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Comment by bmj | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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"

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?

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