Experiencing the steep learning curve of a new father has me thinking again about men and domesticity and the ways in which we carefully inculcate “learned incompetence” in so many of our brothers. (An old post on men and household chores is here.)
As I’ve said several times now, I never changed a baby’s diaper until my daughter was born. Though my younger sisters are more than a decade my junior, I was never invited or encouraged to change them or participate in their care. Growing up, the men I knew were immensely enthusiastic about babies — in short bursts. After some active play, a crying child would be handed by a man to the baby’s mother (or aunt, grandmother, cousin, and so on). My own father was very loving towards me all his life, but the actual care I can remember receiving when I was small was largely from my mother or from other women.
My feminist mother, to her credit, taught her sons how to do laundry, wash dishes, and perform other domestic duties. But we were never given, that I remember, any sort of education about how to care for babies. And though in many previous relationships with women I learned to be scrupulous about balancing out household tasks, small people were never a responsibility. (Pets were, and I’ve always been eager to volunteer to take the lead in caring for animals.) So when Cerys was born, I was suddenly “on” duty in a way I had never been before.
My wife had two younger brothers, and was raised by a Colombian mother with traditionally Latin views about women, men, and domesticity. My wife changed her first diaper when she was six, and more or less raised her nieces and nephew on her own. She’s had a nearly thirty-year jump on me when it comes to taking care of infants. But the fact that we were raised with different gender and culture-based expectations about caring for babies doesn’t for a moment reduce my responsibility to be an equal care-giver to our daughter.
In the past month, I’ve had to fight that classically male temptation to get flustered and overwhelmed by domestic responsibility. When I see the smoothness and speed with which my wife, my mother-in-law, and the doula change or burp or swaddle Cerys, I’m tempted to feel defeated and incompetent. I know, too, that my mother-in-law (as lovely as she is) has certain cultural expectations about men’s ability to care for babies; she expects me to fumble and bumble my way along. My own fear of doing things poorly, combined with others’ expectations of domestic incompetence, can create a formidable obstacle to persisting with the seemingly endless tasks at hand! My devotion to my wife and daughter mean that I’m going to keep pushing right through my own frustration with what I don’t yet understand, though I will ask for help and guidance as needed. And my feminism allows me to stand back from the unfolding household drama and see the forces that are working on all of us to perpetuate traditional gender roles. Learning to care for a baby and to care for her well, despite my acculturation and my prior ignorance, is part and parcel of my feminist work. It’s an opportunity to match my language and my life in a new way.
As we know, many men frequently feign incompetence in the domestic sphere in order to shirk a set of seemingly unpleasant responsibilities. We all know the classic passive-aggressive male strategy of agreeing to do a task, and then doing it so badly that the woman throws up her hands in frustration and takes over. But as my post linked in the first paragraph argued, we also know that a great many women are taught to believe not only in male domestic incompetence, but also in their own innate superiority in matters of the home. Particularly in a world where women are denied other opportunities for power, the chance to be sovereign over the kitchen or the nursery becomes a precious one — drudgery at times, yes, but also an opportunity to demonstrate mastery and to establish control. And even many women who have rejected the most odious aspects of traditional culture, women who embrace many feminist principles, may be surprised by the degree to which they feel a strange and unwelcome compulsion to assume primary responsibility for what goes on inside a home. This compulsion often emerges only when a woman moves in with a partner for the first time, or perhaps when a baby comes. (In the original post, I told the story of my second ex-wife frantically cleaning the bath tub in our new home in anticipation of my mother’s visit.)
I know that a great many men are taught more about babies than I was. (Frankly, I had very little interest in babies until very recently.) Not every first-time Dad has no experience with diapers, or rocking a baby to sleep, or fitting a child into a car seat. This steep learning curve is a joyous one, of course, because I love my daughter — and her mother — so much. And it’s also an opportunity for me to confront those lingering demons of sexism, the ones that tell me that “it’s not my job” or “A man can’t do this as well as a woman can.” False beliefs about male domestic incompetence can combine with exhaustion and anxiety to push some men right out of their appropriate role as equal care-givers. I’m fighting like hell against all of these, and so far, praise be, I’m winning the battle one day at a time.
Fine thoughts, as always, Hugo. Thanks for sharing this learning curve you’re on with us all.
My feminist mother, to her credit, taught her sons how to do laundry, wash dishes, and perform other domestic duties. But we were never given, that I remember, any sort of education about how to care for babies.
