Young couples with children try to equally contribute to parenting, the family’s financial state and chores. But it is still often assumed that the woman does the most work when it comes to children and to the home. Schools tend to call the moms by default even if the family asked to firstly contact the dad, and moms are responsible for gift buying for the child's school Christmas party.
A woman on Twitter jokingly remarked that when she asked her child’s classmates’ dads to give her their emails for birthday party purposes, all 3 of them gave her their wives’ contacts. However, people in the comments didn’t take it lightly and a discussion broke out about how moms are expected to take care of organizational things.
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Mom on Twitter shared how when she asked dads at her kid's school for emails, they gave her their wives' and she jokingly remarked that this is a social experiment
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The Twitter user who started the conversation is Sonya Bonczek, the Director of Publicity at the University of North Carolina Press. The tweet went viral with 283k likes and even though the woman was joking about conducting a social experiment, people in the comments got involved in a heated discussion.
Women were sharing that this is very true and that they have to handle the kids’ birthdays, presents and other organizational things. Dads may think that because moms handle it so well, they enjoy it, but judging from the comments, it appears not to be true.
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While Sonya was joking, others took it more seriously and a heated discussion opened up in her comments
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Men joined the conversation as well and while there were some of them who felt that moms are considered the default parent and were actually annoyed at not being contacted first, more men expressed that they are just not cut out for the job.
These comments were saying that the men don’t have such a good memory, so they forget the things they might have organized or they don’t have the skills for that and if they tried to handle it, they wouldn’t come on time, they wouldn’t be properly dressed and who knows what they would bring as a present.
Men tried to justify the dads' behavior by saying that it would be weird to have a strange woman's number in their contacts if their wives ever saw it
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Another interesting and maybe unexpected point the men raised was that they don’t feel comfortable giving their contacts to another woman. They feel that having a strange woman’s contact in their phones might lead to misunderstandings with their wives.
While that can be true, other commenters noted that this may be an indication that the marriage is not very strong and such trust issues should be solved because the wife shouldn’t be suspicious of the dad having another parents’ contacts for the kid’s school or socializing purposes.
Men also said that their wives handle such matters better and if they did it, it would be an organizational mess
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Sonya didn’t think much of the situation she described in her viral tweet and some men explained that it might be that the parents have their own roles. Maybe the mom handles school and birthdays and the dad takes the kids to doctor’s appointments.
We may not know the situation of every family, but the tendency still remains: people expect less from dads and if they want things done or if they want to find out something, they will go to the mom.
Women were doubtful, because why can't a grown man schedule and organize things when they surely have to do it for themselves?
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You may be able to imagine why the mom is seen as the default parent, and if you’re guessing it’s because of society and people’s expectations, that’s correct. Therapist Nancy Coller LCSW, Rev. says that “Women are assumed to be the default parent in part because of long-entrenched and traditional gender roles, where women are the caretakers of the family and stayed home, while men worked outside the home.”
It worked fine during the cavemen era, but we have evolved since then and women also provide for their families; they have different roles in society, so it is interesting to observe how the expectations from specific genders haven’t changed for thousands of years.
Because the moms know they are considered the default parents and have to handle most of things that have to do with their kids
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Mariah Maddox, a writer for Motherly and a mom, shared that it was very tiring not only to be considered the default parent, but for her husband and her child’s dad to be always viewed as the secondary parent because even if the dad wants to be involved, other people don’t take him seriously.
The mom explores the topic further: “Dads being treated as the lesser parent out in the world plays into them feeling disconnected from their role as fathers in the home. For a while, my husband thought that the only way he could help me with our son was by changing his diaper—even though I needed so much more support. And then it struck me, that was the only thing the rude nurse at the hospital told him he could handle.”
Not only do some men think that this is a job for the mom, but society as well, which leads to other dads feeling excluded from their child's life
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It seems that not only are moms expected to take on this emotional workload and take care of parenting, but dads are conditioned to think that there is nothing they can do to help or that they wouldn’t even be able to handle it.
But men are no longer just providers - they are dads, which means they should be involved in parenting as much as moms are and the workload on both of the parents doesn’t just depend on the family dynamic, but on how society views them. That is why such public discussions are valuable.
Or it may be that the couple has divided responsibilities equally and it just happened that the mom is in charge of the scheduling
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Does Sonya’s experience sound familiar? Why do you think it is so hard to change the assumption that the mom handles family affairs? Do you think there is a fair explanation why the dads in Sonya’s story would give their wives’ emails? Let us know your thoughts and share your stories in the comments!