuff outside of parenting.
This can hardly be resolved with money. We could hire nannies, get the top nursery, whatever. It would even be cost-efficient if it let mom work. However, the kid doesn't want to be without his mom and much more so she doesn't want to be away from him for a longer time! Even with me 4-6 hours is about it.
That is true for a few months. You have children for rather longer than that. Even with breast feeding you can express the milk. I did that. I used to work from home with my younger daughter asleep in a sling.
Your child might want the mother, but this is no true of every child. Different kids in the same family can be different in this way too.
Very few men lactate, that is absolutely true. However, in our family it is the mother who has the drive and career ambitions, which is why the child has fallen asleep on the father instead, including when said child was but a few months old and the mother had a six-week business trip abroad.
I am sure children benefit from having several parents and role models, but I am not so sure that the shape of the genitals matter as much as whether the parent(s) is/are emotionally in tune with the child. The classical father of yore was simply not much of a parent. Today's can choose either.
I'm a house-husband to a wife with a womb who birthed our daughter. She's a software dev at a major software company. I did most of the diapers (little one is soon 7 and out of them for a while now), I do all the cooking. We had daycare partially to give breaks, but also so the little one would get good social exposure at a young age. I sadly can't drive due to a mix of anxiety and sedating medication for other health stuff, so she does before-school appointments most of the time (so she can go to the office after without me having to bus home), but for the most part I come along with appointments and I'm the one to go along on school trips and do the before and after school bus times. I do almost all the away playdates, with playdates at home being a joint endeavor.
Her carefree living has gone, but she can still go to work parties while I stay home and look after our daughter. She's never told me she experienced any overt judgement about being the sole breadwinner (there was a male manager who asked her after mat leave how her vacation was. I wonder how much he was involved in the early years of raising his kids‽). I will admit I do get more praise than I should be for doing my role, but really that praise is pretty empty, the bar is so low for men. The praise I do get mainly comes from women older than us. I've only once gotten a "Mr. Mom" comment and that was from an older American acquaintance.
She took about 4 months off if I recall correctly for mat leave after our daughter was born. She was going crazy at home.
She has some limitations for sure, she feels like she's as far as she'll get at least while our daughter is young, in terms of the promo-game. But she and the company are content with where she's at, though she is a bit envious at times about how some of her colleagues have been promoted to higher levels despite starting at the same time or after her.
She's very involved and a great mom.
I hope that didn't come off as a brag (I'm terrible at keeping the place clean and tidy, we hire help for that), my point is that you probably can have a high-impact career, be sexually attracted to men, and have a womb, and have a child. The freedom and care-free living will go regardless of one's gender, that's just part of being a good parent. There are plenty of men out there up for a majority parenting role.
For some context I'm around 40, and in my age group there's a lot more involved fathers (we see lone fathers with children at the park all the time, including with solely presenting-female children) and working mothers than when I was a child. Living in a major city in Ontario, Canada.
This belittles men, especially those who are single fathers and have similar career struggles as single mothers. Our perceptions create our reality and if we constantly think we've been given the short end of the stick then we'll look for evidence around us to prove this perception. There's a whole other side to motherhood that comes with fulfillment, meaning, and growth.
Does it, or is is a complaint about the patriarchy? I don't see any part of the OP comment that seems misandrist or reducing the role that engaged fathers play.
The assumption that being a father is easy denies the lived experience of fathers. How would she know whether being a father is easy or not? She's never been one.
She would know that in her society there are different sets of expectations about fathers than mothers, and that seems to be what she's aiming at? Are you sure you're not over-reading into what she actually wrote?
I think what you seek is a great companion to truly share the responsibilities with.
I am a father of two wonderful kids. I do more drop offs than my wife, I changed just as many diapers / handled sick care, I handle more of the nighttime routines and give each kid a 10 minute back rub every night while my wife lays in bed (9 years and counting for my eldest) and cook more than my wife. She does clean more than me, folds more laundry, prepare their lunches, organizes their after care and play dates and babysitters more. She also worked harder when the kids were 0-6 months than I did for sure.
