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foogazi

> Fathers are also more likely to sing to and soothe their toddler daughters at night when they cry.

100 years ago father’s wouldn’t even talk to their kids. I don’t think dads even went into the delivery room

Dad’s didn’t get time off from work to be with their wives when the baby was born or get bonding time

Things are definitely getting better on this front

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I was recently wondering about who was typically in the delivery room 50+ years ago. So when I saw my elderly grandmother last week, I asked her whether my grandfather was there when my father was born in the late 50s.

She was a little offended by the question (itself interesting), but said it was just her and the medical staff. No other support people. She thought my grandfather was at the hospital, but wasn’t sure.

In the times when I was born, the father waited in the waiting room.

À la Mad Men.

Heck, I had similar expectations a few years ago and then I was set straight about modern reality :-))

The concept of the delivery room is a historical aberration. For most of history women would give birth at home accompanied by female friends and family.

And for most of history, maternal mortality was double of what it is today

Can you expand on that?

That is mostly due to the development of germ theory, and before that was developed, hospitals had worse outcomes than midwives, who due to 'tradition' would do things like sanitize their hands before touching the laboring mother.

Having more than 99% probability of surviving is also a historical aberration.

offended in what sense?

In the TV Show "I Love Lucy", there's an episode called "Lucy Goes to the Hospital" which aired January 19, 1953. It depicts the father-to-be waiting in the hospital waiting room while Lucy gives birth to their son. The waiting room permits smoking and Lucy's husband smokes a cigarette nervously while waiting.

What utter rubbish... Where did you read this? Or get this impression?

My grandfather was the epitome of "manliness". Blue collar worker. Hunter. Army service. My mother and her sisters have vivid memories of him singing to them.

Something is honestly sick with so many families in this country. Men have been caring for their children for millennia. It's what separates humans from the lesser beasts.

We made a caricature of men and we've grown to believe it.

If this matters, its effect in society is going depend on the number of fathers who behave like this. If that number were much smaller 100 years ago then it is now, etc.

Based on my own familial experience (hard to get many others), my grandfather was not an aberration. Actually, if we look at cultural products of various times (songs, poems, etc), it seems quite clear that it was expected that a good father would be playful and intimate with his children.

Thats a very, post-industrial revolution view of history.

By comparison in my wife's "backwards" country, the female relatives of the woman in labor are traditionally not allowed to attend labor. Sure, the men weren't allowed to see the baby for forty days, but thats to protect the newborn from dirty ruffians who'd spent all day wrestling hogs and ploughing fields. All the men of this society - regressively conservative to a tee - Ive met are far more involved with kids than your average modern day phone addicted westerner.

Nor are fathers, generally, cold and uncaring for their children in classical literature outside very militaristic societies. Curiously enough, you mention "100 years ago". Those fathers were literally shell shocked.

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