Women who complain that they do a lot more childcare than their husbands, leading to losses in professional development or beauty time, need to ask themselves: do they contribute to manufacturing a distance between father and child? Do they insert themselves into their relationship with suggestions, control, hovering, constant presence and supervision?
Because I know I do.
I’m the last person I would have expected to be a helicoptering Mommy. Over the years, I have worn my tongue to a stub and my fingers to nibs telling women in RL and online to stop inserting themselves between fathers and children. I can recite miles upon miles of theory on the importance of paternal involvement and of a timely transition through all the stages of cutting the emotional umbilical cord. And here I am, having to fight a veritable battle with my desire to hover. I’m boring myself stiff with how stupid and useless I’m being about this.
I’ll win this battle for sure but I have to conclude that, in developed countries, just like the “women do more housework” slogan, the “women do more childcare” trope is meticulously constructed by women themselves. At least, I didn’t have to fight myself over the pathetic “I do the dishes / clean / do laundry, etc because if I let him do it, I’ll have to rewash / clean all over again, etc afterwards.” That kind of insanity, at least, I have been spared.
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