Why berate instead of celebrate?

Abi Thompson - 11 Sep 16

‘Excuse me, can you tell me why it’s always the men who push the pram?’

A normal Saturday morning with my husband and nearly 6 month old son. That’s how my introduction to ‘dad berating’ began, around 2 weeks ago. Just minding our own business, when a stranger stopped us to ask this question.

We’d stopped because we had presumed it was a valid question the man had to ask. However it quickly became something else when we processed it. I immediately felt the need to defend why my husband was pushing our son, as the tone was very accusatory. Why was he pushing it and not me? Was I not doing my job properly? Was my husband doing something he shouldn’t? And then I realised that was a load of nonsense. As I spoke to him he then proceeded to try and put me in my place because ‘he hadn’t asked me’. So not only did he have a problem with my husband pushing our son but also with me having a voice. My husband explained he wanted to be pushing his child and we walked off. We laughed about his narrowmindedness, discussed how in the minority this man was and didn’t give it a thought.

And then it happened again, a week later in a Costa coffee. Whenever we go on a long car journey and our little boy needs feeding we stop at a coffee shop and one of us gets his bottle ready while the other gets coffee for us. That day it happened to be me who was in the queue and my husband feeding. As I was asking my husband what he wanted an old man walked past the other side of him and made the comment of ‘Always the dad looking after the baby’.

I was unbelievably affronted as was my husband, and at first I couldn’t place why. Why on earth where we bothered about what strangers thought? And then I realised it was because it stands for something bigger. It means society thinks the mum should always be doing the important bits and dads should be hidden away from the things that keep their children alive, as if they’re too good to feed their children. Some elements of society feel children are a mum’s responsibility. And yes they are, but not like this.

My husband is a wonderful dad. Every day he works then comes home and looks after our little boy, and on weekends he takes every available opportunity to push him in his pram, feed him, and play with him etc. as he feels he misses out during the week. I don’t make him, he wants to. I’m sure that for many users of this site nothing I am saying is unusual to what you have in your family or the balance you have in your relationship.

And yet on these 2 occasions people thought that what he was doing was wrong, or strange, or that he was put upon. Society was presuming that a mother should be doing all these things and the man should stand by.

Why? Is society really stuck in the 1920s?

For someone who is bringing up a child with a male partner I am raising my child with just that-a partner. Since the day our son was home from hospital my husband has shared the feeds, the nappies and the getting up in the middle of the night. At weekends he has Sunday mornings that are just daddy and son time and he meets me halfway in everything. He always has, that’s why he’s my husband to be honest. He is a bloody good dad and should be celebrated as such.

Dads don’t need telling that they’re doing a good job necessarily, and I know there are plenty of people who feel that being a good dad is something that should just be. But like mums not every dad has the most confident of days or moments. So the next time you see a dad pushing a pram, feeding his child or changing a nappy just think of it as normal. It doesn’t require a comment, but if you feel the need to comment make sure it is positive. Because the good dads in this world should be celebrated, not berated.

Abi Thompson

Mother, wife, daughter, best friend, acquaintance, English teacher, loud mouth, weirdo and book obsessive.

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