Reply to Should I excuse DH from nighttime duties?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The amount of bickering on this thread is absurd.

Have a discussion together (really, many ongoing discussions) and figure out what works for your family.  For mine, it didn't make sense for both parents to be up all night and end up exhausted together.  I (mom) do the overnight wakings, and dh wakes up early with the kids.  That might mean as early as 4/5am for a baby or young toddler.  This pattern continued naturally as kids became toddlers/preschoolers.  It works best for our sleep patterns & the family's needs.  Of course, it's flexible and of course we'll both help if either needs back-up for any reason.

There is no need that the dh MUST wake up overnight, basically to prove a point about equal partnership, if it's not the right choice for your family.[/quote]

If your dh did mornings with your kid for years then he was a key part of the night shift.

I feel like a lot of posters are hung up on the details here. Does it matter really if you force your dh to wake up and change a diaper so you’re sharing equally in the burden? No specifically that does not matter. But many many many many many women know what it feels like to be the varsity parent. To be the one who knows what to do who can calm the baby easily blah blah blah. And you become this way by taking on an outsized percentage of the work in infancy. This starts a cycle that simply grows more defined and strong the longer it’s allowed to go on.

So whatever quibble about the fine print here. But if mom takes on everything in infancy it will, perhaps not always but more often than not, lead to a cycle of inequity in parenting that will have an erosive effect on the marriage and parent child relationship. You can yammer on about your specific life situation and how it does or does not conform precisely to this argument or you can head on over to the relationships forum and read all about the versions of yourself 10 years on who have to do everything and who stopped having sex with the husbands they hate. Work on some level of egalitarian parenting for your marriage and, frequently overlooked, for your kids. [/quote]

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