Reply to Should I excuse DH from nighttime duties?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]8:57, you’re right, it’s a blip in the scheme of things. Baby’s first year is a blip - mine is 12 now so trust me it’s all a blip. But that first year can be a really hard blip.

It sounds like your baby was on the easier side when it came to nighttime stuff. Mine was hell - he didn’t STTN reliably until he was over 2 years old. He was also later diagnosed with autism (so it wasn’t my failure, it’s just the way his brain is wired).

My ex refused to help with night duty after baby was 2 weeks old - and we didn’t even make it through the first year before separating. Thank god we did separate because that’s not the only issue we had, but I was made to feel like I was crazy for needing more support for nighttime parenting. I wasn’t, my baby was just hard.

So, you do you. But when someone asks if dad should be given a blank check on nighttime parenting duty, the answer is No. Everyone can come up with their own way of dividing the labor, but moms sleep is not less important than dads. Even during maternity leave - mom is still healing after all and NEEDS sleep in order to heal. Yes, some moms feel great post-birth. They still need rest to ward off PPD/PPA. [/quote]

The thing is the studies are clear that that “blip” sets lifetime parenting patterns. Men who don’t get up with their babies are men who don’t bathe their toddlers are men who haven’t the faintest clue what Susie’s teachers name is. So, OP, I would be guided by the actual research on this, not people who are absolute misogynists like the one saying women should not be allowed out of the workforce, or the ones giving themselves medals for how THEY did it all (because trust me, you will find so many of these magical people who did it all…bitter and divorced later). I would set the model for egalitarian parenting you want, and then I would implement it in a way that is compassionate to both of you. Maybe he goes to bed with the baby at eight because you napped until 2, and then you get the 10 and midnight wakeups and he goes “on” at 2am after he got a solid six hours? [/quote]

Studies can show whatever they want. I did nighttime wakeups while on leave do my DH could sleep since he had to leave for the office at 7am. And several years later, he’s a full parenting partner. He does 90% of all baths, he reads to our child and takes her to the playground on his own multiple times a week. He does drop off/pick up twice a week. He splits cooking duties with me and does laundry. He not only knows our kid’s teachers names but he’s as likely as I am to be the person communicating with them about school stuff. And in the last month he’s taken on 100% of the childcare and house duties for days at a time when I was out of town for work and then dealing with a medical issue.

I get what you’re saying because I read those studies too, and agree that *in general* men don’t contribute enough at home. But also: no one knows my marriage like I do. I bristle at anyone who is going to tell me that a choice I made willingly was somehow bad for my marriage, which I know to be egalitarian because I’m in it, or that by making that choice I somehow set all women back. You can’t boil the historical inequality in parenting down to “who does night wakeups when the child is 0-6 months old?” It’s reductive in a ridiculous way.[/quote]

I’m sure your marriage is fine, no need to bristle, my point is not about you. My point is, the OP is better off making this decision based on actual research then on anecdotes from women who are consciously or unconsciously patting themselves on the back for a behavior that is linked to higher rates of PPD, and then saying they have great husbands because once a month they take their kids for donuts. That is a Really High Bar to set for a mother and an Incredibly Low Bar to set for a man. So if OP prioritizes equality in her marriage she should consider behaviors that are statistically more likely to get her there.[/quote]

Or she could base her decision on her own marriage and experiences, using both statistical info AND anecdotal info from other women to help inform her choice. No one should blindly base extremely personal decisions on statistical data alone. For instance, statistically, getting pregnant when I did increased risk of both fetal abnormalities and maternal outcomes. But I still decided to do it, taking steps to mitigate both and accepting that some risk was worth the potential payoff of being a mom. And as a mom, I’ve often made decisions that were not “statistically indicated” but that were the right choice for me.

A person is not a statistical mean. We are all deviations of some kind.[/quote]

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