My child has two parents. Why does day care call only me? (2018)
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Afterward, we were provided with a form to fill out for the birth certificate, which required a parental signature. I filled the form out and returned it to the office, at which point I noticed that the clerk changed the signature to state my wife's name when inputting it into the system.
Later in the day, a social worker came by and began to ask questions about my income (when I told her I worked for one of the large tech companies, she immediately left and stopped questioning me). She independently took my wife aside to ask questions, and my wife later told me that she did not ask about her income, but did ask to make sure she was not being abused, a question I was never asked.
All in all, we felt it was a very poor experience (not to mention multiple mistakes were made during delivery because the anesthesiologist was distracted by the television), and we were surprised by the degree of sexism in what we thought was one of the more progressive cities in the U.S.
It wasn't until I realized how absolutely terrible the hospital experience is, amplified 10x with birth, rife with shocking biases and sexism, that their behavior began to make perfect sense. Horror story after horror story of human beings being treated little better than cattle. I fear for when I get older and have to deal with the medical system on a more regular basis.
I know a few people that thought the same thing about their deliveries and ended up being wrong. Fortunately, everyone is ok now, but it got dicey for a few people.
It's trendy and perhaps more comfortable/convenient, but it massively amplifies the risk.
A 10x increase on a .001% chance doesn't mean anything. A 1.1x increase on a 10% risk is huge.
I'd rather mitigate the risk as much as possible, regardless of how small it might be initially.
Most people don’t mitigate risk as much as possible. Even hospitals don’t don’t do this. Hospitals routinely give unnecessary c-sections, drugs, etc to save THEIR time. A home birth eliminates these.
Did you earn as much money as possible and fly to the absolute best hospital in the world? Did you or the mother strictly watch weight? Obesity is a known risk that is poorly mitigated. Is the house free of all known toxins? Did you verify this with a particle sensor? Did the mother practice how do a birth without need for drugs?
With my wife’s home birth, we did these. My wife was is tip top shape, and my environmental engineer father brought over his array of very expensive sensors that measure down to parts per quadrillion.
In the US? Link please.
I find this assertion highly unlikely in the US - because midwives only take the lowest risk mothers. We were redirected to our first hospital birth because our midwife discovered twins.
> In the US? Link please.
https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-op...
“Women inquiring about planned home birth should be informed of its risks and benefits based on recent evidence. Specifically, they should be informed that although planned home birth is associated with fewer maternal interventions than planned hospital birth, it also is associated with a more than twofold increased risk of perinatal death (1–2 in 1,000) and a threefold increased risk of neonatal seizures or serious neurologic dysfunction (0.4–0.6 in 1,000).”
What country? What time period? What state?
Hospitals all over have wildly different rates of success. The color of the mother wildly influences the outcome as well.
Some states are very strict with home births. Some are not. The laws governing home births vary far more than the laws governing hospitals.
Also, if 10 babies die in the hospital and 20 at home in the US, that’s a drop in the bucket.
This sort of fear mongering in what the medical establishment uses to push people in five digit price tag births, draining them of their resources just as their family is growing.
I have experienced both hospital and home birth. I would never do hospital again if I could avoid it.
Our last birth was twins and our midwife directed us to a 100% female OB/GYN practice. They were beyond fantastic.
What? The fucking television????
Also, I suspect (but cannot prove) that our daughter ended up in the NICU because of additional failings during delivery related to a very long period of trying to induce while our daughter did not have sufficient oxygen.
I got the message loud and clear that I was less than zero in the whole process, in that Dr's eyes at least.
Edit: responder used the correct word, "doula" not "midwife"; thank you.
Anecdotally, I highly recommend a midwife birth versus doctor if you have the option. A midewife’s only job is to deliver healthy babies. Unlike doctors who do many things.
https://www.today.com/health/what-doula-here-s-what-doulas-d...
Except the ones that don’t of course, and then you really need a doctor.
It's also a good time to catch abused, controlled, or manipulated women at an extremely vulnerable point in their lives. This doesn't mean men are never abused- but childbirth doesn't exactly seem like the place to discover it.
I've been through the experience. I think it's important to remember that, as the father, you are very much party- but you are not the patient.
I felt treated as an equal, and several times they would ask a question and say we can discuss it together before making a decisions before leaving the room.
I don’t know if it was the birth plan or something else, but our experience was excellent. I recommend anyone worried about this also create a birth plan and bring it with them.
I have observed similar things with friends who had kids. There's still something unique in how society deals with children that is fundamentally misandrist. At every level of our society, we assume mothers are the primary caretaker and primary authority with children and men are explicitly and intentionally excluded and distrusted. It's unfair to women as well, because it shoehorns them into a role they may not be comfortable with.