I begrudge her for none of what I do “more”. It’s hard work but I love being with my kids and my wife works her tail off running her business. We have a great balance and I feel lucky. And yet life isn’t perfect and, it being hard work, it’s easy to point fingers instead of focusing on gratitude and real world trade offs (two things the paper and feminism generally lack).
I think it comes down to ambitions. Do you have ambitions to be financially successful, to have a wonderful career or marriage or to be a great parent? Although feminists are loathe to talk of hierarchies for obvious reasons, they nevertheless have their use. So let me hierarchize: I truly have greater ambitions around being a parent than anything else. We also happen to be financially successful (more so because of my wife) but she has greater ambitions around that than I do.
So anyway, I think we are the counter example to your last statement and show that it can be compatible. And many of my friends are similar.
My wife has some severe challenges (hormonal and otherwise), so I have changed almost all diapers, and work part time/nights as a software developer purely for the fact that I need to be available to take our child regularly throughout the day, at one point I was full time childcare and job. My wife has a free pass to go on day trips and climbing excursions for her mental health. I guess the point is, to find someone who genuinely wants to help and participate, and find something that works for you. It's such a huge part of life, it's important to get the balance right. That's a difficult thing to do, but knowing what someone's core beliefs about family, responsibility, and expectations is important.
I don't know why you couldn't be a great father. In the sense you're talking about. I know it would come with the physical baggage (or not, if you adopt?)
A friend I love dearly is raising a 3 year old little girl... she never expected to get pregnant at 42... and she is as much a father as a mother. She lets the girl play in mud puddles while other parents stare, and collect bugs, and go look at art in museums. Absolutely unconcerned with how the world thinks a mom with a 3 year old should behave.
[edit] it did slow my friend's career over the past few years, but, didn't kill it. And she's back to it now. But more importantly... I've never seen anyone love anything as much, even when she says she's frustrated out of her mind. And me, not having kids, I'm a little jealous of that feeling.
[edit2] I'm an uncle, so maybe that's more my speed ... just jumping in for the easy fun parts and teaching the kids new things and being the visiting fireman. But that's not what being a father is, at least as far as my brother's day to day driving them to and from school and taking care of them.
My brother is the fun uncle of my daughter. Know the fun uncle is always appreciated. You should visit them soon :) And tell my brother to get back here for his overdue visit.
What an interesting comment. Do you feel that the aspects of fatherhood that you are most jealous of are relatively lower expectations of time commitment directly watching after the kid and encouragement of professional success?
And if it’s not too prying to ask what are your ideal expectations for your partner? How important is their career? What is their ideal role in childrearing?
> ... And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.
I may be calling names now, but maybe this is an unnecessary "oldschool" meme that should already be forgotten. In my country (Estonia), I don't see dads actually being praised for every small childcare chore they courageously complete. Nobody does that, really. It's more like a meme that e.g. feminists love to bring about and keep alive in Facebook or elsewehere, thus showing an ongoing conflict between men and women (or -- being a man vs being a woman, with women actually as the superior sex or side). Let it fade away finally, for god's sake, and let dads quietly do their thing.
Source: first-hand experience as a primary caregiver for our children for several years, while the mom was working full time. It was not really an optimal scenario in terms of sharing economical responsibility within a family (it did raise conflicts at times), but I liked "doing stuff" with both children, and never expected any direct admiration from society, etc. Luckily, I also didn't get almost any of this. :) I just did my thing as a dad, got children to kindergarten and then back home, etc, and those were some beautiful times in this sense.
I'm in Hong Kong, fathers do get praised for childcare chores but it also comes with a downside. Despite being very active in my school PTA, being one of the only fathers being a "Class Parent", and spending a lot more time at my son's school, whenever my son is hurt the reflex they have is to always call the mother.
They praise dads for being involved because they don't see it as normal and as they don't see it as normal, they always think that the mother is somehow the person to contact in emergencies. I'd much rather not be praised for every little thing and for people here to trust in a father's competence.
