When my friends and I were all starting our families and experiencing motherhood for the first time, we noticed that it seemed like we Moms were doing a lot of the work. More so than our young husbands. And it didn’t seem fair at all. We were pretty cranky about it, in fact. Long gone are the days when Dads can opt out of childcare responsibilities. This is the new millennium, we expect to share all parenting responsibilities equally darn it!
Well, there was a small problem. Even when these new daddies were taking the initiative and asking (ok, I admit it, sometimes begging) to take over the childcare duties, us moms were reluctant at best. We often watched over our men as if they were young children, precariously on the verge of breaking our new offspring. We complained – oh BOY did we complain. “You aren’t holding him right!” “He needs to nurse!” “Why can’t you get him to stop crying?” “He likes to be jiggled, not swayed!” “You are burping him wrong.” I know Mommy Instincts are in overdrive in those first months of new motherhood but man did we set our men up for failure! How on earth could they ever tune into their instincts if we didn’t give them the space or the time or the opportunity. Or the confidence – especially the confidence. Would you be nervous if someone was over your shoulder insisting that whatever you tried was wrong and causing more problems than it solved? It’s amazing that these Dads ever enjoyed their children at all during the first year of life! It’s also not a surprise that more than one Daddy admitted that they were anxious to push their wives out of the house for some “alone time” with the sole goal of finally bonding with their new child! I’ve also talked to Dads who simply wrote off the first year of life (much to the condemnation of their wives) and waited until their little one was old enough to be mobile and seek out Dad instead of Dad playing tug-of-war with Mom for a fruitless year.
Enough is enough! Yes, we are feminists and we are Moms and we know all. I get it! But it’s ok. Our babies won’t break, our lives won’t fall apart, no one will be scarred and our self-esteem won’t plummet if we hand off the little bundle for a short bit of time so that Dad can get to know Junior early, rather than later. Dad can do it!