Expecting anything else, though, is.
That’s a funny way to characterize a bunch of male doctors ignoring my wife’s request for them to ask me simple questions instead of her because she was incapacitated with pain, particularly when in a previous situation I broke my ankle and my request for questions to be addressed to her went fulfilled without any objections by the hospital staff.
But I will be sure to let my wife know that a stranger on the internet thinks her claims of sexism at the hospital are unfounded.
Why would they ask you that for a transparent answer given where they're coming from? Or is this, "how dare they do routine questions that implicate my status"?
1. They assume his mom is his primary caregiver 2. They assume I will mind having to care for my child 3. They never make a note that they can’t get through to his mom; the assumption remains all year that she’s the primary caregiver
On the other side though, buying a car last year was frustrating because multiple salesmen treated my partner like she didn’t exist and answered her questions about cars like she was 3 years old or simply directed answers to me. I had to remind them far too often to talk to her - I hadn’t asked the question.
Also the shitty jokes about letting her test drive - it just isn’t funny, she commutes by car for work and I ride a bike to work; she really should test drive it and no I’m not afraid of a woman driving a car. It made us want to walk off car lots, but then we discovered every lot did it anyway.
Their whole business model, in my area at least, is to buy up all decent used cars for sale and then flip them at a non-negotiable higher price. Those of us looking for a newer used car at an affordable price from a private seller or dealership are left with nothing to choose from.
I don't think I will ever go back to a car dealership without knowing exactly what I want. It is such a waste of time listening to a salespitch by someone that has a absolute interest in you maxing out your budget.
She lives a few states away.
The school still tries to call her first.
It happens everywhere. My sister went to buy a car, with her husband tagging along. She couldn't get a sales person to talk to her. She had to go away and come back without him.
My wife cannot be seen in a certain car parts store. The counter guys will "see right through her" and talk to the man behind her in line when it's her turn.
Not quite 'institutional', its certainly cultural. And it it doesn't happen to you, it's easy to think it doesn't exist.
If a mechanic or a car salesman speaks to the man he'll be correct 99% of the time. Same for a pram salesman talking to the woman.
I blame these monkeys: https://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-truck...
If an old granny asks about computers, will you contemplate that she may well be a Linux engineer and know lots, or will your first pitch assume she doesn’t?
For the same reason as the car example above or the Pascal's Wager - the cost of a prediction failure is so high that it changes the probabilities of your wrong-case calculations, no matter how strong the stereotype.
If I'm driving through what looks like a dodgy neighbourhood and need to stop and ask for directions, I'll be extra vigilant - based on essentially impressions. But I won't assume anyone I speak to is a thug, much less treat them that way.
In other words, Bayesian reasoning is not an excuse for being an arsehole. Really, no cognitive process can be...
It goes the other way too, there are plenty of professionals (female engineers, male primary education teachers, etc.) who get harmed by the biases of the general public.
Really tangential story but I was calling large supplier in my industry looking for an application engineer to help me figure out how to set something up. I first asked for one and got put on hold until someone picked up, I started describing the problem and was told "oh, hold on, it sounds like you need an applications engineer, I'll go get one" so I get put on hold again. The next person picks up and the exact same thing happens. Finally I'm getting a little flustered and a woman picks up the phone and because of what just happened I say "Am I speaking to an applications engineer?!?" She sighs and responds in the positive in an annoyed voice and I finally get my questions answered. This stuck with me for a while because I felt really bad knowing she assumed my initial incredulity was because it was a female voice on the line, and I certainly don't blame her for thinking that either.
There were two groups that sometimes had it rough, though. From time to time, everyone gets the "fun" of picking up the call from a verbally abusive customer (who you can't just hang up on because of company policy) but I really felt bad for the women who had to deal with misogynist pricks. I never got a chance to hear both sides of the conversations but I could tell from the tone in their voices when they had to deal with one of these guys. Along the lines of, "No, I am the only one available right now, how I can I help?" "Sorry, my manager isn't around at the moment." That sort of thing.
One particularly egregious case was when some asshole kept calling in because he broke his site and wanted us to fix it. One woman kept picking up the call (by chance) and every time she tried to help him, he demanded to speak to someone else. After the 3rd or 4th time of this, she quit on the spot. My word of advice: If you're going to be sexist douchebag, at least have the courtesy to just hang up without saying anything instead of berating the human being on the other end for their crime of having a vagina.
The other group I felt bad for was those with non-US accents. Every so often, they would find themselves on a receiving end of an anti-outsourcing tirade from out of our customers. Even though they were sitting in a call center in the middle of a Midwest state.