Great example, thanks for sharing! We seem to have that same reflex (always calling moms in case of emergency) in our country. I guess it just takes time, probably a few decades, for societies to really start trusting dads as caregivers equally to moms. By trust in this regard I mean "pay no attention whatsoever to the sex of the caregiver because it doesn't matter".
You can hire a nanny. I know there's stigma there, too, but I know some "career women" who do this and it works fine. If you're that motivated (and your interests are lucrative enough), you can pull it off.
I'd like to have my cake and eat it too. It's your choice whether you want to spend your life being envious about cherry-picked parts of other people's lives, or whether you learn to appreciate and enjoy the things you do have. This cherry picking is the exact poison that social media delivers, making people depressed the world over. I guess men and women have always felt it about each other. The big difference is that men cannot have what women have, but women can have at least some of what men have.
None of that stuff really seems that difficult or time consuming. I think the danger of being in the position of a stay-at-home mom is that your partner can abandon you at any time and leave you with the full burden and no financial support.
I think the problem really stems from a lack of suitable men rather than the role itself
As a guy who was never married, has no kids, works from home, and does all the cooking and cleaning while my girlfriend on her days off sleeps and scrolls reddit endlessly on the couch, I'm fairly tired of being underappreciated as well. Marriage and kids aren't the only form of emotional responsibility. But I think that everyone's free to make their own decisions, and I'm pretty sure we make a positive decision to stay together every day or else we don't.
Is some of that a "take it or leave it" attitude? Yes, but both people have that in every relationship, or else they should.
I think if you're in a relationship that's primarily defined by what you don't want to do, you should get out of it as quickly as possible.
If this resentment has persisted for a long time and communication hasn’t improved the situation why stay in the relationship? It seems like your advise applies to you as well as GP.
Sure, I mean, I'm only writing to say that we all have stuff we do for people and it's not always picture perfect, it's a balance. In my situation, she's also my best friend, the sex is great, and we like going to a lot of concerts.
If I ever find myself writing extended essays about why I'd love to have a wife like me, and I truly hated making her breakfast, I would bail.
Here’s a thesis: the feminism of the 70s was a reaction specifically to the trends of the 60s. You can see this here in 2 places: the double standard and easy acceptance of male infidelity; and attitudes to divorce.
The trope of society praising male promiscuity is largely an invention of the 20th century.
Biblical and Hebrew texts all encourage punishment of both man and woman in instances of adultery.
As a man I don’t like promiscuous men because they’re competition. I don’t want to introduce my female friends to them because they’re not relationship material, and I don’t find them trustworthy as a wingman. Call it jealousy, but I think the same dynamic applies to the other gender.
How many concubines did Solomon have?
that double standard exists for a rather obvious reason -- male infidelity biologically cannot result into their cuckolded partner unwittingly raising someone else's child, while female infidelity often results into that to this very day. the state will, in fact, force the victim to provide for the child if he doesn't immediately realize the child isn't his.
I feel like this confrontational approach to the problem has achieved basically all it can achieve over the last 55 years.
We're heavy in the diminishing returns here - if it hasn't even inverted already.
New tools and approaches will have to be found to further push these goals.
What kind of confrontational approach do you mean?
The essay there weaponizes sarcasm + the emotional experience of that reality to hit the reader over the head with, in an attempt to break their script and force them to a change in perspective.
This - evidently - worked and works, but there are trade-offs to it.
Specifically, it is zero-sum, which eventually led to the gender war we have now. Since the defenses have been (for the most part) broken down, a modern pivot would likely move towards more unification again, I guess.
The social mechanics to decouple woman permanently from reproduction are already in the making. Incubators and AI educators and people can have children with a company, the rest of the social problems (the social network harem effect) then go out the window. If you need to be a millionaire to have a conventional family, tradition is out, corporate cloning is in. The working alternative to religious fundamentalism.
This comment was dead on arrival, but I've vouched for it, because I believe it's interesting.
I do not believe the conspiracy part, but I do also believe that this decoupling will happen eventually. It seems like the logical conclusion of the trajectory we're on. Leaving biological reality behind in the pursuit of individualism.
