Reply to Should I excuse DH from nighttime duties?

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Reply to "Should I excuse DH from nighttime duties?"

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[quote=Anonymous]My biggest problem with this entire thread is that so much of the advice is "You better do it THIS way or your DH won't be an equal partner or parent."

I'm sorry, but if a man checks out on parenting, expects his working wife to do the lion's share of parenting/housework, or otherwise pushes an unequal distribution of the workload, it is not the fault of his wife for taking on night duty during her maternity leave. He's a person! If he has to be tricked into being an equal partner by FORCING a seemingly nonsensical work arrangement, he's trash anyway and probably was never going to be an equal partner.

Why on earth would the spouse who has to be at work in the morning for an 8 hour work day get up as much as the spouse who is on leave AND has 5-6 hours of help daily from her mom? It makes no sense. Stop yelling at women that they need to enforce an impractical and weird division of labor for a couple months at the beginning of their baby's life or any future imbalance in parental duties is THEIR FAULT.

It's not their fault. Men are responsible for their actions. Men are capable of being active and involved parents. Men are every bit as able to prioritize their children, bond with them, make time for them, sacrifice for them, etc. Every bit as capable. Like the first people I think of are some of the gay couples I know who are devoted parents. There is nothing about having a Y chromosome that makes men incapable of doing this work.

Stop convincing yourselves that women are somehow responsible for their husbands. They aren't. If a guy wants to be a good dad and partner, he can be. If he doesn't, there is not secret to making him do it. And the expectation that women will somehow figure out how to make that reluctant guy do what he does not want to do is IN ITSELF an example of the unequal distribution of labor in our society.[/quote]

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