People assume the woman is responsible for kids, which is a bit of a 1D projection of women, but also, in my personal experience, women, especially mothers, assume the men shouldn't be around, are no good with children etc.
From personal experience, i have seen vast majority of personnel at daycares are women. As in, 95%+. So the bias, if there is any, at that EDU level, would be resting on such personnel, and the people that manage such notification systems. Thus, taken to its simplest premise, this article would become "Busy men & women complaining about other women who only wish to talk to women".
In my experiences with K and preK, i have not had this problem. What I did see was largely tech-driven: The notifications sent to parent had 1 default, which was mom. Once we requested to have me in the loop, it happened as requested, but mom missed all the updates (and i had to fwd). We requested both to be updated, but this could not be done.
System only had space for 1 phone number.
I suspect with COVID, a lot of these preconceived notions have been brought down. However, we should recognize that giving tech to people that never had to manage it, its going to lead to problems. Let's be more patient and not assume bias to something that could very well lack of skill / training.
One day we were at the playground and a mother expressed her disapproval that I was letting an ~20mo use the slide (she denied her 3yo son to use it). She exclaimed: "You are endangering your daughter! Where is your wife?". To which I said, "I'm the father. My daughter is being safe." She then wanted to know where my wife was... and threatened to call the police. I told her: "We live in the yellow house down the street, my wife is home."
After a few days, her son was climbing the ladder too; the woman became good playground company. I think there's all sorts of things people can learn from each other.
Called my daughter's pediatrician's office, left a message with one of her nurses with my question and my contact info so the doc could call back when she had time. She did, but she called my wife. (Has happened more than once. Has never happened "the other way.")
I work much closer to our day care than my wife and have a more flexible schedule, so if one of our kids gets sick and needs to be picked up I have done the pick up 100% of the time. Yet 100% of the time they call my wife, who then calls me. Also, 100% of the time they are a bit surprised when I show up to pick up the kid.
This hasn't caused us any harm, but I believe the phenomena is "real" and I could see scenarios where it does cause harm. It's also true that some instances have mundane causes as others have pointed out here.
With me (Dad) working from home and my kids remote learning for school I'm the primary home contact for school things, assignments, etc, but the school staff often reach for mom's email address alone more often than mine despite my requests.
I took my younger son to the clinic while he was sick and I would describe the situation (he has some respiratory issues that complicate typical colds and etc) and often the nurse would look at me and ask "What does mom think?"
You'd have to be careful about checking things even marked read, but this may solve the issue. Alternately an email address that forwards to both of your addresses.
This keeps all of the house/address stuff in one place, and keeps me from getting doxxed when some vendor's db invariably leaks.
I even have a dedicated old phone that's logged in to just that stuff, we use it for the home automation crap (you can't set up a homepod without iCloud!) and ordering food, et c.
This was because my wife had babies at home and had environmental allergies; I had the flexibility of self-employment.
Caregivers tended to be supportive. Occasionally tho, there were logistical issues with me being a man in women dominated environments.
One example: I wanted to monitor my young son's speech therapy (in/after school), so I could duplicate the teacher's methods. Apparently parents never did this and they had to find a hidden spot for me. This still left the teacher+child alone with a man in a closed classroom - which, reasonably, could make teachers less comfortable. A 2nd teacher had to be found to float in/out. This was a rare case where I was made to feel like I was imposing but it wasn't much of a dad thing.
This exception aside, I didn't run into a lot of issues. Surprise, yes. Lots of that.
I have even read stories of males complaining that they are held up by police and strangers, for committing the suspicious offence of being seen walking with their own children. Is this overdramatized?
P.s.: this thread at least seems to come with somewhat similar stories. — no idea where they are located.
I took my daughter everywhere before COVID and never experienced this, even when she decides it's funny to scream things like "Help, this isn't my daddy!" But she also looks exactly like me, so there's that.
From some of the horror stories I have seen posted on the internet, you would immediately be beaten by bystanders who'll not bother to ask any quæstions first.
Even after we asked them to put a big notice in our records saying to try ringing me first. This is in Melbourne, Australia.
i think quite literally the most frequent reason this happens is because the person calling you will pick the first person on their contact list. for a school, that's usually the wife/mother. she took the kid to school once, and put info on the contact list. she's first. nothing nefarious there.
My partner is listed as my primary emergency contact, and my mother is my second. But my partner isn’t always by her phone like my mother is, so if there were emergency calls happening frequently, I could see how staff would just know to call my mother.
The story lacks nuance, it’s just someone looking to be victimized; woe is me, the answerer of my child’s daycare phone calls.