Inside Motherhood

My top dad pet peeves

by Sherry on October 9th, 2007

Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but no, I’m not about to diss fathers. In fact, it’s less about dads and more about perceptions of them. These are a few things that I hate about the way some of society views dads.

1. Dads are inept. How many commercials or movies or TV plots revolve around a father who is just completely stupid when it comes to kids? The man may be a CEO of a major corporation or able to argue intense cases in court, or perhaps he can assemble a museum’s dinosaur skeleton in under ten minutes. However, flash to him being at home where his wife asks him to change the baby’s diaper - all of a sudden, the man is all thumbs, totally incapable of figuring out how the little tabs work, how to use a wipe, or just not realizing that you can’t walk off and leave a baby on a changing table. Even better, let the wife go out for the evening and whereas she leaves a clean home behind, she comes back to popcorn glued to the ceiling, apple juice pooling in the kitchen, and dad sleeping on the couch with the remote in his hand while the kids dangle from the roof. My husband gets so irate over this, saying that if women were made to look so stupid on TV that the feminist movement would burn the networks down, but men can be made out to be total brainless apes.

It’s ridiculous. I don’t know a single father like this. Every father I know is perfectly capable of caring for his child.

Which leads me to:

2. “Awww, Dad’s babysitting!” What the heck is THAT all about? Why is it that when mothers are caring for their children they’re doing exactly that - caring for their kids, but dads? Oh they’re “babysitting”. I hear that frequently enough that it makes steam come out of my ears. I hear it when I drop my oldest at school without my toddler in tow or when I go out in the evening alone - “oh, is your husband babysitting?” No, no he’s not. He’s taking care of his own child which he fathered WITH me, and therefore he is not a babysitter. I am no going to go home and hand him $20 and then ask if he’d like me to drive him home. Father. NOT babysitter.

3. Dads aren’t interested in their share of the parenting. Again, who are these fathers and where are they? I know that in previous generations, fathers didn’t necessarily take part if much of the parenting responsibilities. Not that many decades back, fathers didn’t even go in the delivery room while the poor mother was giving birth, whereas I might have hurt someone if I hadn’t been allowed to have my husband there. Once upon a time men did tend to leave parenting to the women, but in this day and age, at least in my circles, fathers are very much involved in everything from the birth (well, as much as someone with no uterus can be) to discipline choices, to rule making, to activities, to just sitting on the floor playing My Little Pony.

Now I open the floor to you - what are some of your pet peeves about fathers and the way they’re often portrayed in the media and society?

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POSTED IN: Family, Fathers, Rants