OMG, I can't believe I'm even reading this right:
I told the mother that in being so devoted to her son, she had committed the cardinal sin of marriage, which is to put someone else before her spouse, even if that someone is your child. Furthermore, I said, her obsession had turned one of her most attractive body parts into a feeding station, an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating
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The term for it is "gatekeeping". Essentially, the mother has more skill because she spends more time with the baby, and when the man does something different/less effectively then she tries to make him do it her way or gets overprotective, which makes the man back off, which means she continues to grow in skill while he doesn't get the same opportunity. It's just a vicious cycle. The woman ends up feeling like she does everything and her partner is useless, and he ends up feeling like a failure as a father.
Even being aware of this, I still found it difficult when I had a baby to not gatekeep. I had to keep reminding myself, every time my husband would do something for our son, "It's okay if he does things differently. And the only way he'll learn is if he gets to do it." Over time it gets easier and easier to check those urges to interfere, thankfully. And now, two years later, my son has a father who is just as proficient at taking care of him as I am, so it was worth all that self-restraint in the beginning. :P
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