Feminism is for men too

[moonborn]

I feel incredibly lucky to have fairy_nuff as a partner. Sometimes he infuriates me, and some of his behaviour drives me crazy, but for the main part he is a truly wonderful, compassionate, thoughtful and considerate human being. It'd be untruthful to say I had no qualms about co-parenting with him, but I think I'd have qualms about parenting with anybody -

Comments

[daturabelle]

i find it odd too.
i have a profession that often requires the female to return to work and in some of these cases, the male to leave their job to look after the children.
children don't come with a manual, this we know. and the mothers are learning as the fathers do...

Kilian Here

[anonymous]

For the record: on the weekend I said to Aphie something along the lines of “many first time dads would freak out at being left alone with their 5 week old child for 12 or more hours.”

I’d now like to add - so would many first time mums, uncles, aunts and next-door neighbours. I know I would.

And a second addition: I have since found out that the father in question comes from a large family, has spent a lot of time in his life caring for babies, and in fact, it was his idea for mum to go out and leave him and bub at home. He loves it. And more power to him.

From my observations often times we women do ourselves no good in this department. We refuse to leave the men to care for the children because they “don’t do it right” i.e. the way we would do it. THEN we complain we don’t get enough help around the house. Its time we learnt we can’t have it both ways.

Re: Kilian Here

[moonborn]

I honestly forgot if it was you who was one of the people who'd said anything to me.

And women are just as responsible for promoting patriarchal values as men. Look at fashion - we police each other far more fiercely than any men do. Just because it's sexist doesn't mean women don't do it.

Re: Kilian Here

[moonborn]

AND: Having time to consider these things rather than just reacting in the moment I don't think it should matter that the father "comes from a large family, has spent a lot of time in his life caring for babies, and in fact, it was his idea for mum to go out and leave him and bub at home" if it was okay to expect first-time mum to stop at home for hours at a time alone with baby. Because, again, you have that inequality of expectation, as well as the fact that men can apparently choose which jobs they want to do.

(Hope that makes sense and I'm not rambling)