For whatever it’s worth, my decidedly non-feminist mother–married to a decidedly patriarchal (in both a pratical and a theological sense) husband–nonetheless made certain (with father enforcing her certainties, with a belt as necessary) that all us boys (all seven of us) develop some skill with the domestic side of life. Not everything on that side; she protected the laundry room as if it were her private domain, which in essence I suppose it was. But mopping the floors, doing the dishes, and most of all, diapering and bathing and cleaning up after and feeding bottles to our younger siblings and cousins? We did it all. I would like to think that such was the result of her being sensitive to how the world was changing, even within our fairly insular Mormon environment, but in all honesty, it was mostly necessity: she was often ill, and dad was often gone, and so we all had to pitch in, and couldn’t leave the work for our two sisters. In any case, it had the effect of sensitizing us all for the better, though only one of us–so far!–has gone so far as to accept the description “feminist.”
I find it interesting and, at times maddening, that my husband–who is a wonderfully capable and patient father to our two preschoolers–can sit upstairs at his computer and completely ignore their needs for attention or food or to get out of the bathtub or whatever. It’s like he is so conditioned to let me take care of it, their cries can go on way too long before he finally takes action. I’m sure a lot of this is my fault, for swooping in far too often, but it must also be for the acculturation reasons you outlined above. Bless you for already recognizing this in yourself, as a new father! I am thankful that as our children move out of uber–needy baby-hood, my husband takes more interest and delight in their care and interaction.
The only time I’ve ever changed a diaper, I was baby-sitting a 1.5 year old. Did you know that 1.5 years is old enough to actually laugh at your babysitter for not doing it as well as your parents?
Learned helplessness deeply annoys me, whether it’s men in the kitchen or women in front of the computer, to pick a couple stereotypes that are often internalized. I hate to fail too, but it’s hard for me to imagine not wanting to learn a useful skill.
Russell, in the belief that actions speak louder than words, I’d rather live with a Mormon who actually does the housework, than a self-professed feminist who doesn’t. (Not that those are mutually exclusive things.)
of course there is the option of being an involved dad and still thinking people spend far to much time cleaning their damn houses. in fact if a person, like say me, spent less time on fixing/building/ cleaning house that is time that can be spent with the child and living a full life.
Up with children and life, down with housework.
Great post, Hugo.
My husband and I are in the opposite situation, since I’ve briefly held, oh, about two babies in my lifetime, while my husband has a lot of experience with younger siblings and newborn cousins. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out when we have our own children, especially since some things, such as cleaning, are already being played out according to old-fashioned gender expectations.
“False beliefs about male domestic incompetence can combine with exhaustion and anxiety to push some men right out of their appropriate role as equal care-givers.”
Very true. As I wrote here, I was fortunate to to have had the opportunity to learn how to take care of infants as a teenager. My ability to handle a screaming newborn was something I took great pride in.
Breaking this gender stereotype - that women somehow have a more “natural” ability to care for their infants is one of those win-win efforts that will help everyone.
What STF said! I have a brother 15 years younger than me. Remember: it’s only poop. It isn’t plutonium.
I _love_ kids, and take the opportunity to hold/play with/help take care of those of my friends and relatives whenever I can. That said, as Hugo points out, playing with and helping out with other people’s kids is a far cry from taking care of your own (including changing diapers)….nothing really prepares you for that. I would hope, though, that I would be the type of husband/father to take an equal share of the diaper changing, feeding, cleaning and dishwashing. (Hopefully we can work out a system- I actually kind of like doing dishes, so maybe I could do all the dishes in exchange for not changing diapers? Or not- who knows.) It’s easy to fall away from what we know we _should_ do, though- I’ll have to make an effort to make sure I don’t.
I think the notion that changing diapers is some sort of daunting technical skill is fostered in support of the kind of learned incompetence. I’ve seen men who’d dive into far more complicatedand difficult tasks in many areas of life, with far less actual knowledge/experience about how to do it, treat diaper changing as it if were some technical task they couldn’t possibly master.
Common sense gets you 90%+ of the way there.
I have a 22-month-old. I’ve discovered that most child maintenance tasks are fairly simple, if, at times unpleasant. Changing a diaper is *easy*, but it can be very unpleasant (my daughter loves beans, but they don’t love her). Most of the other tasks aren’t hard, but there are a lot of them, and starting from zero (as I did) can be pretty intimidating. The biggest problem, in some ways, is that they are too easy - there’s no intellectual challenge to them, there’s really not much to improve that someone hasn’t already figured out, they’re just there.
Very true, Anthony. And they’re repetitive. Once you mow the lawn, you’re done for a week, but diapers need changing all. the. time. There’s no glamor in cleaning spit-up off the floor or washing the high chair tray.