It might be a good thing, but we might also find that we were not ready for the total freedom from said biological reality. But that is to be said about a lot of things, SV is pushing towards.
But maybe we will also see stuff crashing down in the near-ish future, and then, pondering about the "end of biological reality" will seem like unreal hallucinations.
___
Hmm. The LLM I've been feeding this comment section pointed me at the Universe 25 Experiment. I've never heard of that before.
While I support equality between biological sexes this had some ill effects.
Giving birth is a woman job. Breastfeeding is a woman's job. Replacing breast milk with something else might be one of the causes of allergies and other ill effects (I'm guessing).
To me it looks like women want to be compensated for the unpaid work of birthing children and taking care of them during their upbringing. No one fucking likes unpaid work. It's not right.
For me this if the current feminism and I do support it.
Isn’t being a stay at home wife being compensated to do that work?
Your bills and mortgage are paid for, so is the food. You get to spend time with the kids. Sounds way less stressful than a high stakes job.
> (I'm guessing)
Please don't do this. It's not helpful.
The fact that everything in life is compared to monetary value is the problem. There abstraction of paternalism to the state is another. For the state you are a number for your family and friends you have a name
I keep reading about what women did in the 70s as housewives and compare it to what they can do today.
The current generation of women falls so wildly short pieces like this read more like science fiction than any fiction of the period.
I'd happily pay mid six figures to someone who can provide the whole housewife package.
There is an element of this essay that seems a bit short on the whole rights-and-responsibilities concept that should be highlighted.
On the one hand, she's right that most people would want a wife and she gives a reasonable overview of why. That is why men generally want wives. The wives bring a lot to the table.
If you do the same exercise for husbands, generally most people would also want husbands. The men also bring a lot to the table. Relationships happen when everyone benefits.
Now if she's coming at this from a place of mutual joy and satisfaction then this essay is a pretty good summary of what men are probably looking for in a wife. But I see "instant classic ... [in a] feminist magazine" get the impression that it is probably being interpreted as wives shouldn't have to bring all the things men want to a relationship.
Yeah sure. I can agree with that. They shouldn't have to. Indeed, they don't. As we've discovered in the 1970s-2025 window they can renegotiate the social contract to a large extent. But I'm not really on board with what contribution the essay is supposed to have had beyond highlighting things what men like in women.
> most people would want a wife
Are you sure about that? Maybe that was true in 1970ties or even yearly 2000, but today stats are pretty clear: most men do not want a wife!
Modern women have ethical troubles with making even simple sandwich. Tons of legal risks. 60% people today are overweight and on mental medication...
And fathers in families today are portraited as a homer simpson!
All the stuff wife brinks to the table, can be easily automated or outsourced at minimal cost!
Well, they probably want one, as in the essay, but have just accepted they can't have one and moved on with their lives.
As a single guy living by myself and have no intention of getting married or having kids, the day to day tasks are much simpler. Also it becomes more simple if you have money to afford help like having someone once a week clean up the whole apartment.
So it seems like what you want is not a wife, but money
Where is this excerpt from? I like the questions at the end.
Really? I thought they were trite and not particularly engaged with the source matter. Why did you like them?
The one at the beginning was far more interesting.
i am scared of it
Eh. I'm just tired of feminism. It promised equality but instead brought the gender war while driving down salaries.
In a similar vein to this essay, I want to be a father so badly. I love being a woman, and am satisfied with the machinery I have been given.
But having to be the incubator means I am saddle with the full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born. I go from woman to mother. And with it comes judgement and duties, and goes freedom and care-free living.
I want to be a father so I can raise a kid, provide, teach and impart to a little slice of my own genes. And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.
But alas I was born with a womb, a sexual attraction to men, and the drive for a high-impact career. The three seem incompatible.
I just love how you assume being a father is easy. Grass is always greener and what not.
Being a father comes with its own responsibilities and subjection to judgment by the community. The phrase "deadbeat dad" is in the common vernacular, but you rarely hear about "deadbeat moms" (trust me, they exist).
