Many people are anxious about becoming a parent, and it's understandable. After all, it is of one of the biggest responsibilities you may take in your life.
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However, Reddit user Puzzled-Two6615's husband has been so unfazed by the birth of their first child that the woman started having doubts about his love for her and the family.
As weeks went by, he got increasingly interested in video games, devoting his entire free time to sitting in front of the computer instead of supporting his wife and raising their daughter.
So the new mother told her story to the internet, asking outsiders to help her make sense of the situation.
This woman couldn't get her husband to put his computer away and help her with their newborn
Image credits: Prostock-studio / envato (not the actual photo)
So she decided to confront him about it
But he didn't seem to care
After her story went viral, she answered people's biggest questions
Image credits: yuhaimedia / unsplash (not the actual photo)
Later, she issued an update on her situation
Image credits: halfpoint / envato (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Engin Akyurt / pexels (not the actual photo)
And said she made up her mind to break up with her husband
Image credits: Puzzled-Two6615
Low father participation in their family's lives often leads to serious long-lasting problems
Even though it's an extreme one, this story illustrates a broader social problem. The number of mothers in the labor force who have young children hit its peak and leveled off a few decades ago but so did the parenting contributions of men. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in heterosexual couples, women employed outside of the home shoulder two thirds of childcare responsibilities, while their male partners account for the remaining third.
The author of the post seems to have realized that her husband needed to step up and contribute more than a few encouraging words (which were also lacking). "Although appreciation goes a long way in a marriage, that doesn't make it a positive or even a neutral force if there's a legitimate grievance. Misplaced gratitude, by supporting a couple’s unequal status quo, can help destroy rather than maintain a romantic relationship," psychotherapist and author of All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership Darcy Lockman wrote.
"Women who report that they do more child care than their husbands are 45 percent less likely to describe their marriages as 'very happy' than women who say responsibilities are shared," Lockman added. "Studies in the past decade in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States have all found that couples with low levels of male-partner participation in domestic chores are more likely to separate than couples in which men do."
And this was exactly what most of people's reactions revolved around
