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we have 5 kids. They're older now (youngest is 10), but I watched them while their mother shopped, or had other things to do. We had great fun! I'm like you - I can't understand why people would think men are incapable of handling kids.

Weighing in to agree. Or maybe just to pile on.

I'm a new father and I already can not count the number of times my wife and I have already been asked the cutesy "so how many diapers has he changed?" question.

The automatic assumption that I'm just going to phone it in -- not to mention the assumption that my wife would put up with me, were I that type of person -- has already strained more than a few relationships.

Never mind that my wife had a difficult labor, unexpected surgery and was stuck in a hospital bed, leaving me to handle everything other than breastfeeding, for the first four days and it never even occurred to either of us to call a grandmother in as a ringer.

We just always planned on each doing as much as we could and so my stepping up when she couldn't was the most obvious and natural thing in the world. At least, to us.

Seemingly half of everyone we know expected I'd hold my daughter just long enough to hand her to my mother and then head back to work.

And as to the people who see my wife out and about and ask in shock/concern whether it's a good idea/whether I can really handle looking after our infant daughter by myself while she so much as runs a few errands ... I have never actually been so angry as to see red before.

I was in the same boat: My wife carried twins and had a rough non-delivery followed by a C-section. She couldn't hardly walk for the first three weeks, and I took six weeks off total, so I pretty much did everything that didn't involve mammary glands (but I did have to wake to feed them extra milk from a bottle).

And not that I kept track, but it took a looong time for my wife to catch up on the diaper count.

Would that I could have taken six weeks off. [1]

And I felt guilty as all hell when I did go back to work.

[1] There might be something there. If our social expectation shifted to allow that fathers ought to/might want to be involved with their children, we'd probably have to update our archaic views on paternity leave. As is, I burned through all my vacation and then some and then stretched my employers tolerance for 'working from home' as far as it would go before I returned. And in the end I still had to go back before my wife got the doctor's Ok to drive, or to lift anything heavier than our child.

You could have taken six weeks off. You were legally permitted by law to take up to 12 unpaid weeks and still have your job waiting for you when you got back (assuming your employer had 50 or more employees and you had been working there for a year IANAL). Most people don't know that you can actually take up to 24 weeks, but if you do take more than 12 then your employer is not obligated to give you your exact job back, only a comparable one. You also didn't have to take it immediately after your child was born, but that you had up to one year to take your baby leave.

I wasn't paid for all 6 weeks. My wife and I had to save up a cash cushion (and her leave was paid because her company had wayyy better benefits than mine). It was a decision and an expense that was important for us, so we saved up for it because we knew that my wife would probably be out of commission for the first six weeks our boys were born and the first 4-6 months of twins is a crapton of work.

I never felt guilty when I came back to work. Once you really internalize that people in a company are replaceable, you just start preparing people for when you leave on vacation or baby leave instead of worrying about it.

Yeah, with FMLA I could have taken more time, unpaid. I just wasn't in a place where I could do that and still feel comfortable about our savings. [1]

And to be clear: I felt guilty for being away from my wife and daughter. I didn't spare a moment of concern for my employer or colleagues -- they're pretty good people and all, but they can take care of themselves.

And while I know my wife can handle things, I still felt guilty because going to work is so much easier. At least, as a first time parent, the parenting side feels far more stressful/intensive/important.

[1] After the dot-com blow-out I became pretty paranoid about how much was reasonable to hold in reserve. And seeing how long unemployment stretches are going these days only convinced me to pad out that number. Particularly now that I have to factor in a higher burn rate.

Agree about first time parenting being more stressful/intensive. We used to joke that we were so tired from the weekend that we looked forward to going to work on Monday.

How many months of expenses do you have saved?

I'd like to have six. I was there - the difference in expenses and unexpected costs brought things down to around four at the moment.

(Not knowing anything about children, my estimates were missing all sorts of stuff. Like regular college fund contributions. And diapers.)

I agree with you, but why do people think this way? Because there are fathers who absolutely cannot function as a caregiver to their own children. I have friends who have trouble watching their kids for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon while their wives do other things. So, the stereotype exists for a reason--but I agree it is not pleasant to be judged by it.

Parenting isn't rocket science, but it's hard work that requires a bit of introspection if you wish raise your kids well. It's a shame that folks have kids but have no desire to shoulder the burden they've accepted.

And there are mothers who absolutely cannot function as a caregiver to their own children.