> full brunt of the responsibility and expectation once the baby is born
This is simply not true. If this were true, child support laws and requirements would not exist.
You actually don't have full responsibility once the child is born. Even then, you can give the child up for adoption.
You do have something that men don't have, which is full control over whether a birth happens in the first place. Men don't have this.
Deadbeat mums definitely exist. I was married to one. A woman who wanted to be a traditional housewife and flat out refused to work gradually did less and less and eventually we divorced leaving me a single dad.
I think a broader problem is that women assume that as men do not have the problems women do, we are better off and lack the empathy to realise men have different problems. Its pretty evident in things such as the higher suicide rate for young men in many countries.
I'm a father, have had sole custody of my five children for 8 nearly 9 years.
Both parents have the same responsibility to their kids, to do the absolute best for them, and we should fight back against outdated cultural norms that assume that mothers are the default parent, and that fathers "babysit" their own children.
> and that fathers "babysit" their own children.
That really, rally annoys me.
> we should fight back against outdated cultural norms that assume that mothers are the default parent
Its changing very slowly. Its very deeply ingrained which is self-reinforcing (schools phoning the mother when a child is sick is an example that came up in a previous discussion). Its assumed by the law in many countries (virtually no paternity leave here in the UK, for example).
> and expectation once the baby is born.
This can be resolved by choosing a better man as a partner, one that is supportive and willing to be an equal partner. I understand finding someone that fulfills that as well as this person also being someone you're attracted to and compatible with socially is challenging, but I have seen relationships like this before so I know it's possible.
My guess is that is easier said than done, and most of the time would only be known after it was too late.
Of course, full accountability belongs on the man for the failure of the parenting partnership.
This cannot be resolved, you will not be an equal parent or even close to it the first few months, maybe even over a year. Breast feeding and various dependencies that develop (like that the kid wants to fall asleep at the breast) mean that most of the effort of parenting early falls on the mother.
And then there's the fact of life that other stuff needs to be taken care of. Trash still needs to be taken out, groceries bought, etc further pushing you towards the stuff outside of parenting.
This can hardly be resolved with money. We could hire nannies, get the top nursery, whatever. It would even be cost-efficient if it let mom work. However, the kid doesn't want to be without his mom and much more so she doesn't want to be away from him for a longer time! Even with me 4-6 hours is about it.
That is true for a few months. You have children for rather longer than that. Even with breast feeding you can express the milk. I did that. I used to work from home with my younger daughter asleep in a sling.
Your child might want the mother, but this is no true of every child. Different kids in the same family can be different in this way too.
Very few men lactate, that is absolutely true. However, in our family it is the mother who has the drive and career ambitions, which is why the child has fallen asleep on the father instead, including when said child was but a few months old and the mother had a six-week business trip abroad.
I am sure children benefit from having several parents and role models, but I am not so sure that the shape of the genitals matter as much as whether the parent(s) is/are emotionally in tune with the child. The classical father of yore was simply not much of a parent. Today's can choose either.
I'm a house-husband to a wife with a womb who birthed our daughter. She's a software dev at a major software company. I did most of the diapers (little one is soon 7 and out of them for a while now), I do all the cooking. We had daycare partially to give breaks, but also so the little one would get good social exposure at a young age. I sadly can't drive due to a mix of anxiety and sedating medication for other health stuff, so she does before-school appointments most of the time (so she can go to the office after without me having to bus home), but for the most part I come along with appointments and I'm the one to go along on school trips and do the before and after school bus times. I do almost all the away playdates, with playdates at home being a joint endeavor.
Her carefree living has gone, but she can still go to work parties while I stay home and look after our daughter. She's never told me she experienced any overt judgement about being the sole breadwinner (there was a male manager who asked her after mat leave how her vacation was. I wonder how much he was involved in the early years of raising his kids‽). I will admit I do get more praise than I should be for doing my role, but really that praise is pretty empty, the bar is so low for men. The praise I do get mainly comes from women older than us. I've only once gotten a "Mr. Mom" comment and that was from an older American acquaintance.
