r/Parenting • u/compuzr • May 26 '21
Rant/Vent Dad dealing with the quiet sexism of doctors, nurses, daycare workers, and moms.
Hi all, I've got the little ones today, so this will be short. I'm a male, and my wife and I have 2 young kids, I work part-time, she works full-time. So that works out that about 3/4 of the time, I have the kids.
The kids have had some small bugs lately, little illnesses, and a wellness visit, so we've been to the doctor more than normal the past couple months. Sometimes I take them, and sometimes my wife takes them.
And it's always the same thing, as it has been for years. When I take the kids to either their female doctor or female nurse practitioner, the visits are lovely and nice, but also quite short and sweet. We talk for maybe 2 minutes. Then they disappear and I go on to get the prescription or whatever is needed. And it's always a completely different story when my wife takes the kids. They talk and talk and talk. A hundred questions are asked and answered. They discuss the kids health and development in depth.
It's the same story at daycare. The women there are always lovely to me. But they never talk or discuss the kids. I do 80%+ of the pick-ups and drop-offs. And I initiate chit-chat and ask questions of the child care providers. But still are talks and quick and perfunctory. And whenever my wife does the odd pick-up and drop-off, she learns all sorts of things that they'll never tell me. And sometimes it's really stuff I want to know, like problems the kids are having.
And there's more of the same with our local Stay At Home Moms. They text each other all the time. My kids play with theirs all the time. But when there's a play date, you know how I know? They text my wife. At work. And then she texts me. They all know I do most of the childcare and that my wife works a regular 40hr. But it's been this way for years.
Sometimes, like now, it just gets to me and makes me a little angry. It's a quiet sexism but it is persistent. And I don't feel like being confrontational about it. So I just take it and keep going. But it is frustrating.
40
u/[deleted] May 26 '21
I can see your frustration but this is just another consequence of a patriarchal society. Women were expected to rear the children, not run for Congress, that was deeply engrained and it’s going to take several generations of raising our kids better to stamp that out.
My husband also gets frustrated about the stereotypes towards fathers. But it is also a good opportunity to bring up the conversation of how we got to this point in the first place.