I think the article is asking why mothers are assumed to be good parents and everyone assumes fathers are lucky if they can get pants on their kids in the morning.

I guess I didn't fully get the point in my mind across. Yeah, some people are poor caregivers (like most anything in life), but some people also don't expend the energy to be competent caregivers (that is, they are perfectly capable of getting kids their dressed in the morning, but for whatever reason, can't get their brains around it). Of course, in the States at least, the cultural tradition, set over generations, is that fathers are to provide for their families, and mothers do the dirty work of raising children. So, for many fathers, their task ends when they get home from work--"there, I've put the proverbial food on the table, now leave me alone so I can rest."

Sure, but things change.

My grandfather used to beat the crap out of my dad with his belt. My dad decided he didn't want to do that to me. I'm deciding to be a more involved dad than father have by historical standards. I don't think I'm alone.

The linked article is saying there are a lot of other dads out there like me but the rest of society hasn't caught up yet.

I agree completely. My hope, too, is that more dad's like us (I was the "primary caregiver" for large swaths of time when my wife was in grad school) will change the perception.

To be fair, I am very involved raising my three-year-old, but I am lucky if I can tell his pajamas from his proper clothes, and as often as not fail to dress him in an outfit his mother aproves of. :)

Eh, don't feel bad. If they're not denim or button down there's really no difference in kids' day-clothes vs. their pajamas. "Convention over configuration" I think we tend to call it in our industry :).

Do you also buy the clothes? Being involved from the buying point helps a lot to understand the logic of it all IMO. I had the same pb with the different baby creams, and had to choose one in the shop to really get what is used for what.

Easy solution, get your son to choose his own clothing. Then you quickly go from, "How could you have picked that for him?" to "How cute!"

Plus your son will probably enjoy having that piece of control.

So, the stereotype exists for a reason

The stereotype certainly has validity insomuch as stereotypes do, but it isn't because men are biologically or mentally incapable of raising children. Instead it's a happenstance of history that women usually did the child rearing while men did the hunting and gathering and war making. Each sex had their roles, and this is seen in almost every culture, everywhere where people were found, throughout history.

Now we don't have to hunt and gather or wage war -- or at least not as frequently -- so those roles are obsolete. That doesn't remove the culturally entrenched positions.

So you have men feigning strategic incompetence to avoid something they've been conditioned not to do, and women assuming incompetence of the other sex, acting territorial about their responsibilities. While we are more enlightened now, that doesn't undo millennia of precedent.

Agreed. As first time parents, both men and women tend to feel completely lost. However, the pressure seems to be on women to "figure it out", because if they admit incompetence in any way, they're looked down upon severely, while the same pressure doesn't exist for men.

I'm not saying that there aren't a lot of wonderful fathers who try hard and contribute (my own father and my DH being two of them), but until we make a massive cultural shift towards expecting this, this problem will continue to exist.

Adding to this is that while both will feel lost, women are more likely than men to have at least some experience with children by the time they have kids of their own. For instance, how many of the babysitters when you were a kid were teenage boys?

or it's the result of institutionalized gender roles.

It used to be 'common knowledge' that women can't be relied on for intense jobs ("They might get hysterical!"), but thanks to a long campaign from the feminist movement, most people know such broad generalisations are false. This is the same as the "men are bad caregivers"

Honestly, it goes well beyond childcare. I think a lot of people simply don't expect men to do anything but go to work and come home and mow the lawn with a beer in hand.

When my son was in Cub Scouts, I remember the scoutmaster asking the kids how they helped at home (in order to get a badge or something). My son said "I help my Dad cook." Scoutmaster looked puzzled for a second, then said, "oh, you mean on the grill. OK!" No, he means he helps me make breakfast, lunch, dinner, bake cookies, whatever needs to be done.

Likewise when my wife was pregnant, she couldn't lift heavy things during the last couple months. We live on a horse farm and normally she thinks nothing of tossing around 60lb bales of hay. When she was asked who was doing her chores when she was pregnant, and she said that I was, the look of amazement on the other woman's face was classic "are you serious???"

Oddly enough, no one seems surprised that I change diapers!

As well as societal norms, it's not too surprising that the Cub Scouts would be surprised by it. The Boy Scouts ban anyone who's gay. Part of their policies are in the past.

Here here.

Back in the day it was seen as perfectly fine for the husband to take care of the money, and for him to give his wife a bit of money for shopping and things like that. Now we have moved on from that (thankfully!). However there are still people who think that men can't handle children.