She took about 4 months off if I recall correctly for mat leave after our daughter was born. She was going crazy at home.
She has some limitations for sure, she feels like she's as far as she'll get at least while our daughter is young, in terms of the promo-game. But she and the company are content with where she's at, though she is a bit envious at times about how some of her colleagues have been promoted to higher levels despite starting at the same time or after her.
She's very involved and a great mom.
I hope that didn't come off as a brag (I'm terrible at keeping the place clean and tidy, we hire help for that), my point is that you probably can have a high-impact career, be sexually attracted to men, and have a womb, and have a child. The freedom and care-free living will go regardless of one's gender, that's just part of being a good parent. There are plenty of men out there up for a majority parenting role.
For some context I'm around 40, and in my age group there's a lot more involved fathers (we see lone fathers with children at the park all the time, including with solely presenting-female children) and working mothers than when I was a child. Living in a major city in Ontario, Canada.
This belittles men, especially those who are single fathers and have similar career struggles as single mothers. Our perceptions create our reality and if we constantly think we've been given the short end of the stick then we'll look for evidence around us to prove this perception. There's a whole other side to motherhood that comes with fulfillment, meaning, and growth.
> This belittles men
Does it, or is is a complaint about the patriarchy? I don't see any part of the OP comment that seems misandrist or reducing the role that engaged fathers play.
The assumption that being a father is easy denies the lived experience of fathers. How would she know whether being a father is easy or not? She's never been one.
She would know that in her society there are different sets of expectations about fathers than mothers, and that seems to be what she's aiming at? Are you sure you're not over-reading into what she actually wrote?
I think what you seek is a great companion to truly share the responsibilities with.
I am a father of two wonderful kids. I do more drop offs than my wife, I changed just as many diapers / handled sick care, I handle more of the nighttime routines and give each kid a 10 minute back rub every night while my wife lays in bed (9 years and counting for my eldest) and cook more than my wife. She does clean more than me, folds more laundry, prepare their lunches, organizes their after care and play dates and babysitters more. She also worked harder when the kids were 0-6 months than I did for sure.
I begrudge her for none of what I do “more”. It’s hard work but I love being with my kids and my wife works her tail off running her business. We have a great balance and I feel lucky. And yet life isn’t perfect and, it being hard work, it’s easy to point fingers instead of focusing on gratitude and real world trade offs (two things the paper and feminism generally lack).
I think it comes down to ambitions. Do you have ambitions to be financially successful, to have a wonderful career or marriage or to be a great parent? Although feminists are loathe to talk of hierarchies for obvious reasons, they nevertheless have their use. So let me hierarchize: I truly have greater ambitions around being a parent than anything else. We also happen to be financially successful (more so because of my wife) but she has greater ambitions around that than I do.
So anyway, I think we are the counter example to your last statement and show that it can be compatible. And many of my friends are similar.
My wife has some severe challenges (hormonal and otherwise), so I have changed almost all diapers, and work part time/nights as a software developer purely for the fact that I need to be available to take our child regularly throughout the day, at one point I was full time childcare and job. My wife has a free pass to go on day trips and climbing excursions for her mental health. I guess the point is, to find someone who genuinely wants to help and participate, and find something that works for you. It's such a huge part of life, it's important to get the balance right. That's a difficult thing to do, but knowing what someone's core beliefs about family, responsibility, and expectations is important.
Yes, there are no solutions, only trade offs.
I believe procreation is the highest impact a human can achieve.
The result of 14 billion years of cosmic evolution, a thermodynamic miracle, the waking universe looking back on itself.
Imagine what we can achieve when robots can do the laundry and dishes.
> Imagine what we can achieve when robots can do the laundry and dishes.
First, you mean like clothes washers and dishwashers, which already exist?
Second, my imagination of what we can achieve by procreation seems limited to "more humans". A trillion humans? A quadrillion humans? Enlighten me.
Where I live, no Dad is being praised for changing a diaper. And golf clubs suffer.
hm.
I don't know why you couldn't be a great father. In the sense you're talking about. I know it would come with the physical baggage (or not, if you adopt?)
A friend I love dearly is raising a 3 year old little girl... she never expected to get pregnant at 42... and she is as much a father as a mother. She lets the girl play in mud puddles while other parents stare, and collect bugs, and go look at art in museums. Absolutely unconcerned with how the world thinks a mom with a 3 year old should behave.
[edit] it did slow my friend's career over the past few years, but, didn't kill it. And she's back to it now. But more importantly... I've never seen anyone love anything as much, even when she says she's frustrated out of her mind. And me, not having kids, I'm a little jealous of that feeling.
[edit2] I'm an uncle, so maybe that's more my speed ... just jumping in for the easy fun parts and teaching the kids new things and being the visiting fireman. But that's not what being a father is, at least as far as my brother's day to day driving them to and from school and taking care of them.
My brother is the fun uncle of my daughter. Know the fun uncle is always appreciated. You should visit them soon :) And tell my brother to get back here for his overdue visit.
What an interesting comment. Do you feel that the aspects of fatherhood that you are most jealous of are relatively lower expectations of time commitment directly watching after the kid and encouragement of professional success?
And if it’s not too prying to ask what are your ideal expectations for your partner? How important is their career? What is their ideal role in childrearing?
Start with the Dad jokes. That's the gateway to gender freedom in parenting!
> ... And be praised whenever a diaper is changed or I fetch the little one from school.
I may be calling names now, but maybe this is an unnecessary "oldschool" meme that should already be forgotten. In my country (Estonia), I don't see dads actually being praised for every small childcare chore they courageously complete. Nobody does that, really. It's more like a meme that e.g. feminists love to bring about and keep alive in Facebook or elsewehere, thus showing an ongoing conflict between men and women (or -- being a man vs being a woman, with women actually as the superior sex or side). Let it fade away finally, for god's sake, and let dads quietly do their thing.
Source: first-hand experience as a primary caregiver for our children for several years, while the mom was working full time. It was not really an optimal scenario in terms of sharing economical responsibility within a family (it did raise conflicts at times), but I liked "doing stuff" with both children, and never expected any direct admiration from society, etc. Luckily, I also didn't get almost any of this. :) I just did my thing as a dad, got children to kindergarten and then back home, etc, and those were some beautiful times in this sense.
I'm in Hong Kong, fathers do get praised for childcare chores but it also comes with a downside. Despite being very active in my school PTA, being one of the only fathers being a "Class Parent", and spending a lot more time at my son's school, whenever my son is hurt the reflex they have is to always call the mother.
They praise dads for being involved because they don't see it as normal and as they don't see it as normal, they always think that the mother is somehow the person to contact in emergencies. I'd much rather not be praised for every little thing and for people here to trust in a father's competence.
Great example, thanks for sharing! We seem to have that same reflex (always calling moms in case of emergency) in our country. I guess it just takes time, probably a few decades, for societies to really start trusting dads as caregivers equally to moms. By trust in this regard I mean "pay no attention whatsoever to the sex of the caregiver because it doesn't matter".
You can hire a nanny. I know there's stigma there, too, but I know some "career women" who do this and it works fine. If you're that motivated (and your interests are lucrative enough), you can pull it off.
I don't know how much this would change things, expectations in particular, but there are guys like me who would like to be stay at home fathers.
I'd like to have my cake and eat it too. It's your choice whether you want to spend your life being envious about cherry-picked parts of other people's lives, or whether you learn to appreciate and enjoy the things you do have. This cherry picking is the exact poison that social media delivers, making people depressed the world over. I guess men and women have always felt it about each other. The big difference is that men cannot have what women have, but women can have at least some of what men have.
Get a surrogate maybe? Should tick many of the boxes you have listed.
None of that stuff really seems that difficult or time consuming. I think the danger of being in the position of a stay-at-home mom is that your partner can abandon you at any time and leave you with the full burden and no financial support.
I think the problem really stems from a lack of suitable men rather than the role itself